Aura Vasquez is an Afro-Latina Colombian immigrant, community leader, fearless environmental justice advocate, and renewable energy advisor. Her journey was long but fruitful and she’s running to bring a renewed sense of optimism and a fresh perspective to the Los Angeles City Council.
Growing Up In Colombia
Aura was born and raised in Candelaria, Colombia, a sugar cane town just outside of Cali. Her parents taught her the values of hard work and to have a strong belief in herself. Her mother, Leonor, was a teenage mom who did not graduate from high school, but worked hard and opened her own successful beauty salon to help support her family. Aura’s father, Jorge, never attended college, but earned a technical degree and became an accountant and community leader.
Jorge began taking Aura to town hall meetings and other community meetings when she was six years old. Though she was young, he encouraged her to speak up and share her opinions. He taught her about equity, leadership, and how to break down the patriarchal barriers entrenched in Colombian society. Most importantly, he helped her find her voice and showed her that her opinion matters.
Coming to America
She and her family came to the US in the early nineties to escape the bloodshed of “la era de violencia,” a period of unrest and destruction caused by drug cartels and the War on Drugs. At age 19, she lived and worked as an undocumented student, studying Political Science on nights and weekends and putting herself through New York City’s Lehman College. During her last year of school, Aura interned in the office of Congressman Eliot Engel, where she experienced the powerful effects elected officials can have on people’s lives.
After graduation, Aura joined United Way of New York City where she managed the Dropout Prevention Initiative and advocated for students at some of the worst performing schools in the city. Her advocacy efforts helped close the achievement gap for students, supporting their academic success, improving standardized test scores, and helping them graduate from high school.
In working with students whose greatest struggles were poverty and marginalization, Aura saw firsthand how unequal access to education is often driven by poverty and institutionalized racism. This early experience in education advocacy is what drives her passion to ensure all youth have equal access to quality education.
Becoming a Community Organizer
President Barack Obama’s 2008 grassroots campaign victory inspired Aura to pursue a career in organizing to build community and advocate for positive change. She found the opportunity to embark on a new chapter of her career in Los Angeles, as an organizer for the Orange County Congregation Community Organization, an affiliate of the PICO Network, the largest faith-based, grassroots organizing network in the country.
Aura found her talents at bringing groups and people together came naturally. Her first effort as a community organizer helped change the City of Santa Ana’s policies targeting immigrants for driving without a license in Orange County.
Orange County policies allowed law enforcement to impound residents’ cars if they were unable to show proof of a driver’s license. Aura built a bipartisan coalition of community leaders, law enforcement representatives, and elected officials to advocate for changes to these policies.
Aura’s efforts resulted in a broader policy change across the state, which today allows the undocumented to obtain drivers licenses.
The changes her advocacy made to Southern California inspired Aura to work in her own neighborhood. She was elected to the Wilshire Center Koreatown Neighborhood Council (WCKNC) in 2012, where she became the only Latina and only non-Korean American on the board. Her work focused on affordable housing, littering, and parking accessibility in the face of intense urban development.
As the chair of the Land Use Committee, Aura established a community benefits policy to make businesses and developers give back to the community and not just profit from residents. She pressured the City Planning Commission and Los Angeles City Council in an effort to fight predatory developers from tearing down affordable housing units in favor of expensive condominiums, which would have displaced long-term residents.
She also prioritized making the WCKNC more accessible to the great cultural diversity of that community. One Saturday a month, Aura set up a lemonade stand with a sign saying: “I am your Neighborhood Council Representative, come speak with me!” on the corner of her street. She welcomed residents to talk about important issues and took city officials on walks in the neighborhood so they could better understand those issues.
Protecting the Environment
Aura has been dedicated to fighting for the environment since she was a child. Aura first learned about the effects of global warming and the destruction of the Ozone Layer in the late 1980s, through a children’s television show in Colombia. At just 11 years old, she was alarmed about what she learned.
Motivated by her father’s leadership lessons, Aura requested a meeting with her school principal to urge her school to take action. With the school’s support, she founded its first environmental club, where she educated students about global warming and urged them to stop using aerosols. It was her first foray into what would become a lifetime of environmental advocacy.
After moving to Los Angeles, Aura again took up the mantle of environmental justice. She joined the Climate Movement in LA, adding her voice and efforts in forcing the local government to take action. In 2013, she fought against legislation that would force residents to pay utility companies for revenue lost due to increased use of solar energy.
That same year, she led the Sierra Club’s groundbreaking “Beyond Coal” campaign to help Los Angeles end its dependency on coal power. In response, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced the city will be coal-free by 2025. Aura’s efforts will make Los Angeles the largest coal-free city in the United States.
In the days that followed, Aura participated in daily know-your-rights, civil disobedience, and peaceful protest training at the frontlines. Aura also respectfully partook in the daily prayers and water ceremonies held by indigenous leaders.
The Standing Rock protests remind Aura of why she fights and organizes for environmental justice. At Standing Rock, Aura saw the current energy paradigm protects and enriches polluters, at the expense of people and the environment.
When elected officials allowed the Dakota Access Pipeline to proceed, Aura realizes that the fossil fuel industry not only pollutes our air and water, but also pollutes American democracy by manipulating the political process in order to turn a profit. Her time at Standing Rock further entrenched Aura’s dedication to organizing people to fight for a fossil-free world, one that does not exploit the land and labor of indigenous people and other communities of color.
Her environmental victories came one after another. She was the driving force in banning single-use plastic bags in Los Angeles and helped establish the Feed & Tariff Initiative in the city, which is the largest rooftop solar program in the country. She also advocated for passage of SB-350, the Clean Energy Pollution Reduction Act, requiring public utilities to produce half of their electricity from clean energy by 2030 and reduce greenhouse gasses to 40% below California’s 1990 levels.
Aura’s community organizing efforts brought thousands of people together for the cause of environmental justice. Aura played a key role in organizing the largest marches in Los Angeles and the country, uniting people driven by the passion to tackle environmental racism, dependency on fossil fuels, and building a 100% renewable energy future. First, in 2013 at the “Forward on Climate” Rally in Los Angeles, and later through the People’s Climate March in 2017 in Washington D.C.
Aura spoke at both marches about the importance of creating local jobs through investing in a green economy, bringing benefits to communities most affected by high bills and pollution, and working with leaders to fight Climate Change.
In Solidarity with Standing Rock
In November 2016, Aura joined the GreenLatinos Delegation to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux to fight TransCanada’s attempt to build an underground crude oil pipeline through their communities. When Aura arrived at the Oceti camp, she was moved by the unity of the nation’s tribes and the generosity of people from around the country who joined and sent aid to the protestors.
She decided to return again during Thanksgiving, bringing two truckloads of supplies and four other supporters with her. Aura and her companions arrived at Standing Rock following a full day of driving snow and freezing weather, only to be greeted by a sad scene: A confrontation with police led to a young woman almost losing her arm, with dozens more injured.
The Commissioner of the People
In 2017, Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed Aura Vasquez to the Board of Commissioners for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted to confirm Aura’s appointment, making her the youngest commissioner and first immigrant to serve on the LADWP. As a commissioner, Aura helped manage the largest publicly-owned utility in the United States, with 9,000 employees who serve 647,000 water customers and 1.4 million electric ratepayers.
During her tenure, she focused on making the department more accessible, equitable, and transparent. In the 117 years of its existence, Aura was (and remains) the only commissioner to host community “Office Hours” or have an open door policy. Once a month, Aura met with customers and stakeholders, who shared their ideas, concerns, and suggestions for improvement.
She left each meeting more knowledgeable and motivated to use her position to make LADWP more accessible for Angelenos.
Aura embedded equity into her work as commissioner by educating the community on the Department’s Equity Metrics Data Initiative (EMDI). The EDMI is a tool that helps LADWP ensure equitable access to public resources, such as water and solar energy distribution, helps redistribute public resources through customer incentive programs, department purchases, and partnerships with minority-owned businesses, and measures the Department’s success at hiring and promoting a diverse staff.
As Commissioner, Aura promoted and expanded the EDMI and used it to champion the Shared Solar program, which aims to bring solar energy to Los Angeles renters. Aura’s equity-driven efforts also enabled her to secure robust funding for energy efficiency programs that created union jobs and benefited LADWP’s most vulnerable customers by helping with lowering their energy bills.
Aura’s goal for a 100% renewable energy future in Los Angeles has been her North Star. As a commissioner, she helped bring funding for electric vehicle infrastructure to communities with low access to the technology, including Crenshaw, Watts, and the San Fernando Valley.
Aura spent her last months as a commissioner fighting fiercely to retire three coastal gas plants in Los Angeles neighborhoods and replace them with renewable energy. In March 2019, Mayor Eric Garcetti instructed the LADWP to repower the Scattergood, Harbor, and Haynes generating stations with renewable energy, a decision that continues to lift the Los Angeles economy with green energy jobs, protects residents’ health, and supports the city’s goal to be a national leader in the fight against Climate Change. It is also the country’s first real taste of the Green New Deal.
An Agent of Change
While Aura has been a fearless grassroots advocate for those without a voice, she has also helped businesses reduce their environmental footprint. Aura has worked for a few Fortune 500 companies helping reduce customer energy costs and reinvest the savings into infrastructure improvements.
After integrating the environmental policies she has long championed into the daily business practices of a major companies, Aura then founded her own consulting company, Vasquez Solutions. She merges her experience as an organizer, social justice advocate, sustainability expert, and policy advisor to help clients solve complex issues. She helps clients incorporate environmental sustainability while working with communities to build an equitable world.
Aura has also traveled nationwide in partnership with organizations, including the New Organizing Institute and the National Democratic Training Committee, training everyday people on how to run for office and effectively organize communities.
Aura’s work coaching Democratic candidates was instrumental in the 2018 Blue Wave, as she trained them in communications, social media strategy, and field organizing. Hundreds of new Democrats were elected, flipping the U.S. Senate to a Democratic majority. In her own education as an organizer, Aura has studied under Harvard professor Marshall Ganz, who designed Barack Obama’s successful neighborhood organizing initiative.
Aura’s organizing efforts outside of California include working with Indiana public school teachers to help them fight for salary raises and training Democrats interested in running for office in West Virginia, Missouri, Texas, and Louisiana.
A fighter for fairness, Aura addressed thousands of people at the Women’s March in 2019 with a celebratory message on how far women have come. As she told a packed crowd: “We have a long way to go and we are making strides.”
In 2020, she founded Ready to Help, a mutual aid organization that organized residents to address some of the most underreported but pervasive issues facing their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ready to Help provided refurbished laptops for local students to study remotely, gathered food to support food banks and families, and began lobbying the Los Angeles City Council to open public school playgrounds as parks for neighborhood children.
She was overwhelmingly elected as a California delegate in 2020, a win that earned her a place on the Executive Board. During her tenure, she introduced the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge in an effort to end the California Democratic Party’s reliance on the gas and oil industries.
Aura is the voice residents need in Los Angeles City Hall. She is a fearless advocate who has faced down developers, fossil fuel corporations, and entrenched political interests to finally address some of the most critical issues of our time. She fights for affordable housing, access to clean energy and water, and finding humane solutions to Los Angeles’s homelessness crisis. She currently serves as the Secretary for the PICO Neighborhood council. She also represent her area in as a budget advocate and in the Education committee.
Aura has the vision and skill to bring innovation, economic prosperity, and much-desired infrastructure improvements to build a District 10 and City of Los Angeles where everyone can thrive.
Through passionate advocacy, effective organization, and expanding the electorate, Aura Vasquez seeks to build a greater city that is inclusive, sustainable, and accountable, better and more beautiful for all the people of Los Angeles. She is proud to be part of the wave of women shaping politics at the local and national levels and will bring that energy to serve Los Angeles District 10.
In Her Spare Time
In her free time, Aura explores the outdoors, loves to dance, and grows vegetables in her garden. She is committed to working together with Los Angeles residents to effectively and responsibly use city funds, bring much-needed resources to District 10, and make our City Hall accessible and transparent for all.
Let’s get to work!
