Beatrice "Bea" Angela Duran is an American politician and union grievance specialist from

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

, who was a member of the

Nevada Assembly The Nevada Assembly is the lower house of the Nevada Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Nevada, the upper house being the Nevada Senate. The body consists of 42 members, elected to two-year terms from single-member distri ...

Early life

Duran was born in 1963 in

Cheyenne, Wyoming Cheyenne ( or ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Wyoming, most populous city of the U.S. state of Wyoming. It is the county seat of Laramie County, Wyoming, Laramie County, with 65,132 reside ...

Career

In 1986, Duran, then a waitress at the Four Queens Hotel and Casino, became active in the

Culinary Workers Union The Culinary Workers Union, UNITE HERE Local 226 is a local union affiliated with UNITE HERE which operates in the Las Vegas metropolitan area of Nevada. Members include a variety of occupations organized along craft lines working in restaurants ...

, the Las Vegas-based Local 226 of

UNITE HERE UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with roughly 300,000 active members. The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 b ...

, and was on staff as the union achieved

recognition Recognition may refer to: Machine learning *Pattern recognition, a branch of machine learning which encompasses the meanings below Biometric * Recognition of human individuals, or biometrics, used as a form of identification and access control ...

there. Since 1999 she has worked as a staff member for the Culinary Union, where she was a grievance specialist with their Culinary Grievance Department.

Politics

In December 2018, the

Clark County Commission The Clark County Commission is the governmental organization that governs and runs Clark County, Nevada, providing services to the unincorporated areas. Its offices are located at the Clark County Government Center in Downtown Las Vegas. Compos ...

appointed Duran as a Democratic member to represent the 11th district (portions of Las Vegas and

North Las Vegas North Las Vegas is a suburban city in Clark County, Nevada, United States, in the Las Vegas Valley. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 262,527, with an estimated population of 280,543 in 2022. The city was incorporated on May 1, 1946 ...

) of the Nevada Assembly, to replace

Olivia Diaz Olivia Diaz (born 1978 in Las Vegas, Nevada), is an American elementary school teacher and politician who served as a Democratic member of the Nevada Assembly from 2011 until 2018 representing District 11. Diaz is a member of the National H ...

(who had resigned from her Assembly seat soon after winning re-election, to run for the Las Vegas City Council).

References

Democratic Party members of the Nevada Assembly American trade union leaders Women trade union leaders Women state legislators in Nevada Restaurant staff 21st-century American women politicians Living people 1963 births 21st-century members of the Nevada Legislature {{Nevada-politician-stub