Philadelphia-based attorney Daniel Mateo has been elected President-Elect for the Hispanic National Bar Association. 

He was voted in by the HNBA Board of Governors, and will serve as President-Elect for the 2022-2023 term.

An experienced litigation and business disputes attorney, Mateo is currently a partner at Holland & Knight LLP, where his work spans many industries, including pharmaceuticals and other life sciences companies, financial services, telecommunications, oil and gas, software and consumer products. 

Clients turn to Mateo for representation on matters that range from complex breach of contract disputes to commercial real estate and leasing disputes, to consumer class action claims, trademark disputes and non-compete litigation.

Mateo joined Holland & Knight as an equity partner in July 2018, after spending more than 20 years in the Princeton and Philadelphia offices of an Am Law 100 law firm. In his nearly 30 years of litigation and arbitration experience, he has established himself as one of the most accomplished legal professionals in the region.

Born in Nuremberg, Germany, to Puerto Rican partners who had been stationed there on an army base during the Vietnam War, Mateo represents the small, but growing Hispanic legal profession. 

Moving around quite a bit as a child, Mateo was primarily raised in Camden, New Jersey, and Coamo, Puerto Rico. 

A graduate of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and law degree recipient from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, one of his main missions throughout his professional career is to serve as a mentor and role model for the next generation of Hispanic lawyers. 

It is part of the reason Mateo has been such an engaged member of the Hispanic National Bar Association, where he will serve as President-Elect for the 2022-2023 term. He will then serve as President for the 2023-2024 term.

According to data from the American Bar Association, the Department of Labor, and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, Latinos make up just 5% of lawyers, despite comprising more than 18% of the nation’s workforce and nearly 20% of the U.S. population.

Aware of these glaring statistics, Mateo has regularly utilized his time mentoring young lawyers and law students, and strongly supporting bar association diversity and inclusion initiatives. 

Mateo is also a past president of the Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey, an active member of the New Jersey State Bar Association and has served on a number of committees focused on increasing diversity within the State Bar.

In 2019, Mateo was named “A Champion of Justice” and recipient of the Law Firm/Corporate Counsel Award during the third annual AL DÍA Lawyers Forum & Reception.