ABOUT CARMEN
Having grown up here and among multiracial and intergenerational organizing efforts, I know that Austin is what we love because of its people and our history of protecting and growing the things that make this place special, including a landscape revered by my Cuahuiltecan ancestors and everyone else who has come through what we now call Austin. I participate in public health equity networks across Central Texas and the country. As a 2019-20 Fulcrum Fellow with the Center for Community Investment at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, I learned to accelerate beneficial projects through a capital absorption framework and began to use this lens to identify solutions to Austin’s current challenges particularly related to climate change and housing.
I am running for mayor because I have been asked to do this by a diverse community of citizens and city leaders from all corners of Austin who value good governance, equity, and climate sustainability. I know how to bring together change-makers, fixers, content experts, creatives, and professionals, to develop solutions and leverage limited resources to deliver big wins. Others may wish, as I do, to run a campaign that is truly community-powered, but no other challenger in this race has the breadth of community engagement experience that I bring to the table. In order to inspire the community to act, you have to know the community and the power that the people there hold. We need a mayor who can help Austinites channel that raw creative energy into a sustainable future, not one who coasts on victories from their political past. We are approaching a once-in-a-lifetime influx of federal funding to climate-proof our infrastructure and housing, and I want us to be ready with dozens of projects and deals so that we can address Austin’s challenges more equitably and protect what we love as we grow. I’ll do this by inviting the knowledge and skills of our diverse community, not shutting people out while special interests continue to decide our future.
I was born and raised in Central and East Austin, and aside from my time in Chicago earning my degree in Environmental Studies, I have spent my entire life in this city. For the past 18 years, I’ve worked shoulder-to-shoulder with neighborhoods and organizations in North, South and East Austin. My community organizing nonprofit, GAVA, has successfully leveraged tens of millions of dollars in infrastructural, retail, and programmatic improvements in Dove Springs, South Austin, Rundberg, and St. John's areas. We’ve done this through collaboration & advocacy with thousands of resident and community leaders and dozens of organizations, governmental partners, and stakeholders.
My professional work as a community organizer began when I was 20 years old at the environmental justice group, People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources (PODER) in East Austin. There I learned about the public and private forces that created our city’s disparities, as well as the people’s history of grassroots efforts to improve health and quality of life East of I-35 and citywide. I later took a job at the nonprofit Marathon Kids, where I stayed for nearly a decade, creating a program called the “Wellness Team Initiative,” which engaged parents and teachers at 18 elementary schools in Austin’s Eastern Crescent to increase fitness and nutrition opportunities in their communities. This organizing work is how I got to know communities in North and South Austin, understanding issues that were so frequently ignored by central city council members.
In 2013, I took part in the citywide grassroots campaign to achieve 10 single-member districts. Then I served on the inaugural Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission which took citywide testimony for a year to create our first district map. I later served on the City’s Latino Quality of Life Commission, co-crafting budget recommendations for Fiscal Years 2017, 2018, and 2019. I then joined the City’s Planning Commission during the Land Development Code rewrite, often lifting the voices of those displaced by redevelopment or seeking more deeply affordable housing.
