Global director for public and government affairs at Phoenix Solar AG in Germany, Julia Curtis has spent her career working in renewable energy and climate change policy, most recently doing policy and business development in solar energy for BP Solar in San Francisco, Sharp Electronics Corp. and SunPower Corp. From 2004-2005, Curtis was communications and marketing director at Harvard’s Center for the Environment and from 2002-2003 she was a senior manager setting up the City of San Francisco’s first climate and energy policy.

After taking politics and art history undergraduate degrees at New York University and a master’s degree in international economics, energy and environmental policy from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS – in Washington, D.C., and Bologna, Italy), Curtis was a presidential management fellow at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington from 1994-1997. She then spent three years with the International Energy Agency working on international climate policy which was followed in 2000-2001 by a policy fellowship at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In 1995, Curtis ran a holistic health spa in Singapore, where she managed a staff of 40 and became a certified yoga instructor.

The Berkeley High School graduate was JSA Northern California governor and statesmen of the year in 1987 and was elected to the JSA board of trustees in September 2010.