Taylor Garner

Taylor Garner is from Denver, Colorado, and completed her undergraduate degree at Elon University in North Carolina.  She studied international and global studies and conducted on-the-ground research on women’s memories of political violence in Argentina and Palestine.  Throughout college, Taylor was committed to public service and academic excellence, tutoring refugee students for four years and completing two congressional internships while being admitted into the honors fellow’s program and winning the Fulbright and Critical Language Scholarships.  After graduation, Taylor worked for a refugee settlement agency in Denver, helping newcomers establish housing and employment.  She now works for the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), where she coordinated the Youth 2030 Cities initiative in Colombia and Ecuador, empowering youth to localize the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and get involved in local governance.  She is now based at headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya helping to launch the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Cities Global Initiative, which supports cities to invest in policies and projects aligned with the SDGs.  Taylor is passionate about fostering safe, inclusive, and sustainable cities and ensuring that all voices are included in decision-making processes, especially historically marginalized populations.  She wants to pursue a graduate degree in international development practices with an emphasis on gender, conflict mitigation, and climate change.  She looks forward to working with USAID and supporting women and youth empowerment programs, conflict prevention and stabilization, and humanitarian assistance for displaced people.  Taylor speaks Spanish and continues to study Arabic.  Besides her love for travel, Taylor is also fond of skiing back home in Colorado, hiking, and kickboxing.  Since living in Colombia, Ecuador, and Kenya, she is also a huge fan of a “plan playa.”