Tierra Bills

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Tierra S. Bills is an Assistant Professor of  Public Policy and Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. She specializes in the measurement of transportation planning and system outcomes, and travel demand modeling, with a special emphasis on transportation equity. Dr. Bills brings a unique and innovative perspective to the challenge of transportation inequity, aimed at impacting transportation science, practice, and quality of life for disadvantaged communities. She has worked in the transportation equity domain since 2009 and her current work builds off this long track record, including her master’s research, dissertation work, study and training as a Research Scientist at IBM Research, Michigan Society Fellowship research, and previous work as an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University.

Dr. Bills has extensive training in travel demand modeling and is engaged in ongoing work on representation of transport disadvantaged groups in household travel surveys, which are traditionally used to estimate and validate travel demand models. This is the first step to developing travel models capable of reflecting the preferences and behaviors of disadvantaged travelers and fine-grain transportation equity outcomes. Dr. Bills also works to advance accessibility measurement for transportation project evaluation, and develops strategies for ranking alternative transportation plans using equity-based criteria. Her work is published in a range of journals including Transport Policy and Transportation Research Record, and a recent contribution to the popular planning research press: The Metropole. She also currently serves as a Guest Editor on a Special Issue of Transportation Research Part D.

Dr. Bills has a strong record of advocacy for transportation equity and representation in STEM fields, including providing testimony for the a U.S. House of Representatives’ subcommittee hearing (see: https://science.house.gov/hearings/field-hearing-smart-mobility-its-a-community-issue), membership on the Equity in Transportation Committee of the Transportation Research Board, and co-developing an entry on her research in the ColorMePhD coloring book series (see: https://ce.berkeley.edu/news/2511).

 

Selected Publications

Bills, Tierra (2022). Advancing the Practice of Regional Transportation Equity Analysis: A San Francisco Bay Area Case Study. Transportation Research Part A. (Pending)

Goodspeed, Robert, Meixin Yuan, Aaron Krusniak, and Tierra Bills. (2021). Assessing the Value of New Big Data Sources for Transportation Planning: Benton Harbor, Michigan Case Study. 17th International Conference on Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM).

Bills, Tierra. S., & Carrel, A. L. (2021). Transit Accessibility Measurement Considering Behavioral Adaptations to Reliability. Transportation Research Record, 0361198120986567.

Nahmias-Biran, Bat-hen, Tierra Bills, and Yoram Shiftan. Incorporating Equity Consideration in Transport Project Evaluation: San Francisco Bay Area Case Study. Presented at the 96th Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, January 9th, 2017

Bills, Tierra, and Joan Walker (2017). Looking beyond the mean for equity analysis: Examining distributional impacts of transportation improvements. Transport Policy, 54, 61-69.

Bills, Tierra., Bryant, R., & Bryant, A. W. (2014). Towards a frugal framework for monitoring road quality. In Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), 2014 IEEE 17th International Conference on ITS (pp. 3022-

3027). IEEE.

Bills, Tierra, Elizabeth Sall, and Joan Walker (2012). Activity-based Travel Demand Models and Transportation Equity Analysis: Research Directions and An Exploration of Model Performance. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C.

 

 

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.

Faye Nixon

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Farre (“Faye”) Nixon (she/her) is a freelance designer and adjunct instructor residing in Los Angeles. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Urban Studies and Planning from MIT and dual Master degrees in Architecture and Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design.

Her research interests include investigating speculative and critical design methodologies, using creative writing techniques such as worldbuilding as a design tool, interrogating the ways emerging technologies and design intersect, and designing for humans and their non-human counterparts within the context of uncertain climate futures. She was recently contracted as a Design Lead with Experimental Design, an agency specializing in the creation and visualization of narrative worlds, where she led a team of researchers, screenwriters, and producers to visualize a future in which a major European auto manufacturer transitioned away from producing cars to instead become a global leader in the circular economy.

Faye is also a strong advocate for transdisciplinary and collaborative practice, an ethos she tries to embody through her own practice as a planner, architect, landscape designer, and co-instructor. She currently co-teaches Advanced Visual Communications for graduate planning students at UCLA with Ellen Epley, and Asymmetries of Access, a transdisciplinary seminar on the participatory design of public spaces for the inclusion of racial and gender non-conforming minorities, at the University of Southern California. She has previously worked as a Landscape Designer for the non-profit planning and design firm Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) and for the Oslo-based office of Snøhetta

Jonathan Shum

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Jonathan Shum is a Senior Vice President of Development for Related California. Mr. Shum is responsible for leading all aspects of the development process, including acquisition, entitlements, finance, design, construction, marketing, and sales/leasing for numerous mixed-income and mixed-use developments located throughout California.

Since joining Related in 2010, Mr. Shum has managed over $750 million of mixed-income and mixed-use developments, including The Avery in San Francisco, a $600 million mixed-income development with 548 residential units and 17,000 square feet of retail; The Emerson in Los Angeles, a $125 million mixed-income development with 271 residential units and 5,500 square feet of retail; and Triada at the Station District in Santa Ana, a $50 million affordable housing development with 114 residential units.

Mr. Shum is a board member of the East Cut Community Benefits District in San Francisco and a faculty lecturer, teaching real estate development at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is an active member of the Urban Land Institute and the Asian Business Association, and a regular volunteer with Habitat for Humanity International. Prior to joining Related, Mr. Shum was a real estate investment banker at Credit Suisse and Houlihan Lokey in New York, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles. He holds a Master in Real Estate Development and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Southern California

LinkedIn profile

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.

Wesley Yin

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Wesley “Wes” Yin is an Associate Professor of Economics at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and the Anderson School of Management. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT. He is currently serving as Vice Chair of the Department of Public Policy at the Luskin School.

Yin’s research focuses on health care, consumer finance and protections, and economic inequality. His recent work analyzes the prevalence of medical debt and its impact on disparities, well-being and financial health; as well as the consequences of health care pricing reforms, insurance marketplace design, and rising industry market power.

His work has been published in leading economics and policy outlets such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, JAMA, Health Affairs, and the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, and has been featured in or he has written for media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Vox, and others.

From 2012 to 2014, Yin served in the Obama Administration as Acting Chief Economist and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and as a Senior Economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers, where he advanced policies aimed at reducing student debt burden, improving affordability and quality of health care, and improving housing market stability and low-income home-ownership. Since 2014, Yin has advised the state of California on health care reforms, including the design of the recent expansion of state premium subsidies for marketplace insurance.

Previously, he was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and Boston University, and a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at Harvard University. He received his PhD in economics from Princeton University.

 

Selected Publications  

The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization. 2022. (with Alyce Adams, Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Jinglin Wang, and Francis Wong). Forthcoming at American Economic Review: Insights.

Personalized Telephone Outreach Increased Health Insurance Take-Up for Hard-to Reach Populations. 2022. (w/ Rebecca Myerson, Nicholas Tilipman, Andrew Fehrer, Honglin Li, and Isaac Menashe) Health Affairs 41(1): 129–137.

Medical Debt in the United States, 2009-2020. 2021. (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong) Journal of the American Medical Association 326(3). Media Coverage: NY Times, Washington Post, Vox, Marketwatch, CBS Evening News, Marketplace. JAMA editorial.

The Role of Behavioral Frictions in Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment and Risk: Evidence from a Field Experiment. 2021. (with Richard Domurat and Isaac Menashe) American Economic Review 111(5): 1549–1574. [Online Appendix] Media Coverage: Tradeoffs Podcast

The Market for High-Quality Medicine: Retail Chain Entry and Drug Quality in India. 2019. (with Daniel Bennett) Review of Economics and Statistics 101(1) p.76-90 [Appendix]

Insurers’ Negotiating Leverage and the External Effect of Medicare Part D. 2015. (with Darius Lakdawalla), Review of Economics and Statistics 97:2 p.314-331 (an earlier version appears as NBER working paper no. 16251). Media coverage: New Yorker

R&D Policy, Agency Costs and Innovation in Personalized Medicine. 2009. Journal of Health Economics 28(5): 950-962.

Market Incentives and Pharmaceutical Innovation. 2008. Journal of Health Economics 27(4):1060-1077.

Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2010. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) World Development 38(3): 333-344.

The Effect of the Medicare Part D Prescription Benefit on Drug Utilization and Expenditures (with Anirban Basu, James Zhang, Atonu Rabbani, David Meltzer, Caleb Alexander) Lead article at Annals of Internal Medicine 148(3): 169-177. Annals’ Summary for Patients.

Designing Targeting Schemes with Poverty Maps: Does Disaggregation Help?. 2007. (with Berk Özler, Chris Elbers, Tomoki Fujii, Peter Lanjouw) Journal of Development Economics 83(1).

Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2006. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) Quarterly Journal of Economics 121(2). Winner of TIAA-CREF 2006 Certificate of Excellence.

Deposit Collectors (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan). 2006. Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy 6(2), Article 5.

 

Working Papers

Provider Market Power and Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets (with Nicholas Tilipman)

The Burden of Medical Debt and the Impact of Debt Forgiveness (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong). J-PAL Summary. AEA Pre-registration 1 (Old Debt). AEA Pre-registration 2 (Young Debt).

Trends in Medical Debt During the COVID Pandemic (with Raymond Kluender, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, and Xuyang Xia)

 

Other Publications and Policy Articles  

“Trends in Medical Debt During the COVID-19 Pandemic” (with Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Raymond Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, and Xuyang Xia) JAMA Health Forum. 2022, 3(5), 2022.

“Options To Improve Affordability In California’s Individual Health Insurance Market,” (with Peter Lee, Katie Ravel and Nicholas Tilipman), a Covered California report for Gov. Newsom, California State Senate and State Assembly pursuant to AB1810, February, 2019

“How retail drug markets in poor countries develop” (with Dan Bennett) VoxDev.org, August, 13th, 2018.

“Potential Impacts of Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson on Californians and the Individual Health Insurance Market” (with John Bertko) Covered California Report, September 25, 2017

“Evaluating the Potential Consequences of Terminating Direct Federal Cost-Sharing Reduction (CSR) Funding” (with Richard Domurat) Covered California Report, January 26, 2017  [Appendix]

“Trump’s “populist” economic proposals come with massive catches. Here’s what to watch for.” Vox, November 18, 2016

Strengthening Risk Protection through Private Long-Term Care Insurance. Brookings Institution, Hamilton Project Discussion Paper 2015-06, June 2015. Policy Brief.

Value of Survival Gains in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (with John Penrod, J. Ross Maclean, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) American Journal of Managed Care 2012 Nov;18(11 Suppl):S257-64

The impact of Medicare Part D on Medicare-Medicaid Dual-eligible Beneficiaries’ Prescription Utilization and Expenditures (with Caleb Alexander and Anirban Basu), Health Services Research, February 2010, 45(1), pp. 133-151   

Valuing health technologies at NICE: Recommendations for Improved Incorporation of Treatment Value in HTA (with Dana Goldman, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) Health Economics October 2010, 10(11) pp. 1109-1116

Solutions and Challenges to Curing Global Health Inequality Innovations 2(4), October 2007, 2(4), pp. 72-80

Testing Savings Product Innovations Using an Experimental Methodology (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan), Asian Development Bank, Economics and Research Department Technical Paper No. 8. November, 2003

A Review of Commitment Savings Products in Developing Countries (with Nava Ashraf, Nathalie Gons, Dean Karlan) ERD Working Paper, July 2003.

 

Current Teaching

Public Finance and the Economics of Inequality (Econ 415)

Health Care Finance and Management (MBA and MPP elective) (MGMT298 & PP290)

Econometrics for Policy Analysis (MPP Core) (PP208)

Applied Policy Project (APP) Capstone Advisor (PP298A-D)

Margaret M. C. Thomas

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Margaret (Maggie) Thomas is Assistant Professor of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her scholarship and teaching emphasize structural sources of oppression and privilege, grounded in her practice experiences working with children, youth, and families facing social and economic marginalization.

Dr. Thomas’s research focuses on the wellbeing of economically marginalized individuals and families through the lens of policy causes and solutions to material hardship and poverty. She conducts two primary streams of research. First, she examines material hardship and its consequences for other domains of wellbeing, such as child protective services involvement (CPS) and health and mental health outcomes. Second, she analyzes policy impacts on poverty and hardship, such as Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) consequences for material hardship experiences. Dr. Thomas’s current research projects include a multi-year, randomized controlled trial testing the effects of guaranteed income receipt on material hardship and other domains of wellbeing; a study of the structure and systemic causes of the relationships between food insecurity and mental health; and work examining the relative roles of material hardship and income poverty in shaping child and family wellbeing, including in relationship to CPS involvement. Throughout her research, Dr. Thomas prioritizes engaging and training student research collaborators, responding to community members’ needs for and interest in research engagement, and sharing research findings in accessible ways.

Dr. Thomas teaches courses in Social and Economic Justice and Child and Family Well-Being, including Foundations of Social Welfare Policy (SW 214A), Social Welfare Research Methods (SW 213A), and Poverty, the Poor, and Social Welfare (SW 290L). Her teaching emphasizes social and policy systems, attends to structural forces that create marginalization and opportunity, and supports students’ development of meaningful, relevant knowledge and skills.

Dr. Thomas’s work has been supported by the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Society for Social Work and Research, and the UCLA Council on Research. She was previously a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia School of Social Work, where she worked on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study.

Deshonay Dozier

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Deshonay Dozier completed her Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology from the City University of New York. Dr. Dozier’s scholar-activism provides critical research that shapes public policy and implementation on the issues of housing, homelessness, and alternatives to incarceration. As a UC Chancellor’s Fellow, she will complete a book manuscript on how poor people reshape the penal organization of their lives through alternative visions of Los Angeles. Dr. Dozier teaches a diverse working-class student population at the California State University-Long Beach on how social movements transform geography.