Biography

Megan Daic, J.D., is an attorney, entrepreneur, mediator and legal educator with more than a decade of experience in litigation, negotiation and dispute resolution. She is the founder and Managing Attorney of Daic Law, a high-volume consumer debt defense and bankruptcy firm, and the founder and CEO of Empathic Edge, an AI-powered platform for legal and professional skills training. She also serves as Founder and Principal Mediator of Daic Dispute Resolution, providing mediation and negotiation consulting to law firms, corporations and professional organizations.

Daic has taught at the University of Houston Law Center since 2016, where she designed and teaches courses in Legal Negotiations, Advanced Negotiations, Client Counseling and Interviewing, and Applied Advocacy. From 2017 to 2026, she directed UHLC’s Alternative Dispute Resolution competition program, coaching teams to national recognition in negotiation, client counseling and mediation competitions and contributing to UHLC’s ABA Competitions Champion title for 2021-2022.

She holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Houston Law Center, a Bachelor of Arts in Government from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Certificate in Negotiation from Harvard’s Program on Negotiation. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Texas Bar Foundation, and was named a Texas Super Lawyer in 2025 and 2026. In 2026, she received the Syracuse Innovation in Law Award for her work at the intersection of law, technology and education.

At the St. Mary’s University School of Law, Daic serves as ADR Coach for The National Team, coaching students in negotiation, client counseling and dispute resolution competition preparation.

Biography

Tracy Almanzan (J.D. ’06) earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management with a minor Communications Management from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in 2002. She earned a Juris Doctorate Degree from the St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, in 2006.

Almanzan began her career with the El Paso County Attorney’s Office in 2006 as the Community Prosecutor. During her time at the County Attorney’s Office, she received training in representing clients in protective orders applications, handling mental health commitments, prosecuting juvenile cases, and eventually, representing Child Protective Services. In 2016, she went into private practice, where she practiced in child welfare law, juvenile law, family law and some probate law.

Almanzan has been a part of several committees through the State Bar of Texas throughout her career, to include the Racial Diversity in the Profession Committee and the Child Abuse Committee. For two years, she was the Chair of the Diversity in the Profession Committee and is still a member. In addition, she recently served on Former State Bar President Sylvia Borunda-Firth’s State Bar Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force. She is a member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion State Bar Committee.

Almanzan joined the University of Texas at El Paso in February 2023 as a Professor of Practice for the Law School Preparation Institute in the Patti and Paul Yetter Center for Law. She taught classes to include legal writing and legal research.

She married attorney, Alex Almanzán, in 2006, and they have two beautiful children, Noa and Paloma, and a dog named Frida. In her free time, she enjoys supporting her children’s love of theater arts, sports and music; reading, traveling and working out on her Peloton.

Biography

Joaquin Gonzalez, J.D., is a San Antonio native and civil litigator. Prior to joining the St. Mary’s Law faculty, he was the Senior Supervising Attorney in the Voting Rights Program at the Texas Civil Rights Project.

He has played a leading role in some of the most significant Texas voting rights cases in recent years. This includes halting an attempt to improperly purge nearly 100,000 naturalized citizens from the voter rolls and forcing Texas to fully comply with the federal motor voter law, which has led to over 2,000,000 voter registrations. He helped design Bexar County’s S.M.A.R.T. Elections initiative in 2020, which successfully expanded access and ensured safe and effective elections during the COVID pandemic.

One of Gonzalez’s focus areas has been redistricting. He has served as the redistricting counsel for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, and recently argued a major Voting Rights Act case in front of the En Banc Fifth Circuit.

Prior to becoming an attorney, Gonzalez worked in policy and campaign positions for a number of state and local elected officials.

• Miguel Rivera, Joaquin Gonzalez, Sarah Chen, Report: A Review of Redistricting in Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project (2021), https://www.txcivilrights.org/_files/ugd/aab911_c285d6b647d84991b89352f49595841b.pdf.
• Joaquin Gonzalez, Secrecy, Lies, Exclusion: Why Texas Is One of the Most Gerrymandered States, TCRPMag (May 21, 2020), https://www.news.txcivilrights.org/post/secrecy-lies-exclusion-why-texas-is-one-of-the-most-gerrymandered-states.
• Rebecca Harrison Stevens, Meagan Taylor Harding, Joaquin Gonzalez, Emily Eby, Handcuffing the Vote: Diluting Minority Voting Power Through Prison Gerrymandering and Felon Disenfranchisement, 21 Scholar: St. Mary’s L. Rev. & Soc. Just. 195, 196 (2019).
• Joaquin Gonzalez, Fighting Back To Protect Student Voting Rights, 129 Yale L.J. Forum 258 (2019).

Biography

Krystal Moczygemba O’Connor, J.D., earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Agricultural Economics with a minor in History from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, in 2017. She then earned a Master’s Degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom in 2019. She also earned a Juris Doctorate Degree from Notre Dame Law School in South Bend, Indiana, in 2021.

Moczygemba O’Connor began her career with Chasnoff Valkenaar Pepping & Stribling LLP in San Antonio, Texas, where she advised foreign and domestic insurers in complex matters arising out of director and officer liability, management liability, professional liability, cyber liability, commercial general liability, and excess insurance policies. She also represented foreign and domestic insurers in federal and state court lawsuits concerning declaratory judgments, breaches of contract, bad faith allegations, and statutory violations in complex civil litigation matters.

Moczygemba O’Connor joined St. Mary’s Law in the Fall 2024, where she is teaching legal writing and research in the school’s Legal Communications, Analysis, and Professionalism course.

She married attorney, Cam O’Connor, who she met in law school, in 2024. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her husband, family and friends, going to the theater, reading fantasy and mystery stories, various outdoor hobbies, working with her family’s cow-calf operation and cooking.

Biography

Prior to joining St. Mary’s University, Victoria Duke-Dawson’s academia path started in Houston, Texas as a staff attorney for the Legal Clinics at Thurgood Marshall School of Law. After several years of showing students how to practice law with real clients, it was then time to make the transition to show students how to embrace legal writing. These skills were subsequently imported from Houston, Texas, to Orlando, Florida, at Florida A&M University College of Law. There Duke-Dawson served as the Director of Legal Writing and afterward an Associate Professor of Law in Torts, Elder Law, Juvenile Law, Advanced Torts, Professional Responsibility and a Law School indoctrination Program. Her accomplishments gained her an invitation to become an inaugural professor at the newly established law school, Indiana Tech, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. After two years in the Midwest, she returned back to the South. First, she went to Atlanta’s John Marshall School of Law where she taught legal writing, bar prep classes and served in the academic support classes, teaching skills labs. To complete the cycle Duke-Dawson transferred her talents and experience and returned back to Texas to teach at St. Mary’s School of Law. Here she supports students in skills-related courses, labs and workshops.

Periodicals

• Workaholic Syndrome: Law and Psychology Explore the Far Reach of the Eggshell Doctrine (work-in-progress).
• Co-authored Forward for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Wiley A. Branton Issues Symposium Issue- Education: The New Civil Rights, 68 Arkansas Law Review 5 (Symposium Issue 2015).
• Calumnious News Reporting: Defamatory Law Is More Than Sticks And Stones For Civic Duty Participants, 93 Nebraska Law Review 690 (March 2015).
• A Silk Purse Does Not Come From a Sow’s Ear: Non-Class Aggregate Settlements Based on Public Law Erodes the Model of Private Law, 8 Seton Hall Cir. Rev. 309 (Spring 2012).
• Reverse Mortgage Facilitators Harvesting Benefits While Escaping Fiduciary Duties: Who’s Really Looking Out For Whom? 10 Florida State Business Review Journal 117 (Spring 2011).
• Who Is Responsible When You Shop Until You Drop? An Impact On The Use Of The Aggressive Marketing Schemes Of ‘Black Friday’ Through Enterprise Liability Concepts, 50 Santa Clara Law Review 747 (2010).

Biography

Amanda Rivas (J.D. ’09) started her legal career in a clinical fellowship program at her law school alma mater. In addition to practicing civil litigation, she co-taught the clinical seminars and supervised law students in the civil clinical course. During her fellowship, she was also charged with coordinating the Center for Legal and Social Justice’s Pro Bono Program and Border Outreach Program.

In 2018, she was named Director of the Externship program after serving as the Associate Director since the program’s formal launch in 2011. Each semester she prepares students for their semester-long learning experience. Rivas is the primary contact and part of the support system for supervising attorneys hosting Externs each semester. She works with them individually and provides regular CLE workshops focused on supervisor effectiveness, ethics, and supervision issues. Additionally, she conducts employer and community outreach to expand experiential opportunities for students through the program. She coordinates with the faculty director, Assistant Dean Karen Kelley, other faculty members, and the Office of Career Services to ensure the program’s continued growth and success.

Her love of teaching and passion for education started after college as a Teach For America Corps member teaching middle school in the Rio Grande Valley. She currently serves as an advisory board member for Teach For America San Antonio.

Presentations

• Navigating Crosscurrents: Challenges and Opportunities in Partnerships between Career Services and Externship Departments, Co-Presenter, NALP Annual Educational Conference, Chicago, Illinois, April 29, 2015
• Supervising the Millennial Generation: The Good, The Bad, and The Hopeful, Co-Presenter, Practice Credit Program Supervisor CLE, April 10, 2015
• Breaking it down: Effective Assignments, Discussion and Exercises, Co-Presenter, Fall 2014 Practice Credit Program Supervisor CLE
• What Makes a Good Mentor: Effective and Consistent Feedback, Discussion and Exercises, Co-Presenter, Spring 2014, Practice Credit Program Supervisor CLE
• Advertising and Selection Tips, Assignments: Long Term, Short Term and Routine, Co-Presenter, Fall 2013, Practice Credit Program Supervisor CLE
• Writing Feedback, Optimal Observations, and Five Minute Supervising Tips, Co-Presenter, Spring 2013 Practice Credit Program Supervisor CLE
• Tips for Mental Health Professionals Regarding Subpoenas, Court Testimony and Legal Liability, March 2012, Guest Speaker, St. Mary’s University Department of Counseling and Human Services
• Violence on the Border, Perseverance and Hope: Providing Help along the Border Guest Speaker, St. Mary’s University President’s Peace Commission Panel, Fall 2010

Biography

Before joining St. Mary’s, Professor Wilson enjoyed a successful and rewarding career as an Assistant District Attorney for the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office. Serving over nineteen years as an ADA, she represented the State of Texas at all levels of proceedings in cases from arrest through sentencing, including jury trials, bond hearings, grand jury proceedings, pretrial motions, and sentencing hearings, involving all degrees of felony charges, such as drug possession, sexual assault, aggravated robbery, and capital murder. As a First Chair Felony Prosecutor, she also had the opportunity to train and mentor junior prosecutors, an aspect of the job she found especially enjoyable.

Originally from Greenwood, Mississippi, Professor Wilson came to Texas after law school as a direct-commissioned officer into the U.S. Army JAG Corps. As a JAG officer stationed at Fort Sam Houston, she served as a legal assistance attorney, Trial Counsel (Army prosecutor), and a legal instructor at the Army Medical Department Center and School. It was during this time that she became acquainted with San Antonio and decided to make it her permanent home. After serving four years, she left the Army to join the District Attorney’s Office in San Antonio.

For the past two years, Professor Wilson has been pursuing a Master of Arts in English through the University of Texas at Tyler. Her current research involves an analysis of the criticism of the English laws of primogeniture and coverture in the fiction of Charlotte Bronte. She is looking forward to completing her studies and receiving her master’s degree in December of 2022.

In her spare time, Professor Wilson enjoys Pilates, reading, attending her son’s football and basketball games and her daughter’s dance performances, and hanging out with her three spoiled dogs.