Mujeres de la Tierra

Irma Muñoz is a community organizer, activist, advocate, and the instiller of confidence and hope.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Irma is one of Josemaria and Josefina Muñoz’s seven daughters.  She was brought up in a home with strong family values, an unwavering commitment to education and a deep respect for their Mexican heritage and cultural traditions.

As a young girl, her father once told her that she should use her smarts and energy to help the community so that he could read about her in the newspaper.  He said, “Don’t just focus on reading history but also on making history.  Irma listened to his advice and has since worked on accomplishing it.

As a result, she creates opportunities for community participation and engagement in her professional and volunteer work.  She figures out a way to engage community so that they become involved advocates and decision makers.

Her work history is multi-dimensional that includes positions with San Diego State University’s Housing Office, chief of staff to a senior ranking state legislator, public relations and community affairs executive with Centre City Development Corporation, a presidential appointee with the Clinton Administration serving 7 years at the U. S. Small Business Administration and a senior manager with the Los Angeles-based environmental organization-TreePeople.

Her proudest achievement is the founding of Mujeres de la Tierra –a non traditional environmental non-profit in Los Angeles.  Mujeres de la Tierra inspires and teaches women and their children to take ownership and leadership of neighborhood issues and challenges. One of the main goals is to identify holistic and practical approaches to solving local environmental issues by balancing efforts to address environmental woes with the needs of family survival.  Mujeres supports the building of healthier and sustainable neighborhoods through public engagement and individual participation.   She developed our~kid~tech© in 2009, an educational program that provides children a platform to participate in decisions impacting their neighborhood. 

She has served as Environmental Affairs Commissioner with the City of Los Angeles and currently serves on the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Board of Directors -both appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. 

In 2010, Irma was named a “community champion” by the Annenberg Foundation www.annenbergfoundation.com  for excellence in leadership in Los Angeles County and honored by Senator Curren Price as a “SheHero” for her role in improving the health of families in Senatorial District 26.

Her work with Mujeres de la Tierra has been featured in Newsweek Earth Day 2009, the November 2008 issue of O, Oprah Magazine and was named in Hispanic Business Magazine’s 100 Influential Hispanics in October 2008 and La Opinion’s  Mujeres Destacadas 2007 community award for leadership.

Irma Muñoz earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, San Diego and a Juris Doctorate from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.