FLIPPABLE: Ricky Junquera for FL-HD118
Ricky Junquera is the Regional Press Secretary for Sierra Club. He is also a proud Cuban American son and community activist. Throughout his career, Ricky has worked tirelessly to improve the community in which he was born in. Today Ricky is also the Outreach Vice Chair of the Miami Dade Democratic Party, after being Chair of the party during the 2018 midterm election cycle.
Ricky is the middle of three siblings raised in West Miami-Dade by a single mother and grandmother- both of whom reminded him and his siblings daily to improve themselves and their community. His grandparents fled Cuba in 1961 to Miami in search of a new life, where his grandmother worked as a seamstress at a factory along the Miami River-when things were still made in the United States.
After graduating Southwest Miami Senior High, Ricky left South Florida to attend Boston University where he received a bachelor's degree in Political Science. After two years of law school and working part-time to make ends meet. He took a leave of absence to work for Joe Garcia’s bid for Congress in 2010 and that is where he fell in love with politics. He then returned to Boston after that and received a master’s degree in intercultural communications from Lesley University in Boston.
In 2014, Ricky returned to the campaign world to once again work for Joe Garcia’s congressional campaign. In 2015 he went to work for Congressman Henry Cuellar of San Antonio, Laredo, and the Rio Grande Valley as his Communications Director just as Trump was starting his run for President. It was there that Ricky honed in on his communications skills to combat Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Later that fall, after being witness to attacks on the EPA-he accepted a position as a Regional Press Secretary for Sierra Club. However, his love for the environment started back in high school in Miami, where he led multiple volunteer cleanups and then as part of Boston University’s Student Body he led a shift to biodegradable food service products on campus and at their university’s arena, while also streamlining on campus recycling.
While at the Sierra Club, he has shaped the communications strategy across the Midwest and Florida. He has led efforts in Flint, Michigan, before national media brought to light their water quality issues. He has spent the last couple of years as a club expert on coal mining, coal ash, and coal plant issues, organizing strategies in national and regional press around three of the largest coal baron mining company bankruptcies in US history, while showing up for coal miners and coal plant workers and the low income communities surrounding coal plants.
Ricky considers himself blessed to have been raised in west Miami-Dade and be running to represent the people he has spent his whole life looking up to. It is because of friends and family that he chooses to go into public service. He often says, “we are our parents’ American Dream, but the American Dream is getting harder to achieve. That needs to change.”
https://www.voteforricky.com
