New toolkit helps communities prepare for heat Luskin Center for Innovation-led initiative offers practical guidance for local heat resilience planning and action
In March, an unexpected spring heatwave brought record temperatures to much of the western United States, prompting warnings in several states. This followed several summers of unprecedented heat across the country, and one message became clear: we must prepare for hotter days ahead.
But for many decision-makers and planners, this is a daunting task. While many heat-decision-making tools are available, communities often lack practical guidance on how to create heat action plans and, crucially, implement them to address the unique problems they face locally.
Not anymore. The UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation-led Center for Heat Resilient Communities has made a significant step toward bridging this gap with a new toolkit that gives communities a step-by-step guide to pinpoint their needs and match them with evidence-based planning activities.
“Building Heat Resilient Communities: A Toolkit for Local Planning, Decision-Making, & Action” features:
- A primer on heat-related topics with definitions of key terms
- Guided activities to collect evidence and engage organizations and community groups in decision-making
- Integrated worksheets to support data organization and interpretation
- Tools to develop customized and locally relevant heat resilience strategies
The toolkit provides information on concepts such as heat exposure and vulnerability; cultural and equity considerations for heat resilience; and how to best involve and collaborate with community members.
We brought together leading researchers, practitioners, advocates, and federal agencies to create resources to help communities engage in more coordinated and effective responses to heat-health risks. This toolkit fills a critical gap for decision-makers who understand the urgency of preparing for a hotter future but need guidance on strategies tailored to their local needs.
The Center for Heat Resilient Communities was a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Integrated Heat Health Information System-funded initiative that brought together a network of more than 50 researchers, practitioners, and US communities to engage in local heat resilience planning. When the grant was suddenly canceled in May 2025, UCLA rushed into action along with co-leads Ladd Keith at the University of Arizona and Sara Meerow at Arizona State University.
“Minutes before we were due to announce participants for the center, we got the notice: no more funding,” said Zach Wampler, a project coordinator for the Luskin Center for Innovation. “But we couldn’t let these community partners down. This toolkit is part of our continued efforts to find ways to empower communities to develop local solutions to a shared problem. Moving forward, we will continue our commitment through a collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Climate Resilience Center.”
How Public Affairs Helped Jesus Reyes Find His Voice and Community at UCLA With guidance from mentors and hands-on internships, Reyes is building a path toward a future in public service.
By Sheryl Samala
Jesus Reyes, a first-generation Latino from the San Fernando Valley, arrived at UCLA unsure of where he would find community. During his first year, he struggled to feel a sense of belonging. Originally a political science major, he ultimately found his place in public affairs, drawn to the program’s hands-on approach and focus on public policy.
Reyes credits Luskin’s undergraduate counselors with helping him navigate that transition. From guiding him through the application process to ensuring he stayed on track for graduation, the counseling team played a key role in shaping his academic and professional path.
“If it wasn’t for one of the counselors, Erika, I don’t think I would be where I am today,” says Reyes. “She motivates me to keep going.” He added that having mentors from similar backgrounds made a meaningful difference, providing not only academic guidance but also personal and professional support.
Reyes interned with Congresswoman Luz Rivas (CA—29) through the University of California, Washington Program (UCDC).
Through opportunities shared in Luskin’s student communications, Reyes secured his first internship in the California State Senate, working in the office of Sen. Caroline Menjivar. He later built that experience with roles in the offices of Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur and Congresswoman Luz Rivas, gaining exposure to policymaking at multiple levels of government. Now graduating in just three years, Reyes has made the most of his time at UCLA. He participated in the UCDC Quarter in Washington program, representing his home community on a national stage, and studied abroad in Paris, where he explored issues of globalization.
Reyes at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, during his study abroad program.
“A lot of the classes I took here in Public Affairs mirrored what I was learning abroad,” Reyes said. “Many of the concepts I learned in school directly reflected what I saw, experienced, and studied in Paris.”
Reyes encourages other students to step outside their comfort zones and take advantage of opportunities such as study abroad, where classroom concepts come to life in new and meaningful ways.
Far from the uncertain first-year student who arrived on campus three years ago, Reyes has steadily built on each opportunity he encountered at UCLA. His experience reflects the impact of Luskin’s hands-on approach—equipping students not just with knowledge, but with the experience and perspective to pursue careers in public service.
Reyes with members of his League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) fellowship cohort.
Amada Armenta and José Loya Honored by Los Angeles City Council Luskin faculty members were recognized during the “Impactful Chicanos in America” celebration.
On May 8, 2026, the Los Angeles City Council recognized Luskin faculty members Amada Armenta and José Loya during its “Impactful Chicanos in America” celebration, honoring leaders whose work has strengthened and uplifted Latino communities across Los Angeles. The ceremony, hosted by Councilmember Imelda Padilla, brought together honorees spanning artists, entrepreneurs, entertainers, and scholars working to shape culture and policy in meaningful ways.
Armenta, director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI) and associate professor of urban planning, was recognized for her research on immigration enforcement and the criminal justice system—scholarship that continues to shape critical conversations on equity, policy, and justice. Loya was honored for his research on inequality in housing and homeownership within Latino communities, and its implications for addressing systemic barriers.
“It was an honor to be recognized at City Hall alongside other Mexican American leaders for the work we do at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, where we use research to elevate Latino voices and perspectives in policy and public discourse,” Armenta said.
The full City Council proceedings, including the ceremony and remarks, can be viewed here.
Centering Community in Urban Planning O’philia Le discusses environmental justice, climate resilience and her path to UCLA Luskin.
What drew you to pursue a Master of Urban and Regional Planning at UCLA Luskin, and how did your background in public health and environmental studies shape that decision?
I decided to pursue a Master of Urban and Regional Planning at UCLA Luskin to build my professional network in my home state and develop the technical and policy skills to shape more equitable and resilient places.
My background in public health and environmental studies also shaped my decision to come to UCLA Luskin. With an interest in the intersection of climate, the built environment and public health, I was drawn to Luskin’s cutting-edge research, particularly through the Luskin Center for Innovation. As a graduate student researcher on the Heat Equity team under Dr. Kelly V. Turner, my experience has reinforced this interest and deepened my focus on how planning and policy can better support human well-being in the built environment.
O’philia Le
I also appreciate the program’s balance between technical skills, such as GIS and Adobe Creative Suite, and foundational planning theory. Because my academic background was more theory-based, I wanted to gain technical skills that would be practical on the job. As a student who pivoted into urban planning, I think Luskin provides a great introduction to the field.
You’ve described yourself as a community-driven planner — what does that mean to you, and how do you hope to carry that approach into your future career?
To me, a community-driven planner is someone who begins with listening. That means treating residents as experts on their own neighborhoods from the very beginning. It also means planning and designing with communities and making engagement an ongoing effort that shapes every stage of planning, policy and implementation. This includes hosting engagement opportunities at accessible times around work schedules and ensuring community members are compensated for their time and expertise.
I hope to carry this community-focused approach throughout my career in urban planning by centering community priorities in decision-making, especially in marginalized neighborhoods that bear disproportionate environmental and infrastructure burdens. I am committed to advancing solutions that address ecological and social needs while shaping planning outcomes that reflect community priorities within real-world constraints.
My commitment is rooted in environmental justice. Growing up in East Oakland near Interstate 880 and the Port of Oakland, I experienced firsthand how freight traffic and industrial activity shape daily life and health outcomes. In response, I believe inclusive urban planning paves the way for more equitable and climate-resilient cities by integrating community knowledge into decision-making and prioritizing health, safety and ecological balance.
Your Fulbright experience in Taiwan seems to have deeply influenced your perspective on cities and livability. What lessons from that time have stayed with you and show up in your work at Luskin today?
My Fulbright experience in Taiwan shaped how I think about climate resilience, livability and community-centered planning. As a Fulbright Taiwan English Teaching Fellow, I lived in a growing rural town and saw how quickly development can unfold. At the same time, I experienced the potential of revitalized spaces that bring people together, connect everyday life with local history and promote climate resilience.
In particular, I was struck by the revitalization of former Japanese naval airbase buildings that were reused and retrofitted into civic and cultural spaces. This redevelopment created a climate-resilient cultural park that provided third places for residents and expanded business opportunities while also preserving the history of the land. It showed me that development and sustainability can move together, especially when historic buildings are thoughtfully repurposed and integrated into new uses.
That perspective continues to shape my work at UCLA Luskin as a design and development student. Luskin has provided me with the technical tools and platform to translate my ideas into clear, actionable planning deliverables. In my Site Planning course with Dr. Minjee Kim, my team and I are currently developing a proposal to reuse the historic hangars at the Santa Monica Airport urban edge zone as an activated civic landscape — one that supports sustainability, invites public use, strengthens the local economy and preserves the history of the site through civic infrastructure and storytelling.
UCLA Luskin Hosts Release of 2026 Berggruen Governance Index on the “Four Worlds of Governance” New findings highlight persistent global divides in democracy and state capacity.
The Berggruen Governance Index (BGI) released its 2026 findings May 6, bringing together scholars and researchers to examine the state of governance across more than 145 countries.
Developed through a partnership with UCLA Luskin, Berggruen Institute and the Hertie School in Berlin, the index evaluates countries across three dimensions: quality of democracy, quality of government and quality of life.
The report’s central finding is that global governance patterns have remained remarkably stable over the past 25 years despite rapid technological, economic and geopolitical change. Researchers identified four persistent “worlds of governance”: consolidated democratic states, capacity—constrained states, authoritarian and hybrid states, and low—capacity developing states.
“The most striking finding, on a quarter century of data, is how rarely countries improve their governance performance in significant and sustainable ways,” said Helmut K. Anheier, principal investigator of the index and adjunct professor at UCLA Luskin and the Hertie School.
The report also found that while quality-of-life indicators have improved globally, democratic accountability and state capacity have largely stagnated — raising concerns about how resilient countries will be in addressing future challenges such as climate change, artificial intelligence, demographic shifts and political instability.
The event featured remarks and discussion from Anheier and UCLA faculty members including Stella Ghervas, Vinay Lal, Alexandra Lieben, Joseph C. Saraceno and Michael Storper.
The full report, executive summary and interactive country profiles are available on the Berggruen Governance Index website.
UCLA for Life: Meyer Luskin Now a centenarian, the esteemed philanthropist — who, with his wife, Renee, has donated close to $200 million to UCLA — remains as true a Bruin as ever.
In the landscape of American philanthropy and entrepreneurship, there are few more compelling stories than that of Meyer Luskin ’49.
Born in 1925 in a rough-and-tumble New York City tenement to Lithuanian parents, he was raised in the “near ghetto” of 1930s Boyle Heights in East L.A. before being admitted to UCLA at the age of only 16. He went on to tremendous success as an innovative businessman, but with a crucial difference from many of his peers: For Meyer and his wife, Renee Luskin ’53, success has meant something to be measured not by what has been earned, but by what has been shared.
At the age of 100, Luskin still exudes the zest for life that forged his success. In a lively and wide-ranging conversation, he discusses what UCLA taught him, his path to giving back and the sensation of eating a burger with his name on it.
Congratulations on your recent birthday! Let’s step back to 1942 when, as a smart, skinny teenager from Roosevelt High, you arrived at a young UCLA to study history. It must have been quite the culture shock.
I don’t remember my first day, but it was all overwhelming. There was a men’s gym and a women’s gym, the quad buildings and Kerckhoff, and that was about it. To me, it seemed giant and impressive, the buildings beautiful. Coming from Boyle Heights, which was kind of a ghetto, I remember feeling so small. There were no freeways, so it took me an hour and a half by surface transportation: trolley, bus and walking. I started carpooling with five people from Roosevelt. We would come in by car, a Chevrolet painted sky blue, arriving at ten to eight and meeting up to go home at 5 p.m. Then I would go to a job. We had little money at home.
I bet all the girls noticed a sky-blue Chevy.
I did not date in my first year. In those days, you paid for everything on a date, and I was on a $30 scholarship that covered student fees and books. I devoured books. I was studying French history from 1760 to Napoleon, the revolutionary period. A professor would ask us to read a few pages, and I would read the book over the weekend. In my second semester, a professor asked me to grade papers, which was a big deal. I loved learning at UCLA.
As World War II spread, you joined the United States Army Air Corps, soon to become the U.S. Air Force, and served during the U.S. invasion of Okinawa.
I was not in the first wave, but I landed on Okinawa by climbing over the side of a ship by rope into a bobbing boat. The Okinawa campaign was the largest loss of life for the U.S. Army. [In 82 days, 49,000 Americans died, as well as 150,000 local Okinawans pressed into service and 80,000 Japanese soldiers.] It was horrible. Dropping the atomic bomb [over Hiroshima and Nagasaki] cost hundreds of thousands of lives, but a full invasion of Japan would have cost millions. There is nothing good about this. It was all horrible.
When you returned to UCLA at the age of 21, had you changed as a result of your wartime experience?
I felt lucky — two of my friends from Roosevelt died in Europe, and others were injured. When I was overseas, I was brooding about what I would do when I got home. I did not have the confidence to go into academia; I was just the little guy from the wrong side of the tracks. I knew I wanted to get closer to the money, so I switched my major to economics. And with the GI Bill of Rights and the California Veterans Bill, which paid me $1,000, I was able to return to UCLA and then get an M.B.A. at Stanford. And that allowed me to start my business.
You have been immensely successful, starting with recycling waste food into animal feed, and so on. But I get the impression that money was not your only objective in life. You have donated a lot to UCLA. Was that planned, or did it just emerge over breakfast one day?
Funny, it did. Over breakfast at home one Saturday morning, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “We are very well off financially — we should start giving some of this back while we can get the pleasure of doing it, rather than leaving it to a trust. I want to be able to do it in jeans or slacks rather than leaving it to a man in a navy blue suit.”
So we started small, with fellowships for history students, and then it built up. We also wanted to make sure it benefited both UCLA and the local community — town and gown — so we set up the Luskin Center for Innovation, through which we share research on health, air quality, heat and so on with the community. Now it has more than 25 researchers. People compliment me on this, when it’s really UCLA, but I will take the compliment.
And I am very happy with the [UCLA Meyer and Renee] Luskin Conference Center, where scholars can not only meet during conferences but also make plans over breakfast and over a drink. Also, it’s very good food — Jeromy [Sung], the chef, is great. I am a salad guy, but every now and again, I will have the Luskin Burger.
Is that a bit odd? Eating food with your name on it?
Oh, yes. But it’s an Impossible [nonmeat] burger, and it tastes great!
You’re a huge student of history. What do you make of the times we’re living through? It feels like some are seeking to undo the Enlightenment, with higher education under siege and under threat.
Yes, both words. I am fearful to say we are at a crux between being a good democracy and a nation that is divided on what the concept of democracy is.
The fact is that many citizens look down on education. They don’t understand that education, being open to experience, is the key to a happier, better life. I don’t know which way the pendulum will swing. But I will do my best to help.
So where do you think UCLA, where you have done so much good, will be in another few years?
I think it will grow stronger and become a major source of scientific research and education with the Research Park. I am involved with the California Institute for Immunology & Immunotherapy, which we will build into a billion-dollar organization within the park. Plus, quantum research and studies into the biome, which will change medicine. I am an optimist by nature. And I am sure that UCLA will continue to change the world.
The Bruins Who Come Back: Álvaro Huerta He left UCLA for activism, then returned to complete his degree — launching a career in teaching and advocacy
This excerpt originally appeared in UCLA Magazine, “The Bruins Who Come Back,” by John Harlow (April 28, 2026). Read the full story here.
Making Good Trouble
For some, stepping away from the pursuit of a degree is nothing short of a moral imperative.
In the mid-1980s, Sacramento-born Álvaro Huerta ’03, M.A. ’06 was two years into his studies at UCLA, on track to graduate with a degree in mathematics. But then the campus roiled with protests, climaxing in a seven-day hunger strike against a state clampdown on financial support for undocumented students. Huerta felt he needed to do more for the poor and racially victimized community he knew so well. Putting activism first, he dropped out.
Feeling he needed to do more for poor and underserved communities, Álvaro Huerta decided to leave UCLA two years into his studies so he could pursue activism. He returned to graduate in 2003.
For the next 13 years, he went on to make what he calls “good trouble,” speaking out against and fighting racial injustice in Los Angeles. He stood up for Latino gardeners when the city threatened to jail them for using leaf blowers; he helped defeat plans to build a toxin-spewing power plant in South Gate that would have never been considered for a wealthier area. He was proud of his work. But it gnawed at him that he was often overlooked for promotions at nonprofits because he didn’t have a degree.
“Even in the revolution, the higher educated will get a better view,” he jokes wryly.
The final straw, he says, was losing a job to a Bruin graduate. By then, in the late 1990s, he had a young family of his own. His Bruin wife, Antonia Montes ’91, urged him to overcome any feelings of awkwardness and discomfort and return to UCLA. “I was a very different person than that 17-year-old know-it-all,” he recalls. “I had taught myself to read and write to university level, and I knew how things worked at college — something other students take for granted, but that my mom, who cleaned houses all her life, could not help me with.”
Huerta says the first key was finding out that you could, in fact, come back to campus to finish. In 1987, instead of abruptly quitting like some of his peers, he had filed an “incomplete” so he could be readmitted without applying from scratch. “Fill in the paperwork,” he urges anyone who may be facing the tough call to pause their degree. “UCLA wants you to finish your studies.”
The second key was to find someone who understood his background and lived experience. “Like many, I was mentored by Juan Gómez-Quiñones [’62, M.A. ’64, Ph.D. ’72] in history, and later Leo Estrada in urban planning,” Huerta says. “They helped many people navigate not just with their studies — they could be very stern — but also life in higher education, and with cultural empathy.”
Huerta graduated with a B.A. in history in 2003 and a master’s in urban planning in 2006. After that, there was no stopping him. He went on to UC Berkeley for his Ph.D. in city and regional planning, then taught classes about the intersection of religious and community organizing values at Harvard Divinity School. He is now a professor of urban planning and ethnic studies at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
“My roots are deep at UCLA,” he says. Those roots include not only his own degrees and his professional roles on campus, but also his wife’s economics degree and the degree his brother, the lauded portraitist Salomón Huerta M.F.A. ’98, received from UCLA in 1998.
Huerta is now a visiting scholar at the Chicano Studies Research Center. Last year, UCLA Alumni Affairs recognized him with the Bruin Excellence in Civic Engagement Award for his work as a teacher and community influencer. It has been a long journey for the former hunger striker. But, he says, he’s glad he listened to his wife — and came home to UCLA.
