Overview & Summary
Terra Lawson-Remer currently serves as Chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, leading a County of 3.3 million people with a budget of more than $8 billion. Terra made history in 2020 by defeating an incumbent to shift control of the Board from Republican to Democratic for the first time in decades, and in 2024 she defended her seat against a formidable re-election challenge by the former mayor of the City of San Diego.
An economist, attorney, grassroots organizer, and educator, Terra has dedicated her life to advancing economic fairness and environmental sustainability. Known for her bold leadership, intellectual rigor, and ability to anticipate and strategically address systemic challenges, Terra has spent her career pushing boundaries and delivering transformative change.Terra’s work is grounded in her commitment to empowering communities and challenging power structures that perpetuate injustice.
From rappelling off the Plaza Hotel during a national protest, to working as a senior advisor in the Obama administration, to spearheading award-winning research, to serving as an elected leader in her hometown of San Diego, Terra’s work has built a lasting legacy both inside and outside political institutions.
A visionary leader, Terra has consistently anticipated societal challenges before they became mainstream concerns. Her early organizing against corporate-led globalization foreshadowed today’s impacts of global trade on inequality and labor rights: early in her career, she led large-scale demonstrations against global economic institutions embraced by the establishment but decried by the working class, including the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. She was likewise an early opponent of the failed war in Iraq, organizing the historic 75,000-person march on Washington in 2002 opposing the war.
Known for her bold proposals, thoughtful analysis, and ability to anticipate and address systemic problems, Terra has spent her life pushing boundaries and delivering on the promise of transformative change.
Groundbreaking Research, Visionary Ideas, Real-World Implementation
Terra’s work as an economist and attorney has produced solutions that are both innovative and practical. After graduating from Yale University with a B.A. in ethics, politics and economics, Terra earned both a law degree and PhD at New York University.
Described as a “rare” breed of economist who understands human rights, she has made significant contributions to academic research and public policy. Her globally award-winning book, Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights, developed a revolutionary and influential methodology to measure societal well-being beyond traditional economic metrics like GDP. This innovative framework earned Terra and her co-authors the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, and was recognized as a best book in Political Science in 2016.
Her wide-ranging research – on global inequality, disparate property rights security between elites and marginalized groups, tax policy, incentives for environmental sustainability, commons management, human rights, automation and AI, and trade and investment policy – has been widely cited and consistently pushed boundaries. She has authored dozens of academic articles, books, policy briefs, and OpEds, including Pathways to Freedom: Political and Economic Lessons from Democratic Transitions, a book offering prescriptions for building durable and prosperous democracies.
As an educator and researcher, she taught graduate students at institutions including The New School in New York City and the University of California at San Diego, and served as a Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), at the Brookings Institution, and at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Her academic research and writings have advanced groundbreaking ideas in politics, economics, law, and public policy. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, CNN, The Economist, Foreign Policy, The Hill, HuffPost, The New York Times, Reuters, Vice, and The Washington Post, among others.
Grassroots Organizing, Global Impact
At her core, Terra is a grassroots organizer – helping ordinary people harness their power and use their own voices to make change. As a high school student, she organized classroom walkouts to protest Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant measure that was later declared unconstitutional, and she successfully overturned a local juvenile curfew law as a 18-year-old plaintiff in a federal lawsuit, with the court ruling that it was unconstitutional and blocked teens from exercising their right to free speech. Her first job in public service was as a San Diego City Council staffer.
By her early twenties, she was already a prominent and experienced organizer, working with the United Farm Workers (UFW), United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), the Student Labor Action Coalition, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Global Exchange. She co-founded Students Transforming & Resisting Corporations (STARC), a national student movement with over 350 campus chapters, where she led campaigns for ethical investing and against sweatshops, predatory lending, and corporate redlining, as well as organizing landmark demonstrations against the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and Iraq War.
She was arrested and jailed at the historic 1999 ‘Battle in Seattle’, part of the prescient opposition to a global free trade regime that advanced corporate profits over the well-being of workers, communities, and the planet.
She was also an organizer with the Ruckus Society, which took direct actions against unfair labor practices and the financing of destructive oil extraction and development projects that cut through rainforests and sensitive lands. An experienced rock climber, she generated global media coverage by rappelling seven stories down the side of New York’s Plaza Hotel to hang a protest banner during the 2004 Republican National Convention.
At Amnesty International, Terra developed a legal strategy and coordinated strategic grassroots partnerships to pressure institutional investors to divest from companies complicit in human rights abuses.
Through Catalyze, a research and strategy firm she founded, Terra developed innovative public policies and social change strategies for high-impact organizations such as the United Nations, Open Society Foundation (OSF), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
During this time she co-chaired an extraordinary grassroots movement to unseat a long-time GOP congressional incumbent and establish a sustainable grassroots organizing program in a key California swing district. After two years of community organizing that mobilized nearly 10,000 volunteers to knock on 250,000 doors, the Flip the 49th campaign flipped the district from red to blue for the first time in a generation.
Economic Fairness and Environmental Sustainability
Terra’s work is grounded in a desire to create a fairer world, particularly for those without a voice. It was a college semester studying in Ecuador that showed her how inequality combined with a lack of democratic accountability can harm lives on a global scale. She witnessed how massive pollution by Chevron from oil drilling had contaminated the rainforest with deadly toxins and carcinogens, killing the plants and animals, and leaving local community residents sick with cancer — a sight that reminded her of farm workers in California battling big business for basic rights to a fair wage and safe and humane working conditions.
Long before it was a popular cause, Terra was an outspoken leader on climate action and environmental justice, centering the idea that a fair distribution of resources is key to environmental sustainability.
As a senior advisor in the U.S. Treasury Department under the Obama Administration, Terra developed and oversaw implementation of the White House’s strategic initiatives, including developing policies to cut pollution from oil drilling and mining, supporting democratization and democratic transitions in the Middle East, leading work on trade policy and trade facilitation, and supporting global development initiatives. She served as the policy lead for sustainable development and economic inclusion, with a focus on emerging economies and fragile states.
As a consultant for the World Bank, she helped the Bank launch its climate finance program to fund billions of dollars in clean energy projects globally.
As an advisor to the United Nations, she advanced a framework for global development that centered democratic voice and social and economic opportunities.
And as the founding chair of the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility at The New School, she implemented one of the nation’s first institutional climate change divestment policies.
Advancing Social Change through Law
Terra has long used the law as a tool to challenge injustice, both as a practicing attorney and as an elected leader.
One of her first jobs was with the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she worked on wide ranging issues related to civil liberties. Later, as legal director at global civic advocacy organization Avaaz, Terra leveraged litigation as a tool to support online and community organizing campaigns, and directed strategic and creative campaigns against corruption, poverty, climate change, and more.
As County Supervisor she has led the County’s expansion into impact litigation: suing big polluters, opioid manufacturers, producers of untraceable ghost guns, social media giants for their addictive platforms, and corporate landlords who illegally use price-fixing algorithms to drive up rent and displace residents.
Elected Office
Terra has continued to demonstrate her ability to anticipate emerging challenges and craft forward-thinking solutions as a County Supervisor representing the City of San Diego, five other coastal cities and the surrounding unincorporated areas.
On the Board of Supervisors she has used her expertise to craft innovative and impactful solutions for her constituents and all the residents of San Diego County. She expanded access to healthcare, fought for labor protections includingfor working families, developedled efforts to resolve a cross-border sewage crisis, passed legislation to hold corporate landlords accountable, protected reproductive rights, gun safety laws, ; and implemented data-driven solutions to address complex issues like homelessness. Terra approaches these issues by focusing on the root causes of problems, ensuring that results are long-lasting and meaningful.A third-generation San Diegan, Terra currently lives in Encinitas with her young daughter, EevaKai. She is an enthusiastic surfer, a certified emergency medical responder (EMT), and continues to be a passionate hiker and rock climber. In her free time, she takes kids on backpacking trips to teach teamwork, personal resilience, and respect for nature.