Julia Cohen

Civic leader and U.S. and international youth engagement specialist

After working as vice president of Rock the Vote, Ms. Cohen became the Executive Director of the Youth Vote Coalition in 1999.

Youth Vote, which consists of more than 100 diverse national organizations, is the largest non-partisan coalition ever created in the United States to encourage the civic and political participation of young adults.

In the run-up to the 2000 election, Julia directed the Coalition’s campaign to register one million new voters and also forged innovative partnerships with MTV and World Wrestling Entertainment.

From 2001, she subsequently became the Executive Director of YouthNoise, a web-based youth engagement initiative of Save the Children to inspire, connect and empower teens to help young people around the world.

In 2003, Ms. Cohen joined the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), serving as Civic Program Manager in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. In that capacity, she led the organization’s efforts to monitor elections and support and develop civil society organizations, particularly youth groups, across emerging democracies of the Former Soviet Union.

Currently, Ms. Cohen is spearheading the development of a new NDI initiative to train young people around the world in building democracies. In addition, she is a consultant to the United Nations World Food Program, coordinating its United Against Hunger awareness campaign.

Ms. Cohen has also worked in several non-profit and government agencies, (including Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the U.S Department of State).

Ms. Cohen, a native of Los Angeles, has a B.A. in Modern Society and Social Thought from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Masters degree in Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley.