Julia thayne

Julia Thayne is speaking at a climate conference about the importance of technology, finance, and community benefit to sustainability. She is wearing a red blazer and seated on a fluffy white chair on a conference stage.

Cities should be places where everyone thrives. Julia has spent the past 15 years trying to fix this.

An economist and urban designer, Julia builds technologies, writes policies, and creates designs to drive sustainable outcomes for cities. She is a 2026 Loeb Fellow at Harvard University and also Founding Partner of the advisory firm Twoº & Rising, where she partners with start-ups, governments, investors, and non-profits to scale solutions in cities that keep global warming below 2 degrees by 2030.

Previously, she served as a senior principal at the climate non-profit Rocky Mountain Institute, as an executive officer for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office, and as a sustainability product manager at the global tech and infrastructure company Siemens.

Accomplishments include raising $300M to convert dirty drayage trucks to clean vehicles at the nation’s busiest port; launching one of the nation’s first public-private partnerships on transportation technology; distributing $150M in financial assistance to businesses and NGOs during the COVID-19 pandemic; feeding 20,000 homebound seniors; and opening streets and sidewalks to outdoor dining, walking, and cycling. Julia has also led teams of up to 100 experts and managed multi-million dollar budgets to accelerate research, infrastructure, policy, and partnerships that impact sustainability in cities.

Her work has touched more than 35 cities worldwide, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, L.A. Times, CNN, Fast Company, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, CityLab, Vox, Governing Magazine, Quartz, and Curbed.

Julia proudly hails from Atlanta and Los Angeles, and lives in Cambridge, MA. Currently, she’s leveraging her expertise on tech, policy, and design to tackle a new topic disrupting communities worldwide: the environmental, social, and spatial impacts of AI data centers.

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