About
Gabriela Sandoval has spent a lifetime working toward social, economic and racial justice. She serves as Director of Strategic Initiatives for TURN – The Utility Reform Network where she leads a statewide project to end utility shutoffs. Gabriela works with community-based organizations throughout California—with a focus on communities struggling to make ends meet and communities of color—to develop a better understanding of where and why utility shutoffs occur, how shutoffs impact the health and housing of families and communities, and how to stop them.
Before joining TURN, Gabriela was Research Director at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a national “think-and-do tank” in Oakland, where the focus of her work was the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative. Previously, Gabriela was a faculty member of the Department of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. She also coordinated the academic program for the first professional midwifery school in Mexico. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and a Masters in Regional Planning from Cornell University.