Julissa Ruiz comes from a background in both politics and law. She got her start in politics interning for Senator Carol Moseley-Braun in 1997 and later went on to further the civil rights cause working for the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. She left the political arena to attend law school at the College of Law at Northern Illinois University. While studying law, she spent her summers educating migrant farm workers on their legal rights and assisting victims of domestic abuse obtain orders of protection. She also spent a summer studying Mexican Law in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Since her graduation from law school, she acted as an organizer and lobbyist for Citizen Action/IL, a state consumer advocacy group. She later went on to lobby members of the U.S. House of Representatives against the passage of an unjust immigration bill that sought to criminalize many undocumented immigrants and those assisting them.

She has also acted as a volunteer attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center in helping various Latinos process their citizenship applications, with the Chicago Workers' Collaborative in helping educate undocumented immigrants about worker rights and with Rainbow/PUSH coalition, where she has acted as a volunteer attorney for the organization's legal clinic. Before starting her own solo law firm, she founded Ruiz Travis Law, LLC, a female- run general practice law firm where she was a partner. She currently practices in the areas of immigration and family law.

Ms. Ruiz holds a Bachelors Degree of Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she majored in Political Science/Policy and minored in French. She has earned several awards including the Willie Taplin Barrow Award and the Exito de la Mujer Hispana Award and currently sits on the board of directors at the following organizations: University of Illinois Latina/o Alumni Association, the International Community Alliance of Northwest Indiana, an organization serving the area's immigrant population by fostering the social and civil life of the area's immigrant and ethnic communities, and the South Suburban Area Project, an organization founded to prevent and treat juvenile crime and delinquency.  She has also served on the board of Immigration PAC, an organization created to promote immigration reform by electing candidates for federal office that support comprehensive immigration reform that is both ethical and rational.