Angela Garretson

Angela Garretson is currently a commissioner on the Union County Board of Commissioners. She serves on the Union County Planning Board, Solid Waste Advisory Board, and the Advisory Board on the Status of Minorities.  Previously she was a representative on the Board’s Policy & Administration Code Committee, Parks, Public Works and Facilities Committee and an alternate on the Fiscal Committee. Garretson has also spent time as an advisory board member of the Local Advisory Council on Alcoholism and Drugs (LACADA), Rutgers Cooperative Extension and is an advocate for the United Way of Greater Union County. In 2018, Garretson introduced the “Union County Academic Excellence Awards,” a Board ceremony to honor high school valedictorians and salutatorians throughout the county. In 2001, she began her career at Rutgers University-New Brunswick’s Eagleton Institute of Politics where she worked on city, state and national initiatives. Currently, she is employed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) as the Chief External Affairs Officer in the Office of the President. Garretson’s political affiliations include membership in the Young Elected Officials Network, a national organization that prepares leaders who are elected by age 35 or younger, and she was a founding member of the women’s and Black caucuses. Garretson is a life-long resident of Union County. She graduated from Montclair Kimberley Academy, earned her bachelor’s degree in Business and Communications from Syracuse University and her master’s degree in Public Administration, with honors, from Rutgers University.  Garretson is now completing her research on the topic of “university, business and urban school district partnerships” in a joint Ph.D. program at NJIT/Rutgers.