Ellen Epley

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Ellen is a licensed landscape architect working, exploring, and researching in Los Angeles since 2017. A Tennessee native, she is drawn to landscape architecture for its implicit mission to reconcile built and natural systems through a human lens. Ellen’s work focuses on amplifying and acting on community needs across sites and scales. She is currently working as an associate at Kounkuey Design Initiative in Los Angeles, where she works on design and planning projects in and around the Salton Sea, in Mar Vista, and in San Fernando. Ellen is a lecturer at the UCLA Luskin School of Urban Planning, and has served as a guest gritic at the GSD, USC, UCLA, UT Knoxville, and UW Eugene. Previously, she worked as a Designer at SALT Landscape Architects. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Anthropology and Photography from the University of Tennessee and a Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellen-epley-4a403235/

Edith de Guzman

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Edith de Guzman (she/her) is an interdisciplinary researcher, practitioner, educator, curator, and consultant working with diverse audiences to understand and address the impacts of climate change in under-represented communities. She is a Cooperative Extension specialist with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, where her work investigates best practices for the sustainable transformation of the Los Angeles region and beyond. Her work has included research, demonstration projects, public policy and planning in the areas of water management, climate adaptation, heat mitigation, and urban forestry. She tackles these topics through the lenses of urban planning, public health, behavioral sciences, biophysical sciences, and public policy.

From 2014 to 2020, Edith served as Director of Research at Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization TreePeople, where her projects included: the City of Los Angeles Stormwater Capture Master Plan; facilitating the creation of a Greening Plan with the communities of Inglewood and Lennox; bringing to fruition multiple urban water management demonstration projects; leading an extensive study tour of Australia’s response to its historic Millennium Drought and gleaning lessons for California; and producing the first interactive, high-resolution public map and spatial analysis of Los Angeles County’s urban forest.

Edith co-founded multisectoral partnerships including the Los Angeles Urban Cooling Collaborative and the Los Angeles Urban Forest Equity Collective, aimed at alleviating the public health risks of extreme heat and removing the policy barriers to cooler, greener neighborhoods. Their research has found that one in four lives currently lost to extreme heat could be saved if L.A.’s land cover had additional trees and its built surfaces were more reflective, particularly where low-income communities and communities of color live and work.

More recently, she co-launched ShadeLA with her colleagues at USC Dornsife Public Exchange – a people-powered campaign to make it easier for Angelenos countywide to bring more shade to their neighborhoods and businesses, leveraging the attention and investment that mega-events are bringing to LA.

Edith earned her PhD at the UCLA Institute of the Environment & Sustainability, where she conducted applied, interdisciplinary research on climate adaptation and climate health equity using community-based methods. Edith earned a master’s in urban planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a bachelor’s degree in history and art history, also from UCLA. When not working or studying, she can be found hiking, playing guitar, or creating art exhibitions that explore the human connection to the environment.

Lilith Winkler-Schor

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Lilith Winkler-Schor is a PhD student whose research broadly examines how the field of urban planning is currently reimagining itself as a field of racial justice and attempting to rectify its origins in white supremacy. She is particularly interested in how the planning field is leveraging arts and culture to develop more responsive and just urban planning methods that authentically heal past racial harms. Her current research examines how the transportation planning sector has been working to acknowledge and redress the racial harms of the highway interstate program, particularly through the development and implementation of the Reconnecting Communities grant. She hopes to contribute deeper understanding on how planners are conceptualizing their role in redressing past racial harms and what delivering repair to historically harmed communities might look like.

Lilith’s previous research examined how two transportation agencies collaborated with embedded artists to address complex transportation justice issues. Through this research she found that artists provided departments with a new set of approaches that align well with reparative planning approaches. However, she also found that these new approaches, though theoretically aligned with emergent scholarship, were in tension with standard agency operations. She continues to explore how theoretical planning concepts around repair and justice can be translated into bureaucratic settings.

Professionally, Lilith works as an urbanist, designer, and urban cultural policy strategy consultant. Prior to moving to LA, she spent a decade in New Orleans, where she worked in holistic neighborhood development. She seeks to incorporate creative and human-centric methods that deliver equitable opportunity, belonging and joy in all the work that she does.
Lilith holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA and a certificate in Urban Humanities. She received her BA in Social Policy and Political Science and a BFA in Fine Arts in Visual Arts from Tulane University.

Aurora Echavarria

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Aurora Echavarria is a PhD Candidate in Urban Planning at UCLA. Her current research centers on the intersection of public finance, comparative urban governance, and disparities in urban service and infrastructure provision. Her dissertation explores the politics of property taxation in Mexican municipalities and is supported by the Fulbright-Hays DDRA and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Aurora’s broader research agenda examines the challenges of leveraging land value to fund public services and infrastructure provision. Her research delves into the political and technical limitations that local governments face in implementing adequate revenue collection strategies. In a parallel line of research, she studies fair housing policies as a lens for analyzing inequalities in infrastructure implementation and public spending across neighborhoods.

Prior to joining the PhD program, Aurora worked as a consultant for Mexican local and federal government, as well as international agencies. During this time, she advised governments on transportation, housing, and public finance policy.

Minjee Kim

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Minjee Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Planning department at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research is situated at the intersection of real estate development and urban planning. She writes about land use regulation, large-scale real estate developments, exactions, negotiated developments, and urban public finance. Her goal as a planning scholar is to identify the ways in which planners and policymakers can foster equitable real estate developments.

Her solo-authored works have appeared in high impact planning journals such as the Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Planning Literature, and Urban Studies. She has been recognized both nationally and internationally as an emerging expert in US land use regulation and zoning. She served as the U.S. expert on Lincoln Institute’s joint effort with the OECD to promote land-based public finance. She also has been engendering a close working relationship with real estate industry professionals. She served as the chair of the DEI committee for ULI North Florida and is the sole author of the report, Creating Diverse and Inclusive Communities, published by the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing. Equipped with an understanding of the economics, processes, and politics of real estate development, she sees herself as bridging the real estate and planning fields.

Minjee received a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning and Master’s in City Planning from MIT. During her time in Boston, she worked in the cities of Cambridge and Boston’s planning departments to obtain hands-on planning experience. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the Florida State University from 2019 to 2024.

Selected Publications:

Kim, M., Garcia, I., Goetz, E., Hanlon, B., Monkkonen, P., Pendall, R., Pfeiffer, D., Reece, J., & Whittemore, A. (2025). Bring Zoning Back into the Planning Curricula. Journal of the American Planning Association.

Kim, M. (2025). From exchange value to social value of real estate development: A Planner’s perspective. Planning Theory.

Kim, M., & Lee, H. (2024). Upzoning and gentrification: Heterogeneous impacts of neighbourhood-level upzoning in New York City. Urban Studies.

Kim, M., Malizia, E., Nelson, M., Wolf-Powers, L., Ganning, J., & Schrock, G. (2024). Real Estate Development and Economic Development Planning Education: Pragmatic Turn or Trojan Horse? Journal of Planning Education and Research.

Kim, M., & Lee, H. (2023). Can U.S. Planned Communities Become Diverse? The case of industry-leading master-planned communities in five metro areas. Journal of Urban Affairs.

Kim, M. (2023). The Case for Mass Upzoning. Housing Policy Debate.

Kim, M. (2023). Infrastructure investments and land value capture: Variations and uncertainties at the frontiers of urban expansion. Town Planning Review.

Kim, M. (2023). Taking Stock of What We Know About Large-Scale Urban Development Projects: A Review of Existing Theoretical Frameworks and Case Studies. Journal of Planning Literature.

Kim, M., & Chapin, T. (2022). Who Benefits from Enterprise Zones? Equity implications gleaned from policy design and implementation regulations. Cities.

Kim, M., & Zhou, T. (2021). Does Restricting the Entry of Formula Businesses Help Mom-and-pop Stores? The case of American towns with unique community character. Economic Development Quarterly.

Kim, M. (2021). How Do Tax-based Revitalization Policies Affect Urban Property Development? Evidence from Bronzeville, Chicago. Urban Studies.

Kim, M. (2020). Negotiation or Schedule-based? Examining the strengths and weaknesses of the public benefit exaction strategies of Boston and Seattle. Journal of the American Planning Association.

Kim, M. (2020). Upzoning and Value Capture: How U.S. local governments use land use regulation power to create and capture value from real estate developments. Land Use Policy.

 

Derrick Behm Josa

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Derrick Behm Josa is an urban planner and a DeafSpace engagement and design consultant. He is currently a PhD student in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs focusing his research on social infrastructures and community development, including how cities empower cultural production among Deaf communities through planning and design. He is also a recipient of the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship award.

In the last decade Derrick has done various community development work in Washington, DC. Previously, he worked at Gallaudet University Office of Campus Design and Planning as a project coordinator and taught the DeafSpace Design Methodologies course. In 2019, he received his Masters degree from the Urban and Regional Planning program at Georgetown University. Through his experience and work, Derrick believes that the “accessibility” framework needs to continue evolving, rethinking how people connect within places.

Chendi Zhang

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Chendi Zhang (she/her/hers) is a doctoral student in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research interests include age-friendly public space, participation and community engagement, urban design, smart city and technologies, and Urban China.

Prior to pursuing her PhD, Chendi was a landscape designer at OLIN, Philadelphia, assisted in curating Penn-China Design Dialogue 2019, worked on Beautiful China – Reflections on Landscape Architecture in Contemporary China as an assistant editor and book designer, and started to share tutorials about landscape architecture and her experience as an international student in design and planning major as a social media influencer.

Chendi studied and worked in the field of landscape architecture for ten years, holding her master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and bachelor’s degree of Science in Landscape Architecture from Beijing Forestry University. With her research concentration, practice experience, and design background, Chendi studies urban issues from a perspective of how planning and design processes can collaborate more tightly and efficiently to better respond to the demands of overlooked and misrepresented vulnerable groups and reduce spatial inequality in the built environment.

Website: chendizest.com

Carolyn Hull

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Carolyn Hull works in areas of regional and urban planning, with an emphasis on economic and workforce development, industry cluster analysis, real estate financial modeling, and data-driven program development that focuses on equitable and sustainable outcomes tailored for each community. Ms. Hull is currently the General Manager for the Economic and Workforce Development Department for the City of Los Angeles. In her role as General Manager, she is charged with negotiating real estate transactions for redeveloping strategic city and privately-owned properties into commercial or industrial uses. Ms. Hull also develops, maintains, and coordinates programs designed to grow and improve Los Angeles’ economy while building a well-trained and job-ready workforce.

She was most recently the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Industry Cluster Development at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC), where she oversaw strategies and programs to promote job creation, business investment, and workforce development initiatives to strengthen the alignment of LA County’s workforce and education systems with industry needs. In this role she also partnered with regional government agencies and non-profits to provide guidance in planning, negotiating, and implementing real estate and financing transactions to activate underutilized public assets for commercial and industrial uses to retain and expand Los Angeles’ living wage employment base.

Prior to joining LAEDC, Ms. Hull was the South Los Angeles Regional Administrator for the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles (CRA/LA). In this role, she managed all redevelopment programs, activities and staff for the South Los Angeles region. During her tenure at CRA/LA, she served as the CRA/LA’s Manager of Capital Finance. In this capacity, she analyzed project-financing plans, and developed financing structures to optimize the utilization of public and private resources for all of CRA/LA’s priority projects. At the same time, she served as the co-founder and President of the Los Angeles Development Fund (LADF). Under her leadership, LADF received and managed a $75 million New Markets Tax Credit Allocation. In addition, she managed CRA/LA’s $700 million portfolio of conduit bonds.

Ms. Hull holds a Bachelor of science degree in industrial management from Carnegie-Mellon University and a Master of science degree in economics and urban planning from the London School of Economics, in addition to a Certificate in real estate finance from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Frederick Zimmerman

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Frederick J. Zimmerman is an economist with a background in the political economy of health and social policy. His research illuminates the intersection of economics and the determinants of health.

Dr. Zimmerman has a particular interest in how economic structure—including poverty and inequality and housing markets—influence population health. Research topics have included the measurement of health equity; the effects of housing affordability on health; transportation and health; media use and child development; and the opportunity costs of medical spending.

Dr. Zimmerman’s work has integrated economic, sociological, and psychological perspectives of behavior into a multi-level theory that unifies both individual and population-level determinants of health. His current research is in the UCLA Center for Health Advancement, where he has developed measures to systematically track health equity over time and across jurisdictions. His Win-Win simulation model of the impact of health and social policy on population health has shown how high-school graduation rates, crime rates, and local government finances are affected by multi-sectoral interventions in several jurisdictions around the country.

The New York Times, NPR, the BBC, Radio France Internationale and many other media outlets have covered Dr. Zimmerman’s research.

Dr. Zimmerman teaches classes on Advanced Statistical Research Methods, Determinants of Health, and Public Health Ethics.

Selected Publications:

  • Frederick J. Zimmerman. Public Health and Autonomy: A Critical Reappraisal. Hastings Center Report. December, 2017.
  • Selena E. Ortiz, Frederick J. Zimmerman, Gary J. Adler. Increasing Public Support for Obesity Prevention Policies using the Taste-Engineering Frame and Consumer-Oriented Values. Social Science & Medicine. 156:142-153. May, 2016.Donglan Zhang, Philippe J. Giabbanelli, Onyebuchi Arah and Frederick J. Zimmerman. Impact of Different Policies on Unhealthy Dietary Behaviors in an Urban Adult Population: An Agent-based Simulation Model American Journal of Public Health 104(7): 1217-1222. July, 2014.
  • Zimmerman, Frederick J. “Habit, custom, and power: A multi-level theory of population health.” Social Science & Medicine 80 (2013): 47-56.
  • Jeffrey C. McCullough, Frederick J. Zimmerman, Jonathan E. Fielding and Steven M. Teutsch. A Health Dividend for America: The Opportunity Cost of Excess Medical Expenditures. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 43(6):650-654. December, 2012.
  • Åsa Ljungvall and Frederick J. Zimmerman. Long-term Time Trends and Disparities in Body-mass Index among U.S. Adults 1960–2008. Social Science & Medicine 75(1):109- 119. July, 2012.
  • Zimmerman FJ, Christakis DA, Meltzoff AN. Associations Between Media Viewing and Language Development Among Children Under 2 Years Old Journal of Pediatrics 2007 Oct;151(4):364-8.
  • Zimmerman FJ and Christakis DA. Children’s Television Viewing and Cognitive Outcomes: A Longitudinal Analysis of National Data. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 159(7):619-625. July, 2005.
  • Zimmerman FJ, Carter MR. Asset Smoothing, Consumption Smoothing and the Reproduction of Inequality under Risk and Subsistence Constraints. Journal of Development Economics 2003 (August) 71(2): 233-260.

Juan Matute

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Juan researches public transit, transportation finance and governance, new mobility, and parking. He led UCLA’s work on two strategic transit plans for the State of California and long-range climate action plans for two Southern California communities. Juan has worked with research teams to quantify the number of parking spaces in Los Angeles County, assess life-cycle environmental impacts of the Los Angeles Metro system, and examine the cost-effectiveness of GHG reductions from California’s High Speed Rail.

As a Lecturer in Urban Planning, Juan teaches graduate classes related to Transportation Policy and Planning and Environmental Assessment for Urban Systems. As Deputy Director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, Juan manages the Center’s operations, external relations, research, and student programs.

Juan holds an MBA and Urban Planning MA from UCLA and a BA from Pomona College.