Our Board

Cesar is the President of AURA and has a background in community and labor organizing. He worked as an organizer for progressive candidates and for the Service Employees International Union for 8 years. He moved to Austin in 2015 to get his Master’s degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas. Cesar now represents District 4 residents on the Zoning and Platting Commission and works as a long-range planner for the City of Georgetown. Cesar’s priorities working with AURA are to improve equity in community outreach, accessible transit infrastructure, and affordable housing for renters, homeowners, and people experiencing homelessness alike.

Jason has taught economics at Austin Community College since 2016, and prior to that he taught at Central Texas College in Marble Falls. He is very fortunate to be married to a past president of AURA, with whom he, an AISD seventh-grader, and a soon-to-be AISD kindergartner live in the North Burnet/Gateway area.

Felicity is a small business owner, community leader and transit activist. She is currently a partner of Tipit, LLC, an Austin based web design firm and former founder and owner of fibercove. With a background in communications, she has worked as marketing director for a United Nations-affiliated NGO as well as for various non-profits in NY and Texas. In 2015, she launched fibercove, a full service coworking, meeting and event space which was recognized by Austin Inno as one of the “Fifty on Fire” for 2016. Felicity is a former board member of Friends of Zilker, active in the Zilker neighborhood as well as in the Austin urbanist community. She is currently a board member of ThinkBilingual, a local non-profit dedicated to expanding language and cultural opportunities in Austin schools and citywide. Felicity graduated from Vanderbilt University and holds a dual-masters in Public Policy from the LBJ School of Public Affairs and an MA in Communications from the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin.

Mike is AURA’s Secretary. His parents and siblings have been in the Austin area for 30 years. Between graduating from high school and returning for a Masters of Arts in Economics from UT-Austin, Mike lived in places with great transportation options: New York, London, the Netherlands, and Berkeley. He wants to bring those options to Austin. He hopes to use economics to both end congestion for cars and move former-drivers onto sidewalks, bikes, buses, and trains.

Liza, the Treasurer of AURA, came to the United States from the Soviet Union as a teenager in 1977 with her family as refugees fleeing repression. Once in the USA, her parents wholeheartedly embraced the American dream and moved to a new house in the suburbs as soon as they had steady jobs and income. That is when she learned to hate the suburbs and when the first seeds of a love for vibrant, walkable, human-scale, cityscapes were planted in my mind. After finishing her Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, and working for several years in Fort Worth, Liza and her husband made our way to Austin to be closer to family. A few years ago Liza and her sister started a family business building urban homes in Central Austin with a strong vision towards a compact, connected, and environmentally sustainable Austin.