Who’s behind this?
SF Good Neighbor Week is run by Good Neighbor Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening San Francisco neighborhoods. Founder Julia Gitis joined an organizing call for National Good Neighbor Day in May 2025, where she was surprised to be the only person on the call from California and learned that this awesome holiday has never been officially celebrated in San Francisco. Julia got excited (especially when she learned that it’s celebrated the last week of September every year, which is the most beautiful week of the year in San Francisco) and started reaching out to community partners to help make it happen.
The success of 2025 SF Good Neighbor Week inspired Julia to continue running SF Good Neighbor Week every year.
Julia is one of the Yes SF Nonprofit Innovators, selected by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Julia is also the founder of Support SF Schools, a website to help neighborhood residents volunteer and donate to their local public schools.
In her neighborhood, Julia is on the leadership team of Resilient West Portal, serves as the school liaison on the Greater West Portal Neighborhood Association (GWPNA), is secretary of the School Site Council at West Portal Elementary School (SFUSD), and champions the wonderful West Portal Library Branch on SFPL’s Council of Neighborhood Libraries. In 2025 Julia participated in two national accelerators for neighborhood leaders: the Neighborhood Village Project and Village Builders.
Julia is a current Board Member of SF Civic Tech, the city’s longest-running weekly tech-for-good hack night, where she has volunteered for over a decade. She was previously the outreach chair on the board of the San Francisco Press Club.
Julia started out her career as a classroom teacher in the east bay and worked in ed tech for many years (including five years as a senior product manager at Khan Academy). She holds a BA from UC Berkeley, a Masters in Education from Harvard, and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. She is fluent in English, Spanish, and Russian, and learned English from watching Mister Rogers.
Founding Volunteers
Our inaugural SF Good Neighbor Week would not be possible without the help and support of all of our community partners. In addition, we thank individual volunteers Laura Carlson, Louise Wo, Ashley Hom, Denise Tran, and Dan Dectis, who helped make the inaugural week possible.