Julie is a National Board Certified teacher with credentials in Math, Science, and Multiple Subjects. She is an unapologetic contract nerd and is proud to serve as one of the lead negotiators on the UTLA Bargaining Team.

When she first started teaching in the late 2000s, Julie experienced RIF/displacement for several years. Although this was a difficult time, it also gave her the opportunity to experience different teaching and learning conditions in a variety of schools, including a charter school. This experience also sparked her involvement in UTLA: she and other RIF teachers started organizing, attending UTLA meetings, and even organized encampments outside of LAUSD schools and District headquarters to advocate for more funding for schools, at the same time as the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy LA movement was taking place.

Julie has a strong vision for the future of LAUSD schools. One of her goals as a leader of UTLA is to establish strong career pathways for LAUSD students into jobs that are unionized and cannot easily be replaced by AI. Specifically, Julie would like to see LAUSD offer seamless pathways from high school into the building and construction trades, healthcare, and childcare/education careers.

As one of the UTLA political officers, Julie is proud of the increasing influence that UTLA has on politics. UTLA must continue to elect school board members who value educators and public schools, and we must also use our influence more broadly across the city and the state. We must build and grow a political coalition that will fight against austerity and for public institutions, for the Black Student Achievement Plan, and for a city in which all of our colleagues and students can afford to live and thrive.