content from Luskin Forum magazine

An Institute Whose Name Is Also Its Mission

/0 Comments/in /by

Upon receiving the naming gift from Meyer and Renee Luskin, the School embarked on a self-examination to codify a path forward. One goal identified a decade ago by the planning task force reads: “position UCLA Luskin as a national leader in analyzing and teaching about the root causes and consequences of inequality in America.” How? Create a research center — and that became the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, now in its sixth year. That name didn’t spring forth easily, however. Learn that history and more about the Institute, known for providing a voice for activists and advocates, from our former dean, the Institute’s founding director and a doctoral student who has been with the Institute almost since the beginning.

Frank Gilliam, whose tenure as dean at the Luskin School ended in 2015 when he became chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The Luskins are very interested in inequality and in a just society. It was the thing that they hammered home over and over. 

We started talking about creating a research action center to address that. And we fumbled in the weeds a bit for a couple of years, trying to figure out a name, trying to figure out what the institute would look like and the issues that it would work on.

It was called Institute X for a couple of years because we couldn’t figure out the name. And then, finally, we landed on two big concepts that, as it turns out now, often seem to be under attack. On the one hand, democracy, and on the other hand, equality. 

Ananya Roy, founding director of the Institute and professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography 

You didn’t want to call it the Institute for Social Justice?

Gilliam: We worried that social justice had such heavy quantitative meaning that people wouldn’t be able to give [the Institute] a chance to do the work, even settle on what it ought to be. So, we stayed away from that.

Roy: I think the name is a really interesting provocation. It prompted me to look at the ways in which democracies, inequality persist. How? Why? And what do we do
about that?

I had spent much of my academic career at UC Berkeley. And I was willing to make the move and serve as founding director of this institute because I found this to be such a wonderful and unusual opportunity.

I looked closely at other centers that are focused on inequality at other universities — Harvard, Stanford. And most of them focused on inequality but did not think about democracy simultaneously. None of them thought about space and cities. Almost none had serious relationships with communities and movements, and almost all of them were focused exclusively on the U.S.

Most of them were led by economists, so I said, “OK, we’re going to do something different here” and take very seriously this question of power, political power, or collective action of what a radical meaningful democracy would mean. What it means to actually think about issues such as housing in relation to rights.

We’re going to do this by paying close attention to the spaces in which people actually live their lives and struggle with these forms of inequality. And we are going to recognize the connections across different parts of the world.

What makes us different, even from other centers in the Luskin School and at UCLA, is that we realize that we can’t do this work without building deep relationships of trust with the communities that are actually most impacted by inequality. 

In Los Angeles, this is everything from unhoused communities to working-class communities of color
facing eviction to the communities that are subject to racialized policing.

In my early years as a director, I spent a lot of time getting to know movements in these communities, spending time at community events and with community organizations. I joked early on that L.A. is the sort of city — this was before COVID — that you showed love by showing up. You braved the traffic and you showed up consistently. … And sit in the back of the room and listen and learn.

Now we have research partnerships with movement organizations … the research we do is often “homework” assigned to us by communities in need and by movements that are doing the advocacy work.

I’m very proud … we’ve done our work with integrity. Powerful universities are often mistrusted by communities that are suffering. They’re worried about how academic research almost extracts their stories, puts it on display without giving anything back.

We try very much to do the opposite. I call this research justice. It is about being accountable to the communities most impacted and to those whose futures and whose reality we are writing about. 

Mostly importantly, we believe that they have the right to critique us, to call us out and to say, “You didn’t do this properly. Do it again.”

Hilary Malson, a June 2022 doctoral graduate in urban planning who is among the many students who have worked with Roy or received funding through the Institute

My first introduction to working with the Institute actually started before I set foot on campus. Professor Roy, she reached out to me once I was admitted as a Ph.D. student and asked me to consult on a grant that she was putting together.

I have previous work experience in public history … as a curatorial research assistant at the Smithsonian Institution. From the moment I arrived on campus, I was involved in stewarding that housing justice and unequal city research coordination.

My independent dissertation work … analyzes Black displacement from cities through a critical Black diaspora studies lens. So, instead of quantifying and mapping the losses of gentrification — how many people no longer live here, for instance — I ask, what does community building look like for a people that has faced ongoing, generational displacement and dispersal.

The work that we have undertaken on housing justice is community-based, first and foremost, which means it is fundamentally and primarily accountable to the communities with whom we study and from whom we learn so much.

Gilliam: The work that this center does is extraordinarily important. And I think the thing that separates it — its secret sauce — is that it also translates into action. And that’s the part I’d hoped for.

But it took Professor Roy to make that happen, and I’m so glad it did.

Faculty Also Lead Research Centers Across Campus

/0 Comments/in , /by

Several research centers based outside of UCLA Luskin are led by one of our faculty. Here are two examples, both of which changed directors in the summer of 2021. The first involves a newly hired faculty member, and the other is a longtime professor who has taken on a new responsibility. 

Veronica Terriquez Ph.D. sociology ’09, hired into the position of director of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center and as an associate professor of urban planning and Chicana/o Studies

Tell us about yourself, the center and your first year as its director. 

I’m a proud daughter of Mexican immigrants with 100-year roots in the L.A. area. I really believe that higher education is an important tool for addressing issues of equity and inclusion. 

We are doing a lot that is addressing the needs of young people as they seek to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial injustices that they have experienced in recent years. I’m leading some projects that focus on that, take a participatory action research approach to understanding the needs of young people, which includes meetings with adolescents and young adults — high school through their 20s. 

A lot of people have suffered during this pandemic, but young people, particularly those in low-income communities, have encountered multiple setbacks to their healthy and successful transitions to adulthood. And part of what I want to do is figure out exactly what is going on so the research can inform local and state investments in young people. 

I’m also developing work to support ethnic studies implementation at the high school level. I’m hoping that the Chicano Studies Research Center could serve as an additional resource for supporting efforts by educators across the state to bring quality ethnic studies to the classroom and to train the next generation of teachers. 

What lies ahead?

I hope that there will be more targeted and quality investments in the lives of young people who are most impacted by social inequalities. And, if those investments are made in the long term, we will see reduced economic and social inequalities in the state of California and beyond.

Professor Susanna Hecht is director of the Center for Brazilian Studies at UCLA.

Susanna Hecht, professor of urban planning, a specialist on tropical development in Latin America who has affiliations in Geography and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA

Please talk about your new role.

I am delighted to be the director of the Center for Brazilian Studies. First, because Brazil is so amazing, and it has been a major site of rethinking so many paradigms about development. Brazil has been an engine of products, concepts and practices that have really changed how people look at things. 

It’s reshaped how we think about conservation. 

Now everyone listens to Brazilian music, has seen Brazilian movies, likes to eat açai bowls and other Brazilian food, and has at least heard of Amazonia. It’s not quite as exotic, although it still maintains the allure of the beaches — its beauty and its beauties! 

When and why was this center created?

Area studies, in general, are an outcome of the Cold War. The isolation of different forms of knowledge across academia made it difficult for understanding of localities through a number of dimensions, including their languages and literatures, their histories, their anthropologies, and their sociology, politics and geography. The geopolitics of the time and the extensive intervention of the U.S. as a novel political power brought a need for consolidation of forms of knowledge in the training of students and fostering interaction between scholars of different kinds. 

These sites also became important areas of critique of American policy and politics in the developing areas that they encompassed. 

Brazil’s new constitution was written in 1988 and it became a template for constitutions in Latin America. It recognized indigenous rights and Afro-descendent land rights, and it paid attention to the new array of environmental questions. 

So much of Latin America is in the tropics, which are seeing deforestation and many extraordinarily important consequences of climate change, including species extinction and changes to livelihoods, both urban and rural. 

Area studies, generally, are useful venues for thinking globally. And in places like Los Angeles, which has become more international in its population — and its arts, music, foods and livelihoods —  area studies centers have been venues for rethinking the relationship of Los Angeles and the world. 

As time went on, large centers like the Latin American Institute realized that its regions were very distinctive, and each needed its own arena of study. This was certainly true of the Brazil Center.

Luskin Center for Innovation and a Case Study of Community-Led Research

/0 Comments/in /by

One of the cornerstones of many research center efforts at UCLA Luskin is community-driven research. Take, for example, the Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) project, with evaluation spearheaded by the Luskin Center for Innovation. Work at UCLA related to TCC has been going on for many years and in many forms, ranging from policy decision guidance for state officials to on-the-ground documentation of grassroots climate action. The team from the Luskin Center for Innovation is tracking hundreds of millions of dollars invested in local climate action. For example, they’re measuring the impacts of energy efficiency upgrades, like smart thermostats and LED lighting, to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and reduce energy bills. Taking you inside this effort are researchers affiliated with the Luskin Center for Innovation, who are all UCLA Luskin alumni.

Colleen Callahan MA UP ’10, co-executive director; Silvia R. González BA ’09, MURP ’13, UP Ph.D. ’21, director of research, UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative and an LCI-affiliated scholar; Jason Karpman MURP ’16, project director; and graduate researcher Elena Hernandez, MURP and MPH ’22

Tell us about what TCC is and how UCLA got involved.

González: TCC is all about recognizing the strengths of community institutions and individuals who are pushing forward environmental justice policies.

It’s focused on the ground-breaking climate action that’s happening in communities across California, with a focus on disadvantaged communities that have historically experienced disinvestments. Many of these residents are on the front lines of climate change. 

The program encourages their visions for climate resilience by supporting them with power and financial resources. It’s really a leading example of local climate action.

Callahan: We first got involved because the state wanted to understand if the program was on the right track. We were called in as evaluators. And evaluation is really important to tell you a number of things: Like are we setting ourselves up for success? Do we have the right ingredients in place, the right kind of logic model or theory of change established? And are we putting in the right investments to achieve this vision?

The Luskin Center has a long track record of doing policy-applied research and working very closely with state administrators to improve their programs. So, this reputation of creating actionable research, plus the longstanding relationships we’ve had with local community organizations, have been essential.

Can you describe those relationships? 

González: In the case of Pacoima — one of the communities that we’re working with — UCLA Luskin has a long-term relationship with Pacoima Beautiful [a grassroots environmental justice organization], and there’s an established trust. We’ve taken time to build a relationship with communities around us. For instance, Veronica Padilla [executive director of Pacoima Beautiful] graduated from the master’s in urban planning program. Before joining the evaluation team, I had been working with Pacoima Beautiful for years even prior to TCC. 

But long-standing relationships aren’t always the case for researchers. There’s always a lot of mistrust in communities of color with outsiders coming in.

It was really easy to work with community members since we had a long-standing history together. The trust we built over time enabled us to speak directly with residents and staff of community organizations. That access helped us gather new insights in our research that we wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. 

Karpman: To add to that, one of the reasons Pacoima chose us as an evaluator is the collaborative work that UCLA has already been doing in the community, particularly through Silvia, while at the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, and the work that she and Professor Vinit Mukhija did as part of a Luskin MURP comprehensive project class. 

They developed a displacement avoidance plan in collaboration with residents. It was really a generative endeavor that turned into new research projects and partnerships. It’s been cool to see how that project has endured even after the students have graduated.  

Describe examples of what community-led research looks like in the TCC project. 

González: The TCC’s evaluation approach of community-based research isn’t just surface-level. It’s about our research methods, the principles that are guiding the on-the-ground work, and the way the project is amplifying the voices of community members.

Hernandez: For instance, we attend as many in-person events as we can, and we try to attend all of the collation meetings with other local organizations. We’ll go to neighborhood fairs and speak directly to residents. We walk a fine line between being a partner and an evaluator. We’re there to collect data, but also to support the site. 

We also want to make sure that our research deliverables are actually useful, so it’s not an extractive one-way street where researchers get data and then leave. It’s actually beneficial.

Our annual progress reports show impacts of the community’s work, with detailed numbers and profiles of residents. They showcase the community’s accomplishments with TCC.

They’ve been really meaningful to the community members. I always enjoy talking to residents and hearing what’s important to them. It’s fun to see how they light up when they talk about their projects. They’re really proud.

What type of impacts has the research had?

Karpman: It’s really informing active discussions about how to address climate change in an equitable way. Our work as an evaluator is going to help inform the degree to which this model gets replicated across the country.

Callahan: TCC is now part of the national dialogue around making federal climate investments more equitable, and federal agencies are looking at TCC as a model. Our research is documenting the benefits of resourcing and empowering historically underserved communities to realize their visions for community health, well-being and prosperity while combating the climate crisis.

González: Another impact is that it opens up an opportunity to bring in a more diverse set of researchers to UCLA who are interested in equity-focused work, and researchers that come from the front-line communities. 

That’s one of the benefits that I see for the Luskin Center, that now you’re going to have people like me and like Elena, who come with a diverse set of experiences or identities. That will have an impact over the long run.

Karpman: That’s a good point. Since we’ve started working on TCC, the racial and socioeconomic diversity
of our graduate student research pool is really different. 

Hernandez: In this project, I feel seen. This is research that I can be part of and give back to my community. 

At the same time, this is a way to highlight the stories of community members. Because at the end of the day, they’re the ones doing the important work.

The Young and Mighty LPPI

/0 Comments/in /by

Research centers are born for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, it’s just the right thing for a public research institution like UCLA to do. In the case of the Latino Policy and Politics Institute (formerly Initiative), “it was the single-biggest missing element in the School,” said Gary Segura, who co-founded LPPI soon after he became dean at UCLA Luskin in 2017. “We were a school of public affairs in a state that is 43-44% Latino, and we didn’t have any faculty expertise focused on that area.” Learn more about LPPI, which has attained funding of $13.5 million in just five years of existence,  from its founding director, a current student fellow and an alumna whose time with LPPI has proven crucial to her career.

Sonja Diaz MPP ’10, founding director of LPPI

What are you working on now?

A U.S. Latino data hub will create a portal for the first time of taking government data and disaggregating it by Latino subgroups. So, you’ll get a sense of the differences between Cubans in Florida and Puerto Ricans in Florida. And that, frankly, hasn’t been done across a number of indicators, from housing to the environment to voter registration. The second big project is a summit, and we’re trying to create a programmatic nexus between our scholars, our staff and our different policymaking audiences, lawmakers and researchers who need the support to have a Latino lens. We’re hoping to convene people in Washington, D.C., and establish a national presence for LPPI.

How did your directorship at LPPI come about and what has it meant for you personally?

I was leaving a position with a statewide constitutional officer at a time when we expected a different outcome from our 2016 U.S. presidential election. And it made sense for me to look at UCLA, which is personal to me and my family. My father received a Ph.D. in urban planning here when I was a toddler. Some of his faculty are my colleagues today. And in that way, it’s been one continuous line. What I didn’t expect was to be given the opportunity to marry policy and research. 

Now, after being on this job for a number of years, I am recognizing the impact that we’ve had, not only in the students that have walked through our doors, and even our staff colleagues, but to our community members. It has been mind-blowing. 

Recent successes of note?

Two things happened in ’20-21 that I think were so important for LPPI, but also for the Latino community writ large. The first was our work to advance full representation of Latino politicians to an important body, which is the U.S. Senate. And that was cemented with Gov. [Gavin] Newsom’s appointment of now-Sen. Alex Padilla, the first Latino in over 170 years to occupy that office.

The second thing, and this was happening at the same time, was providing a data lens to the COVID vaccine policy in the state of California that, in many ways, had disenfranchised youthful racial minorities, including Latinos, in the face of the evisceration of Latino households during COVID-19. And our work with over 40 community organizations, based on our data analysis, really changed course for the state and made it so it wasn’t just wealthy and older Californians who had access to the vaccine, but the hardest-hit communities that were working on the front lines.

Bryanna Ruiz Fernandez, an LPPI student fellow who majored in political science and minored in public affairs and Chicano/a studies and who will join the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a policy fellow after graduation

Talk about yourself, your role at LPPI and your future plans.

I am a proud product of immigrants. I come from a mixed-status household. We are from a border town, El Centro, California. I actually grew up in Mexico for part of my childhood, until I was around 8 years old. And then we immigrated to the United States. Spanish is actually my language of birth. And my mom, just recently, I was able to sponsor her for residency, for her green card.

She just became a U.S. resident, and it was a huge deal for the family because of the laws that can be discriminatory and negatively impact one’s life. 

And my dad is in the process. 

I understand immigration policy firsthand, and when it’s not properly researched by people with firsthand experience or who are culturally competent, what kind of impact it can have on communities of color, like my family.

I feel very fortunate to have been a fellow for LPPI for, basically, my entire undergraduate career.

In the classroom, I was learning methods and these broad concepts, but I didn’t really understand, especially as a first-generation college student, how that applies to the real world.

As a fellow, I was able to work with UCLA faculty. I was able to see firsthand how they conduct research, how they write reports. And on the other hand, I was also able to see how that research needs to be amplified. Because if we’re doing research and no one knows about it, then what impact is it actually having?

woman with short hair smiles broadly

MPP and MSW alumna Gabriela Solis Torres

Gabriela Solis Torres, MPP and MSW ’19, a founding student fellow at LPPI who now works as a project leader for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab in Houston, Texas

Please explain your work.

We’re a research and technical assistance organization that provides support to governments who are pursuing ways to combat some of the most complex social challenges. That’s things like trying to reform the criminal justice system or the child welfare system, or trying to address homelessness.

A lot of things have changed because of the pandemic. But a big change in my work came after the murder of George Floyd. Harris County, where Houston is, and a lot of other jurisdictions across the United States started thinking about what their policing looks like and really started exploring, I think, more seriously the alternatives to their emergency response approach.

And now I’m leading our portfolio for alternatives. I provide technical assistance to five jurisdictions across the United States that are implementing alternatives such as sending unarmed teams to 9-1-1 calls. 

Did your experience with LPPI have a direct relationship to what you do now?

For me, I think it really opened my worldview. I came into the Luskin School from a direct service background. I was a case manager doing outreach with folks who were homeless in Venice and Venice Beach, and I thought I wanted to be a clinician. I was going to school to study social work and learn to do therapy.

But I was thinking too much of the macro, always complaining about the rules and the limitations. And I was advised to get a public policy degree. And I didn’t really know anything about public policy. I think being at Luskin and then participating in LPPI really changed my worldview and my whole career track completely.

I like working directly with governments. I grew up in East Los Angeles. I’m first in my family to go to college and have a professional job. My dad used to work in a factory. My mom was a stay-at-home mother. And I had no access to professional spaces. 

Another thing has to do with access. I had never really talked to anyone who was an official, and LPPI was my first exposure to people who had a lot of power or influence. 

I remember when I first came to UCLA Luskin and received the Monica Salinas Fellowship, which was created by a successful marriage and family therapist, and I got to have dinner at their house. And that was, like, so fancy! It was the first time I’d ever been in a space like that. And it was very cool because she was also a Latina and was very supportive of the work. 

Then, with LPPI, I would help organize panels or events, which meant having to manage details with elected officials or work with very high-level stakeholders. It helped me develop confidence that is applied to my job.

Every day now, I work with mayors, city managers, the director of an emergency communications center. Those experiences at UCLA were very pivotal in assuring me,
“I know how to communicate. I know how to write. I know what I’m talking about.”

How did you get involved with LPPI?

I found out that Sonja was opening the shop, and I just went to talk to her in her office. There was no formality. This thing is happening, let’s go. And I think I was the first or second person she hired. 

What I really appreciated from working with her was the true openness to being collaborators, making me feel like my opinion was important, that she actually cared about it. 

Myself, and Sonja, and the other student fellows were a team. And we got real. It was a growth environment where everyone was expected to step up. If you didn’t know something, your mentality was: “I’ll learn how to do it.” 

We understood that we were in a startup environment. … I have very fond memories of that time and just feeling like I was helping to set up something that was big. And I take pride that LPPI is where it is now.

ITS, Lewis Center Have Thrived for Decades

/0 Comments/in /by

The Institute of Transportation Studies was created within the University of California in 1947 and has been in permanent existence at UCLA since 1994. The Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies marked its 30th year in 2020 with a grand celebration just six days before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. Both remain influential and productive, promoting a faculty-student research relationship that for many is a hallmark of the Luskin School experience. Here are interviews with the two current directors and a handful of alumni. 

Brian Taylor, UCLA double-alumnus, longtime professor and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies

Why are UCLA and ITS the right fit for you?

Oh, I keep coming back to UCLA. I transferred from Berkeley to UCLA as an undergraduate … and went to graduate school at Berkeley. And then I came back to UCLA for my Ph.D. in urban planning, but at the time it was in the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning. I taught [at another university] for a while and then was recruited to come back to UCLA a third time. 

I understand that I was the first faculty member hired in the “School of Public Affairs.” My appointment began July 1st, 1994, and the School began on July 1st, 1994, at midnight. 

What we know today as the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California … was created by the California Legislature in 1947 to examine the growing transportation needs for the state of California after World War II. The original branch was at UC Berkeley, and eventually a branch was opened at UCLA. It existed from the 1950s into, I believe, the early 1970s, primarily in engineering. … They used to crash test cars in what is now the sculpture garden. They had the tracks, and they’d run them up with the dummies in the cars. 

[That version was later moved] from UCLA to Irvine. … In 1994, the branch at UCLA was reestablished, but instead of being in civil engineering, it was established in what’s now the Luskin School of Public Affairs. And the founding director was Professor Martin Wachs. 

Transportation is the thing that everybody’s an expert in. Because they all travel. 

What makes it unique is that transportation is one of the things that connect all of human activity. It’s education, communication. Where we live, where we work, where we shop, where we play, how we relate to friends. We’ve learned what it’s like to do it by Zoom and that’s one way. And the other way is to come together. And if you come together for activities, whether it’s manufacturing, or to socialize, or to see a sporting event or to go shopping, those things all require transportation systems. 

The transportation program at UCLA is fairly unique among universities. … Others tend to have their centers anchored in engineering, and it is very much an infrastructure focus. We are anchored in a school of public affairs. And because of that, our transportation experts, who are known around the world, are not, quote-unquote, transportation experts. They’re people who focus on transportation around some realm. So, take [professor] Donald Shoup. He was basically a land economist who realized that parking had huge effects on urban development and the environment. And as a land economist, he’s become one of the most prominent transportation scholars in the country.

Only the late Marty Wachs and I, and now [recent faculty addition] Tierra Bills as the third, were actually first and foremost transportation people, even though we’re widely considered as one of the top transportation research centers in the country. And because we bring in these experts from these other fields who see the connections to urban design and safety, to the environment and to economic outcomes in poverty, to all of these things connected to transportation, [it] has made us so relevant and so intellectually rich as a result.

How do students benefit from being associated with ITS?

ITS, like many of the other centers, has for years devoted substantial funding to students, offering scholarships to recruit outstanding students, diverse students to the Luskin School. At this point it’s millions of dollars in scholarships. We are the largest single funder of students at UCLA outside of — I have been told this repeatedly — outside of the graduate division in terms of funding our students.

Is there a signature event or a signature activity?

Oh, yes. It’s the UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium on the Transportation-Land Use-Environment Connection. We’ve been doing it since ’91. It’s at UCLA’s Lake Arrowhead Conference Center, and we are known internationally for this symposium. It has led to changes in policy at the state and federal level. We have had secretaries of transportation in California, the head of the Federal Transit Administration, and we’ve had prominent academics from around the world
to speak.

Any unmet challenges or missed opportunities over the years?

I think urban planners could have been more intentional about addressing transportation justice and equity issues.

And there is — I hate to use the word disturbing — but the view of transportation in the eyes of many public officials, whether on the right or the left, often involves big projects, concrete and steel. They might favor some projects or oppose others. So, often we are approached and asked, “What can you do to help us? How do I get approval for this project or kill this other project?” But when we engage with public officials, rarely do they just say, “This is a vexing problem. What can we do to address it?”

Urban Planning alumni Andrew Mondschein PhD ’12 of the University of Virginia and Anne Brown MURP ’14, PhD ’18 of the University of Oregon worked with ITS while students; Lance MacNiven MURP ’16 is the national zero-emission lead for WSP USA, a civil engineering firm

How does your career today relate to your time at UCLA?

Mondschein: I’m still really interested in travel behavior and expanding the idea of what accessibility is and how we understand that concept. And that all came from the opportunities, the things that I experienced and the things I got to work on at UCLA. I do work on accessibility, particularly looking at cognitive mapping and understanding how people actually understand the opportunities that are available to them and the way that transportation systems shape that.

MacNiven: Although I never worked for ITS directly, I was very close with Brian [Taylor], and he was kind of a partial advisor with the late, great Marty Wachs for my capstone project. I am the national lead for zero-emission vehicles and fleet planning support and serve as a project manager for
the transition to zero-emission vehicles, primarily for transit and freight.

My capstone was connected to L.A. Metro bus system ridership and basically improving ridership. … I’m back on the bus side primarily with the zero-emission aspect. A lot of my studies and research with ridership and trends definitely inform the duty cycles and other things that we look at on the zero-emission side.

Brown: I’ve always been in transportation equity. Essentially, with the rise of shared mobility during my six years at UCLA, that’s the angle I went. UCLA provided flexibility to pivot into this whole new opening. Back in 2014, we just had no idea what was going on with any of these services.

What stands out about your time at UCLA?

Brown: Brian [Taylor], Evy [Blumenberg] and Marty [Wachs] were some of my primary advisors the entire time
I was at UCLA, kind of like surrogate parents and grandparents in a work context. They all came to my wedding. It’s just a wonderful community.

The support goes beyond the classroom. It’s out of the classroom on research projects. But there’s depth of care that they really invest in you as an individual. And it goes beyond graduation, too. We’re in regular touch. It feels like any time an email pops up or the call comes through, it’s like no time has passed.

Mondschein: Fundamentally, the people at ITS were so supportive and could take anyone that was excited and engaged in transportation and encourage them to think how it might have benefit to society and might be able to change the world.

It was really a special kind of unique environment to be able to talk to like-minded people in a little bit of an educational hothouse. It was a lot of fun.

MacNiven: The professors, you know, it’s full of brainiacs; we could spend all day talking about how smart they are. But it’s the human connection that really draws people in and keeps us tight. 

When I first came to UCLA, reading about [Wachs, Taylor and Shoup], I was intimidated. I was like, “Oh, man, there’s Brian Taylor.” But then you get to know him. And, quite honestly, a lot of the times I’m talking to Brian Taylor it’s about college basketball.

Marty was my capstone advisor. He was busy but he accepted me. And I would go to his house on the weekends, you know, to basically bug him with questions. And there were times when my wife had our car, and he would offer to come pick me up to go to his house on a Saturday. 

That stuff sticks with you forever. It really shows the community.

Brown: I think about advice I was given early on but have not yet mastered. It’s to think, “What are the questions? What’s the purpose of doing the research?”

You can use research to answer questions that can better transportation, better society, better connect people to opportunities. 

I can’t look at a new technology without thinking, “Well, what do we do with this? How can we harness this to better the public good? What are its potential pitfalls and how do we avoid those?” In a lot of ways, my professors are the voices in my head that continue to drive my research agenda. They trained me in their own style. And I am forever grateful for that.

MacNiven: There’s no perfect silver bullet to this in terms of which transportation system we should favor. We deal with this a lot on the zero-emissions side because everyone seems to think that zero emission is the silver bullet to solve all our environmental problems.

But we’re always trying to think about the pros, and the cons. Who are the winners? Who are the losers? And let’s
zoom in on those “losers” a little bit to see how we can mitigate those situations.

It’s not just producing great research, but also trying to translate it into practice. 

two men and a woman sit in large white chairs and talk

UCLA Luskin scholars Allen Scott, left, Evelyn Blumenberg and Paul Ong have each led the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies during its three-decade history.

Evelyn Blumenberg MA UP ’90, Ph.D. ’95, a faculty member since 1995 and director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies since 2018

Who works with the Lewis Center and has it changed over its three decades of existence?

I was first involved with the Lewis Center as a student. I did projects through the Lewis Center when I was a doctoral student [when it was still] in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning. 

The overall mission of the Lewis Center has held constant, but within that broader mission, each of the directors put their own stamp on the kinds of policy issues they were engaged in, and on who they were collaborating with.

And the areas of emphasis have evolved with the directors. Currently, we do “live,” “move” and “work” as our three areas. A lot of “live” is focused on affordable housing qualities of neighborhoods. “Move” is the work we do on transportation in the region. And “work” reflects our interest in jobs and the regional economy. 

We work with students in all of the graduate and undergraduate degree programs.

The Lewis Center, like some of the other centers in the Luskin School, helps fund capstone projects in all three departments. And there are also students who get funding from the Lewis Center and write policy briefs that are based on their work.

We also help solicit some of the capstone projects. We do a broad solicitation, but many of [the clients] are alumni. Some of them had been involved in Lewis Center projects when they were students. It’s like match.com, where we try to match our great students with great projects. And that’s one way in which former students who are now alums can participate. 

How do faculty benefit from their association with the Lewis Center?

Faculty are really good at academic research. And they can figure out how to fund academic research. And, you know, they have to produce academic scholarship in order to get promoted. That happens with or without the Lewis Center. 

The Lewis Center allows them to amplify the policy implications of their research. 

Certainly, they apply for funds through the Lewis Center, and that helps their academic portfolio. But the big advantage is that we have the ability to help them promote their findings to communities, to elected officials and to other stakeholders. 

And we do it in a number of ways. We create reports and policy briefs. We have started a podcast around housing and affordable housing. We structure a lot of our events around the scholarship of faculty. They can use those events as a way of getting out their research and the policy and planning recommendations that fall from it.

And being involved with Lewis Center is a vehicle for bringing faculty and students together on topical areas. As an individual faculty member, oftentimes you’re working on your own. The centers offer a collegial place to interact and to creatively think about how to pursue policy interventions. 

We’ve had meetings where all we do is brainstorm. We think about bringing faculty and students together to think about what the next round of research should be. So, it’s
an incubator.

I got into this business to make a difference, right? To improve communities, to make life better for low-income households. This is an opportunity to translate the research into policy, and to do it with others.

(Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Our Research Centers An introduction to the stories in this edition

/0 Comments/in , /by

Our goal was to create a definitive roundup of UCLA Luskin research centers. Over several months, more than two dozen professors, staff, students and alumni were interviewed, producing 160 pages of transcripts totaling 69,774 words. Did we capture every connection, permutation or interaction? No way. For one, we simply ran out of space. What follows are excerpts from the interviews. Also note that our research centers web page now has a mention of every — we think — research entity with a UCLA Luskin connection. Here are a few facts and notes about the project:

  • Funds that flow into the Luskin School are increasingly tied to a research center, and those numbers have risen as the School has grown in recent years. Research centers received 80% of all contract and grant funding at UCLA Luskin in the last fiscal year, totaling $18.5 million. With four months of 2021-22 to go, the research center tally stood at 82.9% of all awards and $17.9 million.
  • Most full-time faculty, and many part-timers, are associated with at least one research center. The financial benefit is a factor, but interviewees mostly spoke about collaboration and impact.
  • Research units play an integral role in advancing UCLA Luskin’s mission, particularly its community service goals. (Some of the many research-oriented advocacy success stories are told in this edition.)
  • There are a lot of them. In 2009, the Luskin Center for Innovation became the fourth research center at UCLA Luskin. Today, we show 12 research centers on the homepage and list more than a dozen more on the web page mentioned earlier. A couple of non-Luskin-School-based examples are in this issue, but faculty also hold leadership positions or fill scholarly roles in many other research centers housed within another UCLA school, hosted by an off-campus partner or existing as part of a national research consortium or an ad hoc project involving scholars from other universities.
  • Some research centers are — potential funder alert — still in the startup phase; others are firmly established but ready to grow. And two research centers have been bastions of the UCLA Luskin educational experience for decades. These highly respected and influential centers are profiled in chapter 1. 
  • The word center is often used in this project as an umbrella term even though individual entities are actually an institute, initiative, hub or lab. No disrespect is intended. Is there any official difference? We asked UCLA’s vice chancellor for research, Roger Wakamoto: “We do not discriminate a center from an institute or any other term. The names are
    used interchangeably.”
  • The main story in this issue unfolds in oral history form. Some minor rephrasing was needed for clarity’s sake, and trims were made. But the people associated with UCLA Luskin research centers tell their stories primarily in their own words

Dean’s Message

/0 Comments/in /by

And in the blink of an eye, five years has come and gone.

This is my 11th Forum column. I write after an extraordinary period of change in the world, and at UCLA Luskin. We do our work in the world, on real problems facing real people, families and communities. When I arrived five years ago, I made a commitment to embrace and enhance the School’s well-established mission of helping, of doing good in the world. I believe we have kept that promise, and each day I am stunned to see the astounding efforts of my colleagues in implementing that vision through research, training and action.

Five years ago, I could not have envisioned the pandemic, the insurrection and the myriad crises of these last two years. New challenges and new opportunities, daunting and exciting at the same time, have emerged from this upheaval. Out of the old will emerge new patterns, changed institutions, terrible losses and unanticipated opportunities. Exactly what those will look like is hard to foresee. But the Luskin School will certainly be trying.

What can UCLA Luskin do to enhance our understanding of COVID-19, of the political upheavals of the last years, of the social changes being set into motion by both? In this issue, we highlight ways in which Luskin research has immediate impact on the world around us.

Our work on inequality and displacement is never more needed than now, when the homelessness and affordable housing crises collide with large-scale economic struggle during the pandemic, and
a 40-year growth in income inequality.

Our work on housing and transportation can certainly inform our understanding of the “great resignation” or the withdrawal of substantial segments of the workforce from active participation. There is very little question that priorities have shifted for millions of Americans, less willing to work for minimum wage, less willing to take that second job (or, for couples, third job), less willing to

commute for hours a day. The death of hundreds of thousands of our countrymen, the 18 months of remote work, clearly reshaped choices.

Similarly, our expertise in these areas cannot help but inform the changing nature of work and workplaces after nearly two years of remote employment for many. Telecommuting pre-dates the pandemic, but these last two years have revolutionized our understanding of what tasks require in-person labor, and how supervisors can effectively monitor those working from home. Clearly some of this work was not ideal, but we discovered that some workers did just fine! In this context, hours of commuting and parking costs are hard to justify when they don’t improve productivity or enhance service.

Our expertise on health and health care disparities, disruptions in the insurance market, depression and mental health challenges, and lack of services to the poor, to marginalized communities and the homeless is made more urgent in the wake of clear and undeniable effects of this inequality on Los Angeles and beyond. We have witnessed wildly uneven mortality rates, testing and vaccination efforts, and untreated morbidities that have made a terrible situation worse for those who have the least.

Communities of color, among those most disadvantaged in the pandemic, have also seen their political voice weakened by vote dilution and voter suppression, and by a history of the use of the criminal justice system as social regulation. The UCLA Voting Rights Project at Luskin may be coming to a courtroom near you as we fight to protect the franchise and American democracy. When those most disadvantaged take to the streets in frustration, they are likely to face hostile law enforcement and attempts at suppression. Minority experiences in the U.S. justice system have historically been problematic under the best of circumstances and even more so in these times of social stress and the ongoing tragedy of unjustified killings. Thankfully, these events, too, are the subject of inquiry in all Luskin departments.

The distinction between the Luskin School and much of academia is reflected in words written by Marx 133 years ago in his 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”

Gary

In Support Social justice, equity and diversity are among the priorities for new gifts, fellowships and other initiatives

/0 Comments/in /by

SHAH IS FIRST RECIPIENT OF GILLIAM CHAIR IN SOCIAL JUSTICE

When the Luskin School formally presented its fifth and newest endowed chair to Professor Manisha Shah in November, former Dean Frank Gilliam and benefactors Meyer and Renee Luskin were in attendance.

The Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. Chair in Social Justice, which was created by the Luskins as part of their naming gift to the School in 2011, is now fully funded. It will provide financial support for Shah’s research throughout her five-year term as holder of the chair.

Gilliam, who is the chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, said he was honored to have his name attached to an award focusing on social justice.

“Meyer and Renee have ambitious goals about how to change the world and how to make it a better place,” Gilliam said. “At the core of that commitment is social justice: What, in a democracy, are you going to do about vast inequality?”

He pointed to a statement by sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois that the so-called color line is the great American dilemma. “Whether it’s African Americans or Muslims, Latin Americans or Asian Americans, it’s about integrating all people into the society and determining the rules upon which entry to society will be considered legitimate,” Gilliam said.

Dean Gary Segura credits Gilliam with codifying social justice as a unifying theme among the disparate departments that were rolled together decades ago into one school of public affairs.

“Frank is very much the dean that put the social justice stamp on the School,” Segura said. “The Luskin School we know today came into existence as a social justice-oriented entity because of his ingenuity.”

The Luskins have also endowed three other chairs benefitting professors at UCLA Luskin, Segura noted. One provides funding to research projects under his direction as dean. Another funds the research endeavors of the director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, a position held by Ananya Roy since it was founded five years ago. The third supports the director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, a position held by JR DeShazo prior to his departure in August to become a dean at the University of Texas. A search for DeShazo’s permanent replacement is underway. The fifth endowed chair at UCLA Luskin is the Marjorie Crump Chair in Social Welfare, currently held by Ron Avi Astor.

Segura said all these chairs were funded with gifts of $2 million to $3 million to provide funding in support of academic research endeavors. UCLA Luskin does not currently have any endowed chairs of another type offered at UCLA in recognition of gifts at the $5 million level. Those chairs include salary support for a recipient.

Shah is a professor of public policy who joined the UCLA Luskin faculty in 2013. Her scholarship tends to focus on issues of health equity and exploitation of disadvantaged people around the world, and she is the director of Global Lab for Research in Action at
UCLA Luskin, which she founded in 2019.

So, what is it like to have one’s name attached to an endowed chair?

“As with any sort of institutionalized thing like this, the naming of a school or a professorship or a scholarship is significant because it goes on in perpetuity,” Gilliam said, smiling broadly. “If somebody has the misfortune of asking one day who Frank Gilliam was, and they go back and discover who I was and what my connection was to the Luskin School, then that story gets told again.”

Jacqueline Waggoner, left, and Lourdes Castro Ramirez will co-chair a newly created Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee on the UCLA Luskin Board of Advisors.

FUNDING CAMPAIGN TIED TO EQUITY LAUNCHES AS BOARD WELCOMES NEW MEMBERS

The UCLA Luskin Advisory Board welcomed six new members to start the academic year: Lourdes Castro Ramirez, Andy Cohen, Brien Kelley, Travis Kiyota, Alex Rose and Wendy Wachtell. Castro Ramirez and continuing board member Jacqueline Waggoner are urban planning alumnae, and they will co-chair a newly created Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee. The committee will focus on confronting disparities, driving equity and creating greater access in the field of public affairs. To kick off this initiative, Castro Ramirez and Waggoner created a matching gift campaign to encourage others to join them to support this cause. Funds raised during the campaign will go toward the Urban Planning Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Fund. The fund seeks to diversify the field of planning, providing two kinds of support: funded internships with nonprofit community organizations that otherwise could ill afford to provide a paid internship; and student fellowships, allowing students to devote more time to learning instead of having to hold down a job or being saddled with an unsustainable debt load. For more information, contact Nicole Payton at npayton@luskin.ucla.edu.

Research grant from W.K. Kellogg Foundation will seek to broaden the understanding of issues affecting Latinos.

KELLOGG GRANT WILL SUPPORT LATINO-FOCUSED RESEARCH DATABASES

The UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI) was awarded a $2.5 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to support a pair of new research databases that will become available to policymakers, scholars and the public as resources for broadening understanding of issues affecting the Latino community.

“As the largest nonwhite minority group in the United States,
Latinos are integral to building a prosperous future for all Americans,” said Sonja Diaz, founding director of LPPI. “Yet Latinos face significant barriers to economic opportunity, political representation and social mobility. This funding will enable us to reliably collect data that brings Latinos and the issues that impact them out of the shadows
and to create real policy solutions that build a truly inclusive economy and democracy.”

The first of two databases, the Latino Data Hub, will contain verified data on demographics, socioeconomics and civic participation that will help decision makers promote policies that benefit Latino communities. It is intended to become a go-to resource for national, state and local data, and it will also include statistics and information on climate change and the environment, economic opportunity and social mobility, education, health and housing.

The second database, the Latino Research Redistricting Hub, will help identify how the drawing of state and federal electoral maps affects Latinos. The hub will be a resource for officials engaged in redistricting decisions with a goal of ensuring fair representation in politics and government for the nation’s diverse Latino communities.

“Before we can address inequity, we must tell the truth about our conditions, and that is what data does,” said Cicely Moore, program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. “We are proud to invest in creating tools that help us see our biggest challenges clearly and identify equitable solutions that enable us all to thrive.”

FIRST GROUP OF YAROSLAVSKY FELLOWSHIPS AWARDED

The inaugural group of graduate fellows to receive support from the Barbara Yaroslavsky Memorial Fund recently met virtually with their benefactor, Zev Yaroslavsky, to share experiences and talk about their futures.

The fellows include students working toward graduate or doctoral degrees in public policy, social welfare or public health at UCLA, or any combination thereof. Their areas of expertise and concentration include mental health as it relates to chronic disease, refugees in connection with forced migration and human rights, family services, and health and mental health across the lifespan.

Zev Yaroslavsky, whose long career in public service included time as both a county supervisor and city councilman in Los Angeles, is now on the faculty at UCLA Luskin. He established the fellowship with support from friends and family after the death of his wife in December 2018, honoring her legacy of advocacy and commitment to health care for all.

URBAN PLANNING FELLOWSHIP CIRCLE FINDS SUCCESS

The recently created Urban Planning Fellowship Circle has raised $53,350 to benefit urban planning students impacted by the pandemic, surpassing its goal of $50,000 with more donations on the way.

Led by co-chairs Joan Ling MA UP ’82 and Nicole Vermeer MA UP ’96,  a group of Urban Planning alumni banded together to help the next generation of urban planners weather a challenging year.

Other committee members were Toni Bates ’82, Alice Carr ’95, Robert De Forest BA ’99, MBA ’06, MA UP ’06, Nancy Lewis ’77, Reagan Maechling ’05, Katherine Perez ’97, Michele Prichard ’89, Anson Snyder ’90, James Suhr ’87, Yasmin Tong ’92 and Dwayne Wyatt ’83. Staff support was spearheaded by Robin McCallum, department manager.

The UCLA Luskin Development team is looking to replicate this model for the other departments. Anyone interested in making a similar impact to benefit students from public policy or social welfare may contact Laura Scarano, associate director of development,
at lscarano@luskin.ucla.edu.

CENTER FOR INNOVATION FUND HONORS DESHAZO

JR DeShazo

A campaign has been created to seek gifts in honor of JR DeShazo to the student fellowship fund for environmental justice.

Former UCLA Professor DeShazo, inaugural director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, became the dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in August. The student fellowship fund seeks to reflect the spirit of his enduring contribution and the Center for Innovation’s long record of support for hundreds of students during his tenure, helping to shape the next generation of policy.

The effort reflects the Luskin Center for Innovation’s commitment to supporting first-generation Bruins, students of color and other emerging environmental leaders via two types of fellowship opportunities:

  • one providing paid opportunities for students to collaborate with community-based organizations to advance environmental justice;
  • the other expanding opportunities in the center for students to conduct research that shapes environmental policy.

 

Alumni Notes

/0 Comments/in /by

CELEBRATING THE CLASS OF 2020

The Luskin School welcomed students and alumni back to campus with a series of celebrations and orientations to launch the new academic year. The 10th annual UCLA Luskin Block Party on Sept. 23 drew a record crowd as students, alumni, faculty, staff and supporters such as Meyer and Renee Luskin gathered on Dickson Court North to connect with one another after an 18-month stretch of remote learning brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The week wrapped up with an exclusive reception, above, for Class of 2020 graduates in the School’s public policy, social welfare and urban planning programs at the Luskin Conference Center for a celebration of their academic achievement.

Therese Agnes Hughes MA UP ’99

ALUMNA RECOGNIZES WOMEN IN THE MILITARY

Author and photojournalist Therese Agnes Hughes MA UP ’99 grew up in the military with a father who served in World War II, so her respect for people in service started at
a young age. She lived in far-flung places such as Guam and Hawaii as a result of her dad’s career.

Later, with two children still in school, she came to UCLA Luskin. After a break from her studies in 1997 for a kidney transplant, she came back to finish her education.

After graduating, she worked at the AmeriCorps Vista Clinic in Venice, California, and met women soldiers returning home from Iraq. She found that these women were not being appropriately recognized. After later working with California Congresswoman Linda Sánchez to raise awareness of issues specifically affecting women, Hughes started her own business to help female veterans.

It became evident to Hughes that many of those veterans had served ably beside male counterparts without being similarly recognized. This was true within her own family: Her mother volunteered for the Navy but never told Hughes about the experience.

In May 2010, Hughes quit her job and began her project to start telling women’s stories through photographs and quotes. Her first step was to ask to connect to veterans.

She eventually gained enough funding to travel to Washington, D.C., for five interviews, but only one person showed up. But this didn’t stop her work. Later, with an assist from UCLA Luskin’s Michael Dukakis, she was connected to Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, Purple Heart recipient and former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Duckworth was among the first handful of Army women to fly combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Once Duckworth was on board as an interviewee, Hughes’ project flourished, and she has interviewed more than 800 women since 2011. They include Brigadier Gen. Wilma L. Vaught, the first woman to be a four-star general.

By the time she had reached 60 interviews, Hughes said, she became aware that many of the women would go back to service “in a heartbeat.”

Her work has culminated in the book, “In a Heartbeat: Military Women WWII to Present.” Hughes hopes that young women of today can look at the women she has profiled and “see someone who looks like them and say, ‘I can do military service.’ ”

Hughes said she learned at UCLA Luskin not to be afraid to ask for help, and never to stop following up. She learned to look at the world through a prism, seeing many ways to do something. Those skills are not taught in a typical urban planning master’s program, she said.

Álvaro Huerta ’03, MURP ’06

ALUMNUS BECOMES A HARVARD FACULTY FELLOW

Álvaro Huerta ’03, MURP ’06 has been appointed as a Harvard faculty fellow.

The son of working-class Mexican immigrants and a product of public housing projects in Los Angeles, Huerta said he is honored to become a Harvard fellow.

He is additionally “eternally grateful to UCLA and my former professors and mentors, like the late professors Dr. Leo Estrada and Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones. Given that there are few Chicano urban planners and historians in the academy, I will maximize my Harvard position to show that for those of us who hail from America’s barrios like Boyle Heights, we, too, can teach and mentor graduate students at elite spaces.”

Jennifer Payne BA ’87, MSW/PhD ’11

ALUMNA IS FIRST WITH SOCIAL WORK PH.D. AT KENNEDY KRIEGER INSTITUTE

Jennifer Payne BA ’87, MSW/PhD ’11 is the first social work researcher with a doctorate ever to be hired at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins. Quite a few people with MDs and Ph.D.s had been hired there in psychiatry and psychology, but no social work researchers with a Ph.D. — until now.

Payne conducts research at the Kennedy Krieger Center for Child and Family Traumatic Stress. She joined a newly formed Neuropsychology of Social Injustice Center at Kennedy Krieger, which is in Baltimore.

She developed a culturally tailored model to address African American racial trauma based on an evidence-based intervention called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The center wants Payne to start a culturally based ACT clinic at Kennedy Krieger and to teach others across the nation and around the world about the model.

Payne is also an assistant professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with a primary appointment within the Department
of Psychiatry, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

She was also recently named as the 2021 recipient of the NACSW Diana Garland Award for Clinical Practitioner Excellence.

Susan Nakaoka ’91, MSW ’99, MA AAS ’99, PhD UP ’14, left, and Nicole Vazquez MSW/MPP ’09

 

MSW ALUMNAE SERVE CALIFORNIA CHAPTER OF SOCIAL WORK ORGANIZATION

The National Association of Social Workers: California has two organizers from UCLA Luskin Social Welfare: Susan Nakaoka ’91, MSW ’99, MA AAS ’99, PhD UP ’14, and Nicole Vazquez MSW/MPP ’09.

Both have been involved with a critical race studies course at UCLA.

Nakaoka is currently a visiting professor at Cal State Long Beach. Vazquez is the former field director and chair designee for Cal State Dominguez Hills’ MSW program, and currently is running Vazquez Consulting.

Recently, Laura Abrams, chair of Social Welfare at UCLA Luskin, and Vazquez spoke about critical race theory in social work on the podcast, “Doin’ the Work: Frontline Stories of Social Change.” They discussed the history of CRT, honoring the scholars of legal studies who developed it. They noted the conclusion of CRT that the law is not neutral and historically has been used to oppress people of color and others from marginalized groups.

Alumni Accolades Career changes and other updates from the alumni of UCLA Luskin

/0 Comments/in /by

Richard Xavier Corral MPP ’02, executive producer of “L.A. A Queer History,” won Best Documentary distinction at the Highland Park Independent Film Festival. The film sheds light on largely unacknowledged historical figures in U.S. history and how the LGBTQ community affects the world today.

Joshua Kirshner MA UP ’02 joined the University of York’s Department of Environment and Geography in 2015 as a lecturer in human geography and is now a senior lecturer. He previously held appointments at Durham University in Great Britain and Rhodes University in South Africa.

Daniela Simunovic MURP ’13 was appointed senior advisor on environmental equity for the California Air Resources Board. Simunovic previously held policy-related roles for Better World Group, the California Strategic Growth Council, Liberty Hill Foundation and elsewhere.

Sasha (Wisotsky) Kergan MA UP ’10 of Sacramento has been appointed deputy secretary of housing and consumer relations at the Business Consumer Services and Housing Agency. Kergan previously held several housing policy roles at the California Department of Housing and Community Development, as well as management roles elsewhere.

Hironao Okahana MPP ’09, MA ED ’11,
PhD Ed ’13 holds a new position as assistant vice president of research and insights at the American Council on Education. Okahana is a highly published scholar who is passionate about reforming higher education through institutional changes and policy reforms.

Amanda Morrall MPP ’14 was appointed as executive director of the Coretz Family Foundation based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The foundation’s announcement says she will be asked “to close socioeconomic opportunity gaps in Tulsa and work with partners on the ground to address social injustices in our city’s marginalized communities.”

Susan Oh MPP ’17 started a new position as legislative analyst for Los Angeles’ Office of the Chief Legislative Analyst. Susan is among a large number of MPP alumni now working for the City of Los Angeles and nearby municipalities.

Sara Jackson MPP/JD ’07 was promoted to director of career development at Rainier Scholars in Seattle. The nonprofit organization cultivates the academic potential and leadership skills of hard-working, underrepresented students of color.

Shannon Baker-Branstetter MPP ’05 now holds the position of director of domestic climate policy at the Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington, D.C. Baker-Branstetter joins alumna Vernessa Shih MPP ’14 at CAP, where several former MPPs also have worked.