Director, Outreach Programs
Gabriel Varela is an experienced outreach and community liaison having spent years working closely with his local communities. He started by providing grassroots educational opportunities on a myriad of local issues in Boyle Heights and he has continued to advocate for access to local resources on behalf of the communities he grew up in. He focuses on relationship building by sharing his lived experience as a native Angeleno and learning from the stories of those communities he works with.
Before joining Climate Resolve, Gabriel worked with GRID Alternatives, a local non-profit organization dedicated to democratizing access to solar energy and solar jobs in communities that have historically lacked access to those resources. As an outreach coordinator and manager, he guided countless families and individuals through the process of obtaining photovoltaic systems on their homes potentially saving families up to 100% of their energy consumption. Before GRID Alternatives, Gabriel worked with the Los Angeles Center for Affordable Tenant Housing where he engaged multiple local stakeholders in the local affordable housing community around housing rights education. He collaborated with multifamily housing owners, managers, and tenants to spearhead an educational effort to disseminate knowledge about section-8 housing rights, responsibilities, and habitability standards.
Gabriel lives in South East Los Angeles, loves dogs, and enjoys fruitlessly cheering for the Dodgers during the World Series.