Ricardo Garcia-Acosta

Ricardo Garcia-Acosta has worked with high-risk, systems-impacted youth and young adults for the past 20 years. He is a thought leader on Crisis Response and Community Intervention Strategies as well as Care Management frameworks rooted in traditional healing practices, that seek to reduce gun violence and build community peace. After many years of working in San Francisco, where he helped lead the City’s Street Outreach and Crisis Response Initiative for 8 years, he returned to his home city of Oakland, and began working with Youth ALIVE! in 2014. There, he would manage nationally recognized programs that focus on hospital response to shooting victims and supporting young people and their families as they work through the trauma of a homicide. In 2016, he would become the City of Oakland’s first Violence Prevention Liaison, working crucial lines of communication between the City’s Community-Based efforts, the Mayor’s Office, and the Oakland Police Department. In 2020, Ricardo returned back to San Francisco as the Roadmap to Peace Initiative Director, where he would build out a comprehensive community-driven collective impact model, creating new pathways for criminal justice diversion efforts, and playing a key role in reforming the SF Juvenile Justice System. His passion for collective healing, self-determination and community empowerment, continue to guide his commitment to build systems that best support youth and families impacted by violence. Ricardo has now joined the CURYJ (Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice) movement to “Dream Beyond Bars”, serving as the Director of Community Peace, while continuing to work on a broad spectrum of projects focused on Training & Capacity Building among Frontline Intervention Providers throughout the Bay Area.