Julia Garcia was born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California. She graduated from University of California, Davis, where she received her B.S. in Environmental Policy, Analysis, and Planning, with a focus in City and Regional Planning, and a Minor in Economics. Julia was inspired by her coursework to pursue a career in transportation planning, which led her to apply to CivicSpark-AmeriCorps. At CivicSpark, she was placed at Los Angeles County - Internal Services Department: Clean Transportation Program, where she worked on a national survey of governments who own and operate EV Charging networks to identify best practices and common challenges, developed a mathematical model to determine optimal fees to recover operations and maintenance expenses, and developed the County’s 10 year EV Charger Deployment Plan, which determined where and when 15,000 chargers would be installed at the County’s 1,000+ properties.

Her 2 year experience with Los Angeles County inspired her to return to school to pursue a double Master of Sustainable Transportation and of Infrastructure Planning and Management, at the University of Washington Seattle, remotely. She is also working full time as a Sustainable Transportation Coordinator at California State University, Long Beach, where she coordinates all alternative transportation initiatives, including a bus pass program, carpool, vanpool, on campus shuttles, and management of 50 EV Chargers. She also holds a chair on the university’s Commission for Sustainability.