Vincent M. Gonzales is Senior Environmental Counsel for Southern California Gas Company, a Sempra Energy Utility. He provides environmental legal counsel to the Company, focusing on air quality, climate change, and Proposition 65 issues, among others.
Previously, Gonzales was in-house counsel for Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), now operating as BP America. In addition to environmental law, Gonzales provided counsel to the various ARCO companies in the areas of commercial law, real estate law, and maritime law. Before ARCO, he was an associate in the corporation department of O'Melveny & Myers.
Gonzales is a member of the International Board of Directors of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) with over 29,000 in-house counsel members across the globe. He currently chairs the ACC Energy Committee, having once chaired the ACC Environmental & Sustainability Committee and ACC’s Council of Committees. He is a Director Emeritus member of the Board of Directors of the Southern California Chapter of the ACC (ACC-SoCal), where in 2005 he served as its President. Gonzales is on the Board of Directors of Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles, serving as its Treasurer. He is a member and former president of the Philippine American Bar Association of Los Angeles. He is also the Chair of the Environmental Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA).
In 2000, ACC-SoCal honored Gonzales as the first recipient of its Pro Bono Corporate Counsel of the Year Award. In 2004, the Board of Directors of Sempra Energy honored Gonzales with the Chairman’s Award, in recognition of his exceptional professional achievements in support of the Company. Most recently, Gonzales received the Robert J. Townsend ACC Member of the Year Award for 2007, in recognition of his many professional contributions to the ACC and its many in-house counsel members.
Gonzales is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law where he served as a staff member and Publication Editor of the Southern California Law Review. He received a B.A. from Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and a M.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego.
