José García is a senior program officer and current interim director of the Future of Work(ers) team. Prior to joining Ford, José served as program officer for Strong Local Economies at the Surdna Foundation, where he led the design and implementation of a $4 million grant-making portfolio to spur business development and acceleration while focusing on quality job and wealth creation.
Before his time at Surdna, he was a policy fellow at the National Council of La Raza’s Wealth Building Policy Project. During his tenure, he co-authored the book Foreclosure to Fair Lending: Advocacy, Organizing, Occupy, and the Pursuit of Equitable Credit and the policy report Making the Mortgage Market Work for America’s Families.
Earlier in his career, José served as associate director for the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, where he authored dozens of reports on household debt and co-authored the book Up to Our Eyeballs: How Shady Lenders and Failed Economic Policies are Drowning Americans in Debt.