Julia Rose Dowell
Senior Campaign Organizer at Sierra Club
By Emily Frisan
Education: Master’s in Geography, California State University, Long Beach; Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Policy, California State University, Long Beach
Past Experiences: Adjunct Professor, Chabot College; Field Investigator and Community Advocate. San Francisco Baykeeper; Community Organizer and Policy Advocate, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice
Geography was always there, just out of sight for Julia Dowell. Growing up in Long Beach, California, she was aware of the impacts of industrial, gas plants, and high-traffic arterial concentrated in the backyard of marginalized communities. “With my background, if I was going to do anything with my life, it had to be using environmental science and policy to right these wrongs. Studying geography and bringing in all those concepts was the best way for me to be able to do that kind of work.”
Dowell’s commitment to a career in geography began during her last semester as an undergraduate at Cal State Long Beach. She enrolled in “International Environmental Issues,” a geography class centered on justice as the central piece to the environmental movement.
This first direct encounter with the discipline helped focus Dowell’s dedication to environmental justice on concepts of place and people, connecting the impacts of environmental pollution and climate change to people’s lives. This, in turn, has led her to activism through her role at the Sierra Club.
Dowell’s current campaign at the Sierra Club is dedicated to shutting down power plants across the state of California, specifically nearby vulnerable communities on the frontlines of the growing impacts of pollution and climate change.
“I feel like I use my geography skills every day in my current job. I took a lot of human geography courses in my masters – that was really the emphasis. I took a lot of courses on social justice and the sociospatial dialectic: how humans impact their environment and how in turn our environment impacts us. I pull in both physical science and social science, which geography sits perfectly in the middle of.”
“I’m a firm believer that geography touches every aspect of our lives and every discipline. Explore the possibilities because I really believe if you study geography, you can do anything.”
Interpreting Maps for Advocacy
“The two tenets behind the work I’m doing right now are one, to combat climate change and two, to protect communities. Both of those goals involve skills that I learned in geography. I’m always looking at geographical data: Where are these power plants? What communities are they near? What are the cumulative impacts to these communities?”
Although Dowell doesn’t create maps, her skills in interpreting and analyzing maps inform her advocacy work. She explains, “For example, there’s a statewide map called ‘CalEnviroScreen,’ and it shows the different environmental impacts in every census tract in the state. I’ll use that data overlaid with power plant data to look at which communities are most impacted.”
Gaining Expertise on the Job
The most important skill that Dowell did not obtain through school is community organizing experience. “Community organizing is really all about creating relationships with folks in impacted communities and also with other organizations that have similar goals,” Dowell explains. “I owe a lot of this experience to my first organizing job, which was at a small nonprofit called Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. I did a lot of organizing around toxic sites in the Bay Area.”
In addition to organizing actions and protests, the exposure, “created my confidence and built up my skill set as an advocate, which today I use to advocate to state agencies and local community advocacy. That’s something you don’t typically use or learn in an academic setting. So, it’s something that I very much learned by doing. Getting into nonprofit work was how I gained that experience. I didn’t get the chance to take a ton of environmental justice courses in either of my programs, though it was embedded in some of the courses.”
From Interest to Advocacy: The Path to Environmental Justice
In Dowell’s previous job at environmental nonprofit, the San Francisco Baykeeper as a Field Investigator, she travelled across the San Francisco Bay Area to investigate pollution incidents such as illegal dumping or runoff, based on tips called into a hotline. Now in her current role, “it’s more about working with communities that are right next to or near power plants, [asking] the question of, ‘who’s impacting the environment’, and then ‘who’s being impacted by this pollution’. Often those are not the same people.”
Dowell’s work as an environmental geographer engages with questions of power: “Those who have the resources, those who are responsible for the climate crisis, often have the resources to insulate themselves from the impacts. By working to shut down power plants, we’re working to protect communities that have been historically at the front lines of pollution and are starting to be at the front lines of climate change impacts.”
“I feel fortunate that I get to work on these very important issues every day. I often advocate to agencies for policies that incorporate equity as we are moving towards a statewide and national scene of trying to combat climate change.”
Advice for Students
“As one of the biggest environmental nonprofits, I felt like I could make the most change somewhere like that [Sierra Club].”
As a student Dowell was advised by professionals that finding a job in the field would be difficult. Through gaining experience in more local nonprofits, she was then able to expand her work to focus on statewide issues at one of the largest environmental nonprofits, Sierra Club. “This is a field that is growing, especially with environmental issues, like climate change coming to the forefront. Don’t get discouraged – a career in advocacy and justice-oriented work is possible.”
Learn more about what a degree in geography can do for you by reading more AAG Career Profiles and discover the resources we offer for your professional development journey.