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WASHINGTON When prominent Latino activists meet with President Obama, there's one White House staff member present whom many of them have known since she was a child.

Julie Chavez Rodriguez grew up handing out leaflets and knocking on doors with her grandfather, Cesar Chavez, whose campaign to organize farmworkers still inspires today's Latino leaders.

As deputy director of the Office of Public Engagement, Rodriguez runs Obama's organizing efforts in support of immigration reform and supervises Latino outreach.

On Monday Cesar Chavez Day in California, Colorado and Texas she spoke about her family at a White House event to honor volunteers and community organizers from around the country.

"My grandfather used to tell us that the job of an organizer was to help ordinary people do extraordinary things," Rodriguez, 35, told the crowd. "One of my favorite quotes from my grandfather says: 'Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.'"

Rodriguez usually keeps a much lower profile as a Chavez descendant. Her role is to defend the White House's slow-and-steady approach to immigration reform while many activists have demanded Obama use his executive powers to stop deportations.

Two top Latino leaders recently branded Obama the "deporter in chief," challenging the president's argument that he can't take further actions on his own but can only press Congress to pass legislation to overhaul the immigration laws.

In support of Obama's view, Rodriguez cites "Tata Cesar" and his decades of organizing farmworkers. "My grandfather helped me to understand that change isn't immediate," she said. "It doesn't happen overnight. It does take a lot of time and sacrifice. It takes consistent, sustained organizing and pressure to be able to see great progress in our country."

Rodriguez was born in Delano, Calif., home of the Delano grape strike and not far from the Chavez family home where her mother, Linda, was raised. Rodriguez grew up mostly at the United Farm Workers headquarters, a small community named Nuestra Seora Reina de la Paz, or Our Lady of Peace, in Keene, in the Tehachapi Mountains.

She and her cousins used to accompany their grandfather as he sought to build his labor union. They joked that while other people went on family picnics, they went on family pickets.

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Cesar Chavez's legacy is at work in the White House