July 1, 2011 — David Bohnett Foundation announces new public service Fellows.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2010-2011 David Bohnett Fellows
Office of the Mayor, City of Los Angeles


(L to R: Susanna Curry MSW '11, Michael Fleming,
Executive Director of The David Bohnett Foundation,
Karissa Yee MPP '11, Dan Caroselli MA UP '11)

Dan Caroselli is an urban planning student at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs where he is studying the use of physical planning and urban design interventions to support economic development initiatives.  As a newcomer to the world of planning and policy, Dan assumed for much of his life that he would end up in art or advertising.  Through his undergraduate education in cultural theory, his stint in experience marketing, and his artistic endeavors in video art and pop music, Dan grew an intense interest in the built environment, culminating in his decision to seek his master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning at UCLA.  As a Bohnett Fellow in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Office of Economic and Business Policy, he has developed marketing and communication materials and strategies for the City, including a new comprehensive business website.  He has a specific interest in city branding through planning, something he has been able to explore in his fellowship while assisting with communications for the Mayor's Transit-Oriented Development initiatives.

While pursuing her Master of Social Welfare degree at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Susanna Curry works with Deputy Mayor Joan Sullivan in the Office of Education.  She works closely with the Mayor’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools to facilitate administrator access to City services and student support in the form of wrap-around services and exposure to new educational opportunities.  She grew up in Davis, California and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Earlham College in Indiana.  For two years she staffed Sacramento’s City/County collaborative to address chronic homelessness and was a leader in the development of the annual event Sacramento Homeless Connect. She interned with the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia, the Center for Community Change in Washington, D.C., and served in AmeriCorps VISTA for one year. She has also spent significant time in East Africa.  Susanna’s passion for education began with her work for the Los Angeles-based mentoring program Children Uniting Nations. Through her efforts to coordinate mentoring services at John Muir Middle School in South Los Angeles, she witnessed firsthand the importance of comprehensive support services in schools. She plans to pursue a career in social policy through an agency utilizing innovative and creative tools to address urban poverty.

As a Bohnett Fellow, Karissa Yee analyzes policies to inform the Mayor’s education advocacy work and convenes the City’s foremost education leaders to build a collective agenda for education reform.  While studying as a public policy student at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, she is researching avenues to improve teacher education quality within the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit created by Mayor Villaraigosa that serves 20,000 of LAUSD’s most vulnerable students.  Karissa built her research skills collecting and analyzing data for B.T.W. Consultants, which provides program evaluation and strategic planning services to the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors.  Karissa received her BA in Political Science from American University in Washington, D.C., where she was also a congressional intern for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and a legislative intern for the Council of the Great City Schools.  Karissa has served terms on the San Francisco Board of Education as a student delegate and on the San Francisco Youth Commission.  She has taught elementary school in Suzhou, China, is co-founder of Policy Professionals for Diversity & Equity at UCLA, and serves on the Dean’s Social Justice Initiative ad-hoc committee.


Previous Bohnett Fellows