Candidate for
Member, City Council; City of Los Angeles; District 13

Community activist and educator Eric Garcetti is a fourth-generation Angeleno. His grandparents and great-grandparents, Mexican and Eastern European immigrants, lived and worked in Silver Lake, E. Hollywood, Eagle Rock, and Boyle Heights.

Eric is a professor of public policy, diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College and at USC. He is an expert and activist on race relations, education, government efficiency, and economic development. In recognition of his work for education and human rights, he was selected as a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellow, one of twenty-four such Americans chosen to develop solutions to problems facing the United States.

Eric believes strongly in neighborhood-based civic participation and is active in numerous community-based organizations. He serves on the board of the Roth Family Foundation and is one of the founding directors of the Pobladores Fund, which seeks to encourage social change in Los Angeles by addressing youth, environment, and housing needs in the city. He has also been a youth mentor in the community. Eric has been active in the creation of neighborhood councils, facilitating workshops throughout the city on neighborhood empowerment. He is a member of the Silver Lake Improvement Association, the Silver Lake Residents Association and the Echo Park Improvement Association.

Eric is also an environmentalist, committed to developing environmental industries locally. Eric has worked for local businesses to help develop solar energy and environmentally-sensitive development. Eric started his first business at the age of eight, and has more recently worked as a consultant for a number of local businesses, particularly in the trade and technology sectors. As part of his commitment to a cleaner Los Angeles, he is one of the first consumers to drive a fully-electric production car made by General Motors. He has been endorsed by the Los Angles League of Conservation Voters.

Eric has a long record of human rights work, both in Los Angeles and abroad. He has worked in England, Burma, Ethiopia, and the United States as a human rights advocate. In Los Angeles, he is the co-chair of the Young Advocates of Human Rights Watch, where he has promoted the rights of women, gay and lesbian students, and immigrants. He is a founding director of the International Criminal Court Alliance.

Eric sits on the boards of both the Los Angeles County Young Democrats and of Democratic Leadership for the Twenty-First Century. He is a member of the Downtown Democratic Club and of the Stonewall Democratic Club and has served on more than a dozen local, statewide, and national campaigns as a campaign manager, policy advisor, fundraiser and volunteer.

Eric studied urban planning and politics at Columbia University, where he received his B.A. and M.A. He did his Ph.D. work at Oxford University and the London School of Economics as a Rhodes Scholar. He is an avid photographer, jazz pianist and composer. He has lived in Silver Lake and now resides in Echo Park.