Julia’s passion for organizing comes from a long legacy of organizing in her family, personal experiences of struggle and amazing mentors along her journey. She first got involved in movement work when social work professors in college introduced her to immigrant rights leaders fighting for the DREAM Act in 2010. Since then, Julia has been organizing in solidarity with working class people of color-led movements and power organizations on efforts to address gentrification, living wages for farm workers and drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants in New York State, among others. Prior to her work at Hand-In-Hand, she has had the privilege of working at AFL-CIO National Headquarters in DC, Community Voices Heard in New York and as an Americorps VISTA in Cleveland, Ohio. Julia has a Masters in Social Work from CUNY Hunter College. She is bilingual in English and Spanish.