Latoya Small

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Latoya Small’s scholarship is informed by her work in clinical social work practice and community-based research.

Her research focuses on health disparities, specifically, the intersection of mental health, treatment adherence, and HIV among women and children in the U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her global research addresses the urgent need for theory-driven, empirically-informed, and sustainable psychosocial HIV treatment approaches for youth living with perinatally acquired HIV in South Africa.

In the U.S., Dr. Small examines how poverty-related stress, parenting, and mental health interact and relatedly impact adherence in HIV medical services among Black and Latina women in urban communities. An extension of her work includes mental health and discrimination facing transgender women of color.

Dr. Small takes a collaborative approach in her scholarship, recognizing that traditional intra-disciplinary boundaries can impede the development of effective and sustainable research interventions. Her work aims to produce accessible, evidence-informed interventions that bolster youth development and women’s health.

Kenya L. Covington

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Kenya L. Covington conducts empirical research that examines social and economic inequality associated with the structural makeup of metropolitan areas. Her work suggests ways to better utilize social and urban policies that likely mitigate disparities in economic opportunity and well-being overall.

For over a decade she was professor of urban studies and planning at California State University Northridge and concluded her tenure as full professor. In 2015 she was named Distinguished Teacher of the Year.

Professor Covington teaches courses on Housing Policy, Introduction to Public Policy, Research Methods, Forces of Urbanization, Social Inequality and Urban Poverty. She joined the Public Policy faculty at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in 2017. 

Dr. Covington actively participates in APPAM, Urban Affairs, ACSP and the Population Association of America. Over her career, Dr. Covington’s articles have appeared in the Journal of Urban Studies, Brookings Institution Policy Briefs, Journal of Urban Affairs, the International Journal on Economic Development, the Harvard Journal on Legislation, the National Urban League’s 2003 and 2004 publication titled The State of Black America, and The Review of Black Political Economy, among other publications.

Khush Cooper

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Khush Cooper, MSW, PhD. is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs as well as a consultant to public child welfare systems and private child welfare organizations in the areas of foster care reform, LGBTQ youth in systems, implementation science, and leadership. Dr. Cooper teaches Child Welfare Research, Leadership, Public Policy for Children and Youth, and Macro Practice at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA and is a foster care subject matter advisor to the UCLA Williams Institute, a nationally renowned LGBT research and policy analysis center. She received her MSW (2000) and PhD (2010) in Social Work from Luskin.

 

Her research projects include the California Residentially-Based Services (RBS) Demonstration Project which tested new models for the provision of residential treatment to foster children across four jurisdictions, which models influenced AB 403 Continuum of Care Reform – the largest overhaul of California’s child welfare system in 30 years; the RISE Project, a $13 million, federally-funded 5-year demonstration project which developed evidence-based practices and a rigorously evaluated training curriculum aimed at reducing barriers to permanency for LGBTQ youth in foster care; the Los Angeles Foster Youth Study, the first empirical study to determine the disproportionality of LGBTQ youth in a large urban child welfare system; and the LA LGBTQ Youth Preparedness Scan which used a preparedness framework (as opposed to a cultural competence framework) to analyze the eleven youth-relevant Los Angeles County departments’ capacity to properly serve LGBTQ children, youth and families.

 

Additionally, as a social entrepreneur and specialist in the study and implementation science, Dr. Cooper has cultivated long-standing relationships with policymakers, leading practitioners, and consumers to shield and guide California’s child welfare organizations, both public and private, through reform initiatives. Her credibility in the child welfare field is further enhanced by her years of direct practice experience in foster care, residential treatment and community adolescent service settings. She has deployed performance management systems for large multi-site child welfare and mental health provision organizations; designed practical implementation support and readiness initiatives with regard to state and federal legislative mandates (such as the Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration Project and the Families First Prevention Services Act; and currently is an adjunct member of the Implementation Collaborative within Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago as well as CQI subject matter expert utilized widely by Casey Family Programs.

 

Michael Fleming

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Michael Fleming is the Executive Director of the David Bohnett Foundation – a grant making foundation charged with “improving society through social activism”. Since 2000, he has shepherded more than $125 million dollars to organizations and institutions that share the foundation’s goals and vision.

Michael has been appointed to boards and commissions at every level of government.  In 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom named him as one of his two appointees to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, a Joint Powers Authority between the City of Los Angeles, the County of Los Angeles, and the State of California. From 2018 to 2022, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Getty House Foundation, dedicated to civic education, community engagement, and the preservation of Getty House, the official residence of the Mayor of Los Angeles.

From 2013 to 2017, Michael served on the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners – the five member panel that oversees the nation’s largest public utility. He previously served as the President of the East Los Angeles Area Planning Commission and as a Commissioner on the Board of the Los Angeles Convention Center. In 2010, President Barack Obama named Fleming to the White House Council for Community Solutions.

Michael sits on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations including The Carr Center at Harvard Kennedy School, The University of Limerick’s Kemmy School, and public radio powerhouse KCRW, where he served as Chairman of the Board and Co-Chair of their capital campaign.  Since 2003, he’s been an adjunct professor of organizational development and public policy at UCLA, a member of the LGBTQ Studies Faculty Advisory Committee, and, in 2023 was awarded the Student’s Choice Outstanding Faculty Award at UCLA’s 25th annual Lavender Graduation.  From 2013 to 2016 Michael was also an adjunct professor of public policy at NYU.

Michael is married to California Court of Appeal Justice Luis A. Lavin.

 

Michael is currently teaching:

  • Politics, Power, and Philanthropy (Public Policy M227, Social Welfare M290S, Urban Planning M287) – Winter
  • Institutions & Organizations (LGBTQ Studies 180XP) – Spring

Monica Blauner

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Monica Blauner, LCSW is a graduate of Smith College School for Social Work 1979, and earned a certificate in psychoanalysis from the New York Freudian Society Psychoanalytic Training Institute. She is currently in private practice in Los Angeles, and has worked at all levels of care in mental health and substance abuse treatment. She has led an Integrative Seminar for Smith College School for Social Work students placed in Los Angeles and taught at The Psychoanalytic Training Institute of the New York Counseling Center and Metropolitan Institute for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She is dedicated to teaching foundational clinical skills, including client engagement, understanding unconscious process and using the therapeutic relationship.

 

Gregory Pierce

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Greg Pierce (he/him) is the Research and Co-Executive Director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and the director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab. He is also the director of the UCLA Water Resources Group within the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and serves as an adjunct associate professor in the department of urban planning. He is a faculty affiliate of the Lewis Center for Regional Studies and Institute of Transportation Studies in the Luskin School, and Center for Healthy Climate Solutions in the Fielding School of Public Health.

Dr. Pierce’s research, teaching and service is motivated by persistent inequities in access to the essential environmental services that we need to survive and thrive. He examines how infrastructure planning and policy efforts either perpetuate or address service inequities, and demonstrates how communities strategically cope with and overcome inequities. His primary focus is on water insecurity, but he also examines solutions to cross-cutting green infrastructure, climate resilience and transport insecurities.

He has secured 40+ extramural research funding awards as a principal investigator at the Center for Innovation. Current and past sponsors of this work include the California State Water Resources Control Board, the California Air Resources Board, the Strategic Growth Council, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, WaterAid, the Water Foundation, The Resources Legacy Fund, the World Bank, the UC Multicampus Research Initiative, the UC Institute of Transportation Studies and the UCLA Grand Challenge, LADWP and Los Angeles County.

Pierce is an author or co-author of 50+ peer-reviewed articles, including many in the leading journals in urban studies, infrastructure planning and policy and environmental health, as well as 20+ major Luskin Center for Innovation reports. He has also reviewed articles for 50+ journals, several funding agencies and many collaborating researchers. Pierce received a PhD in urban planning in 2015 and an MA in urban planning in 2011, both from UCLA. For more information regarding his peer-reviewed research, see here. For Pierce’s full CV, see here.

 

Jody Heymann

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Dr. Heymann established and will continue to lead the first global initiative to examine health and social policy in all 193 UN nations. This initiative provides an in-depth look at how health and social policies affect the ability of individuals, families and communities to meet their health needs across the economic and social spectrum worldwide. In addition to carrying out award-winning global social policy research, Heymann carried out some of the original studies on the risk of HIV transmission via breast milk to infants in Africa, the impact of HIV/AIDS on tuberculosis rates in Africa, and how labor conditions impact the health and welfare of families globally.

She has authored and edited more than 200 publications, including 15 books. These include Changing Children’s Chances(Harvard University Press, 2013), Making Equal Rights Real (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Lessons in Educational Equality (Oxford University Press, 2012), Protecting Childhood in the AIDS Pandemic (Oxford University Press, 2012), Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder (Harvard Business Press, 2010), Raising the Global Floor (Stanford University Press, 2009),Trade and Health (McGill Queens University Press, 2007), Forgotten Families (Oxford University Press, 2006), Healthier Societies (Oxford University Press, 2006), Unfinished Work (New Press, 2005), Global Inequalities at Work (Oxford University Press, 2003), and The Widening Gap (Basic Books, 2000).

Deeply committed to translating research into policies and programs that improve individual and population health, Dr. Heymann has worked with government leaders in North America, Europe, Africa and Latin America as well as a wide range of intergovernmental organizations including the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, the World Economic Forum, UNICEF and UNESCO. Central to her efforts is bridging the gap between research and policymakers. She has helped develop legislation with the U.S. Congress as well as with UN agencies based on the implications of her team’s research results. Dr. Heymann’s findings have been featured on CNN Headline News; MSNBC; Good Morning America; Fox News; National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” “Fresh Air” and “Marketplace;” in The New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Business Week; Inc; Portfolio; Forbes India and USA Today, among other internationally and nationally syndicated programs and press.

Karen Kaufmann

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Karen Kaufmann is a lecturer in the department of Public Policy in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.  She received her Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and was an Associate Professor in Government and Politics at the University of Maryland before returning to California.

Kaufmann’s research on urban politics explores the nature of power in American cities and the ever-present challenges that political leaders face with respect to enacting policies that aid the poor. Kaufmann (with collaborator Thomas Holbrook) was awarded a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study race relations and political behavior in American cities.  Her work examines local politics in the context of diversity, with an eye to the roles that competing interests and incentives play in undermining successful minority coalitions. She is the author of numerous articles and two books — “The Urban Voter: Group Conflict and Mayoral Voting Behavior in American Cities” (University of Michigan Press) and “Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths about American Voters” (with John R. Petrocik and Daron R. Shaw, Oxford University Press).

Kaufmann teaches classes on urban poverty and public policy, urban politics and U.S. housing policy.

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Urban Voter: Group Conflict and Mayoral Voting Behavior in American Cities
University of Michigan Press, 2004
The Consequences of Marriage and Motherhood: How Gender Traits Influence Voter Evaluations of Female Candidates
Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, February 2015, 6:1:1-21 (with Melissa Bell).
Turf Wars: Local Context and Latino Political Development
Urban Affairs Review, January 2012, Volume 48:1:111-147 (with Benjamin Bishin and Daniel Stevens).
Political Behavior in the Context of Racial Diversity: The Case for Studying Local Politics
January 2011, PS: Political Science and Politics (with Antonio Rodriguez).
Battleground States versus Blackout States: The Behavioral Implications of Modern Presidential Campaigns
Journal of Politics, August 2007, Volume 69 (3):786-797 (with Jim Gimpel and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz).
Immigration and the Future of Black Power in American Cities
Du Bois Review, (spring) March 2007, Volume 4 (1):79-96.

Kian Goh

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Kian Goh is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She researches the relationships between urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization. Dr. Goh’s current research investigates the spatial politics of urban climate change responses, with fieldwork sites in cities in North America, Southeast Asia, and Europe. More broadly, her research interests include urban theory, urban design, environmental planning, and urban political ecology. As a professional architect, she cofounded design firm SUPER-INTERESTING! and has practiced with Weiss/Manfredi and MVRDV. She previously taught at Northeastern University, the University of Pennsylvania, the New School, and Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Goh received a PhD in Urban and Environmental Planning from MIT, and a Master of Architecture from Yale University.

Dr. Goh’s forthcoming book, Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice, will be published by the MIT Press in 2021. The book investigates the contested power relationships and conflicts around plans proposed by cities to respond to climate change impacts. Exploring sites in New York, Jakarta, and Rotterdam, it traces the global flows of ideas and influence in the production and justification of climate change plans, and the local social movements organized against unjust and exclusionary actions.

Recent publications include articles on urban theory and climate justice in Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, urban planning and the Green New Deal in the Journal of the American Planning Association, the politics of urban flooding in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, the global and urban networks of climate change adaptation in Urban Studies, and queer space and activism in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Michael Manville

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Michael Manville is Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Both his research and teaching focus on the relationships between transportation and land use, and on local public finance. Much of his research concerns the tendency of local governments to hide the costs of driving in the property market, through land use restrictions intended to fight traffic congestion. These land use laws only sometimes reduce congestion, and can profoundly influence the supply and price of housing.

Dr. Manville’s research has been published in journals of planning, economics, urban studies, and sociology. He has received research funding from University Transportation Centers, from the John Randolph Haynes Foundation, and the TransitCenter, among others. He has consulted for developers, environmental groups, local governments, and the United Nations.

Dr. Manville has an MA and PhD in Urban Planning, both from UCLA Luskin. Prior to joining Luskin as a faculty member, he was Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University.

Selected Publications

Manville, Michael and Emily Goldman. 2017.  Would Congestion Pricing Harm the Poor? Do Free Roads Help the Poor? Journal of Planning Education and Research.

Manville, Michael and Taner Osman. 2017. Motivations for Growth Revolts: Discretion and Pretext. City and Community. 16(1):66-85.

Manville, Michael. 2017. Travel and the Built Environment: Time for Change. Journal of the American Planning Association. 83(1): 29-32.

Manville, Michael, David King and Michael Smart. 2017. The Driving Downturn: A Preliminary Assessment. Journal of the American Planning Association. 83(1):42-55.

Manville, Michael. 2017. Automatic Street Widening: Evidence from a Highway Dedication Law. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 10(1): 375–393

Manville, Michael. 2017. Bundled Parking and Vehicle Ownership: Evidence from the American Housing Survey. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 10(1): 27–55

Manville, Michael and Daniel Kuhlmann. 2016. The Social and Fiscal Consequences of Urban Decline: Evidence from Large US Cities. Urban Affairs Review. 1-39.

Manville, Michael and Benjamin Cummins. 2015. Why Do Voters Support Public Transportation? Public Choices and Private Behavior. Transportation. 42(2):303-332

Manville, Michael. 2015. Comment on Talen et al. Journal of the American Planning Association, 81:4, 313-314.

Manville, Michael. 2014. Parking Pricing. In Parking: Issues and Policies, edited by Steven Ison and Corinne Mulley. Emerald Press. (Refereed).

Manville, Michael. 2013. Parking Requirements and Housing Development: Regulation and Reform in Los Angeles. Journal of the American Planning Association. 79(1):49-66.

Manville, Michael, Alex Beata, and Donald Shoup. (2013). Turning Housing into Driving: Parking Requirements and Density in Los Angeles and New York. Housing Policy Debate. 23(2):350-375.