Sarah Rubin is the Chief Outreach and Engagement Advisor at the California Department of Conservation. Prior to joining the Department in June 2018, she was the Public Engagement Program Director at the Institute for Local Government. Specializing in public engagement, she has extensive expertise working with local governments and stakeholder groups throughout California.
Rubin is a national leader in the public engagement field with deep understanding of cities, counties, special districts, and state departments. She is experienced in a wide range of policy and regulatory issues as well as rural, urban, and suburban communities. Issues she has worked on include community/resident involvement, sustainability, climate action planning, housing, land use, transportation, water, air quality, district elections, public health, environmental justice, immigrant engagement and integration, utilities, disaster preparedness/ emergency management, public budgeting, and tobacco control. Rubin prides herself on being results-oriented and expert in building customized approaches to challenging technical, relational and cross-cultural issues.
National involvement includes the Council of Advisors, National Civic League, the Steering Committee of the Divided Communities Project at The Ohio State Law School, and the Steering Committee of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. Within her home state of California, she helped to co-found the California Consortium on Public Engagement and sits on the Institute for Local Government’s Public Engagement Panel of Advisors.
Rubin has her M.S. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She is also an accomplished community mediator and has led conflict resolution centers in Sacramento and Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Rubin is on the roster of the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution.
