Kristin Urquiza

Kristin Urquiza, MPA is the nation’s top disaster equity advocate, with expertise in race, economic, environmental, and health policy. An experienced grassroots organizer, Urquiza co-founded Marked By COVID and catalyzed the nation’s foremost community-led Covid justice movement days after the death of her father, Mark Urquiza, to Covid in June 2020. By uplifting impacted voices, Urquiza improved the nation’s Covid response and advanced legislation for a just recovery, recognition, and pandemic prevention. Over the last 20 years, she has transformed global power dynamics to put power back in the hands of people at former Congressman Henry Waxman’s Mighty Earth, Angela Glover Blackwell’s PolicyLink, California’s leading environmental justice organization Communities for a Better Environment, and U.S. PIRG. Urquiza holds a B.A. from Yale University and an MPA from U.C. Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and is the recipient of the Arizona Public Health Association’s 2021 Community Partner Award and the Goldman School’s inaugural Alumni Award for Social Justice Impact.