Julia Arroyo is the Executive Director of Young Women’s Freedom Center (YWFC) and a nationally respected movement leader with more than two decades of experience in reproductive justice, community health, rape crisis intervention, and work alongside girls, women, and trans youth impacted by incarceration and exploitation. Since joining YWFC in 2014, she has supported the organization’s growth across California, while ensuring that healing-centered practice, leadership development, and storytelling remain core to YWFC’s mission and 32-year legacy.
A powerful external voice and culture keeper, Julia cultivates authentic relationships with funders, partners, and policymakers by centering the lived brilliance and leadership of the community. Her policy and advocacy work focuses on ending the incarceration of women, girls, and trans youth of all genders and advancing reproductive justice at the intersection of reform and abolition. A second-generation Xicana of Mexican and Filipino descent with lived experience in foster care, the underground street economy, and incarceration, Julia brings deep commitment to her leadership, mentoring the next generation, and helping shape a future rooted in healing, dignity, and collective power.
