Meet Heidi
Rooted in Service and Resilience
Heidi Hall has spent her three-decade public service career working with others to solve problems, protect our land and water, improve health, and build opportunities for others, all while raising two boys primarily as a single mom.
Heidi’s parents were educators who grew up poor and worked hard to get ahead. Her dad was the oldest of three boys who picked oranges and raised cattle before losing his own father to suicide when he was 16 and then serving overseas in the Army. Heidi’s mom escaped post-war Germany as a teenager and settled in the Bay Area to work in childcare.
Raised by parents who had persisted to make a middle-class life for their kids in Contra Costa County while lifting up others, Heidi was taught to push through and overcome challenges rather than complain about them. She learned to stick up for the vulnerable, to respect working people, and to value equal opportunity and justice.
Shaped by the civil rights and social justice movements she grew up around, Heidi developed an interest in public service and environmental advocacy.
As a 12 year-old, she watched the Watergate Hearings rebroadcasts each night on PBS with her dad and became infatuated with the process at a time when members of both parties took the system seriously and put politics aside to focus on facts and the rule of law.
Heidi’s 4th grade teacher inspired her to get involved in environmental advocacy, spending time volunteering with Save the Whales, advocating to protect Mt. Diablo from development, and promoting recycling.
Heidi applied the determination she learned from her parents to school and work. While focusing on her education, she started working as a babysitter at 13 before getting a job at McDonald’s at 16, and she spent summers in Grass Valley scooping ice cream while visiting her grandparents.
Building a Career as a Problem Solver
Heidi worked her way through Pomona College, including spending a summer coaching farmworkers on their rights regarding pesticide spraying for the California Agrarian Action Project in Davis. After earning a degree in international relations, she went to Columbia University for graduate school to study underdeveloped nations.
A problem solver at heart who makes it her mission to learn how things work and then make them better, Heidi wanted to understand the world of finance so she worked as a broker on Wall Street after earning her master’s degree. She then went to work for the Rockefeller Foundation, helping to organize reproductive rights and contraceptive care programs in underdeveloped countries.
Heidi wanted to shift her focus back to her passion for our environment, so she earned another graduate degree in public policy from Rutgers University and went to work for the Environmental Protection Agency in a regional position based in San Francisco that focused on hazardous waste. She started out working to protect our land and water by stopping the dumping of toxic chemical waste before moving on to work with Tribal governments on reducing waste and implementing recycling programs.
Heidi earned promotions to supervisor and worked to prevent hazardous waste dumping by corporations along the U.S.-Mexico border which was having serious economic and health impacts on residents. She approached the job as a problem solver, working with the local, state, and federal governments in both countries to develop methods to prevent dangerous waste dumping and then helping to hold polluters accountable.
A Fighter for Local, Rural Communities
Raising two boys on her own in the city was expensive, so Heidi decided to move to Grass Valley full time to raise her kids in a rural environment and went to work for the California State Water Resources Control Board before moving to the Department of Water Resources. In those roles, she worked to protect ecosystems around rivers and helped implement landmark policy changes to use flood plains to refurbish groundwater.
As Heidi got involved in Grass Valley and throughout the region, she became more aware of the challenges residents, workers, and business owners faced. She saw the lack of access and opportunity for economic success. People would do what they could to help their neighbors, but they got no help from Sacramento or Washington. So, Heidi stepped up to run for Nevada County Supervisor and successfully replaced a right-wing Republican who failed to act on issues like homelessness.
Heidi earned the trust of voters, winning the seat without a runoff and restoring civility to the board she currently chairs. For the past eight years, she has been a leader on expanding broadband access to create more economic opportunity, she has worked with cannabis growers to regulate the industry and reduce crime by cracking down on rogue growers, and she has worked with members of both parties to reduce homelessness and make Nevada County a model for rural counties on the issue. Heidi has worked to solve real problems facing her community and fought to strengthen fire protection, address the fire insurance crisis, and protect public lands for recreation.
Putting People First and Standing up to Washington
Heidi is a proud mother, stepmother, and grandmother who has always prioritized family while maintaining her career and solving big problems to improve our environment and public health. Heidi lives in Grass Valley with her husband Enrique and they enjoy time with their blended family while caring for her mom.
Now, Heidi is running for Congress because the politics in Washington has become toxic and people are suffering because of it. Right-wing billionaires and super-rich corporations are taking advantage of the toxic politics to put themselves and their bottom lines ahead of workers and retirees. Heidi will bring her determination and problem-solving approach to Congress to stand up to extreme politics and the greedy corporations, and she will work with others to put people first for a change.
