Ms. Cumare was born in Venezuela and as a child lived in upstate New
York and in Holland. She moved with her parents to California and, except for six years in graduate study at Harvard
University, she has resided in the Pasadena area. She attended Ramona Convent School for Girls in Alhambra in her
junior and senior years, then earned a B.A. in humanities, magna cum laude, from the University of Southern California.
Ms. Cumare studied English and American Language and Literature at Harvard University, being awarded an A.M. and a Ph.D. The
title of her dissertation is: Subversive Arts: Eighteenth Century Theories of Fiction and Comedy from Hobbes
to Fielding. While at Harvard she taught undergraduate classes in expository writing, English and comparative literature.
After teaching both undergraduates and graduate students in the English Departments at the University of Southern
California and California State University at Los Angeles, Ms. Cumare spent a year as co-host of a public radio arts and information
program at KCSN-FM on a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She studied law at the University of Southern
California, and was awarded her J.D. In law school she was a member of the Southern California Law Review and
was made a member of the Order of the Coif.
Ms. Cumare joined the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson as an associate,
for seven years; then she formed her own firm, Hamilton & Cumare LLP. In July 2009, she established herself
as a sole practitioner, focussing on management-side employment law and related business matters. In recent years, Ms.
Cumare has expanded her practice to include representation of non-profit organizations. She has successfully tried cases before
juries, judges and in administrative proceedings. She is especially adept at serving as counsel for individuals who are
sued as co-defendants with their employers. Ms. Cumare has been voted a Pasadena Magazine Top Attorney by her
peers.
Active in the community, Ms. Cumare has served as President of the Pasadena Bar Association (2003-04),
President of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Business & Professional Committee (2002-03), President of the Board of Holy
Family Services Adoption and Foster Care (1995-97), and served as a board member for St. Francis Center for the
homeless from 2004-2014 and for Mayfield Senior School from 2007-2013. She is currently a member of the board of The
Laboure Society, based in St. Paul, MN. She has served as a member of the Cardinal's Awards Dinner Committee,
the Children's SEED ministry at St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church, and was Councillor of Justice & Peace
for the Western Lieutenancy of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem from 2007-2011. In 2010 she was
invested as a Dame Commander in the papal Order of St. Gregory the Great.
Ms. Cumare is fluent in Dutch and has a reading knowledge of French, German and Spanish.
