Staff

Alexandra Paxton (she/her)

Senior Program Officer

Alex Paxton serves as senior program officer on the Water Foundation’s healthy communities team. In this capacity, she develops and implements grantmaking programs and strategies to build urban resilience, with a focus on Los Angeles.

Prior to joining the Water Foundation, Alex worked for over a decade on local strategies for redevelopment, displacement mitigation, workforce development, and urban sustainability for a range of employers including Los Angeles Unified School District, then-LA City Councilmember Eric Garcetti, Mayors James Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa, the LA City Community Redevelopment Agency, the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, and Estolano LeSar Perez Advisors. She also taught a course on Sustainable Urban Economies for the Masters Program in Urban Sustainability at Antioch University. Alex received a BA in American Studies, an MFA in Theater Management, and a law degree from Yale University, as well as an MS in Social Anthropology from University College London.

Contact

apaxton@waterfdn.org

Recent Blog Posts

"I love water and I love cities.
I’ve always been drawn to oceans, lakes and rivers, but I didn’t fall in love with urban water infrastructure until I was writing a report on job opportunities related to sewer infrastructure in Philadelphia. It’s a fascinating world underground, from natural streams on which we built cities and roads to wooden pipes and channels that have delivered and transported water under our feet for over decades. Water infrastructure is the essential lifeline of a city, and often unseen and little discussed until there’s a problem. Now, years later, there’s much more understanding of how water works in built environments and awareness of the opportunities of managing water differently in cities, including using green infrastructure to simultaneously manage water, support public health, and build resilience."