Julia Gerasimenko has joined Transform as our Housing and Parking Policy Manager. She will lead the SPOT SJ program and Transit Oriented Communities outreach and engagement in the Five Wounds neighborhood of San Jose. 

Julia is motivated to tackle systemic issues in ways that materially improve people’s lives. “As a first-generation immigrant growing up on low income in the affluent community of New Haven, Connecticut, I often felt othered,” she says. “Public transportation was an accessible and affordable public service that allowed me to access incredible cultural and educational opportunities in nearby New York City, despite not having a lot of money.” 

Julia has never owned a car and has always gotten around by public transit, walking, and biking. Her first job out of college was helping others access educational resources because she saw that as the path to upward mobility. However, she soon realized that the students she worked with had to choose between making a car payment or buying textbooks, and that led her to focus on the interconnections between transportation, housing, and community and individual well-being at the Active Transportation Alliance in Chicago.

“The most successful campaigns I was a part of at the Active Transportation Alliance always had housing and transportation advocates collaborating to build a larger umbrella and more collective power to influence policy wins,” Julia says. “Housing and transportation are fundamental to everyone’s lived experience, and I can think of few other issues that need urgent solutions to tackle climate change and systemic racism.”

While working on transportation issues in Chicago, she also became aware of how much of our public space and streets are dedicated to storing (mostly) empty cars. She sees an urgent need to aggressively push policymakers and developers to prioritize constructing more affordable housing by repurposing parking and investing in transit-priority streets, protected bike lanes, and other forms of infrastructure that support safe and healthy living conditions for all.

Adding Julia to our team represents an increased emphasis at Transform on our parking reform efforts. “I’m excited to change the narrative around parking and our communal public space. The dominant narrative that there is ‘never enough parking’ and countering that with a mindset of abundance,” she says.

SPOT SJ is a collaborative effort to better utilize abundant garage parking spots in downtown San Jose, leaving curb space for active transportation and public transit. Julia’s work in Five Wounds will be conducted as part of a grant from the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to design better connections for people biking, walking, and taking the bus to connect with a transportation hub around the next planned BART station in San Jose. 

We’re thrilled to add Julia Gerasimenko’s enthusiasm, knowledge, and policy savvy to our policy team.