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Susanna Hecht Honored with CAPE Distinguished Career Award

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UCLA Luskin Professor of Urban Planning Susanna Hecht is the 2025 recipient of the Distinguished Career Award by the Cultural and Political Ecology (CAPE) Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). She was honored March 26 at the CAPE business meeting held in Detroit. The prestigious award recognizes her groundbreaking contributions to the field of political ecology, said CAPE chair Josh Cousins, noting that nearly 50 scholars signed the nomination letter, “speaking to the wide respect scholars working in political ecology have for your contributions to the field.” The award is a testament to Professor Hecht’s profound influence on the study of nature-society relationships. The nomination cited her groundbreaking research on deforestation, forest recovery, indigenous land-use practices, and the socio-environmental impacts of climate change which has shaped global policy discussions and sustainable development strategies. Hecht is a widely recognized expert whose award-winning books and extensive funding from leading institutions underscore her profound contributions to environmental history, land-use change, and the global carbon economy. “We are excited to recognize you and your scholarship as well and place you in a long line of inspiring political ecologists and nature-society scholars to have received this award,” Cousins said. As CAPE honoree, Hecht also has been invited to deliver a keynote address at the 2026 AAG annual meeting.

UCLA Luskin Career Services Team Expands Opportunities for Students Personalized workplace tours add to a robust selection of career-focused resources

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Choosing a fulfilling career path can be a complex journey, often involving trial and exploration. To help our students make informed decisions about their futures, the UCLA Luskin Office of Student Affairs and Alumni Relations (OSAAR) provides direct professional development and networking opportunities at a pivotal stage in our students’ academic and professional lives. 

Luskin students met with panelists and employees at Estolano Advisors and Better World Group.

As part of this commitment, the OSAAR career services team facilitates workplace visits to leading firms in the Los Angeles area, offering students firsthand exposure to potential career paths. The most recent career tour this winter brought students to Estolano Advisors and Better World Group in Downtown Los Angeles—two prominent firms led by Cecilia Estolano MA UP ’91, a UCLA Luskin master of urban planning alumna and an active member of our school’s Board of Advisors.

Estolano Advisors is an award-winning urban planning and public policy firm, and Better World Group specializes in environmental, energy, climate, and conservation policy and advocacy. During the visit, undergraduate public affairs majors and graduate students from urban planning and public policy engaged in immersive experiences, including workplace observations, employee interactions, and a panel discussion featuring professionals from both firms—many of whom are UCLA Luskin alumni. 

The panelists, comprising both recent graduates and seasoned professionals with government and non-profit experience, shared insights on their career trajectories, current projects, and the diverse opportunities within advocacy-related fields. Students gained a deeper understanding of the challenges and rewards associated with these career paths, as well as the interdisciplinary collaboration that drives success in urban planning and consulting. 

For Shay Rivera-Bremner, a third-year public affairs major, the experience was particularly impactful as she begins to explore her post-college options. “It was fascinating to see the possibilities and efforts of combining community resilience, equity, and urban planning to solve problems for various stakeholders,” Rivera-Bremner said. “Talking to professionals from Estolano Advisors and Better World Group with different backgrounds demonstrated how diverse skills and perspectives can shape new ideas in this field. Seeing how these firms trust and empower their employees to lead projects and grow professionally was truly inspiring.” 

OSAAR continues to expand these valuable opportunities, with an upcoming career lunch and learn in April with JCI Worldwide, a renowned public affairs and public relations firm in Santa Monica. The team aims to offer at least one career tour per quarter, supplementing a robust lineup of on-campus career-planning events, including alumni panels, internship and career fairs, personalized career counseling, and professional development workshops. 

“We are thrilled to see such strong student interest in our career tour program,” said Nandini Inmula, Luskin’s assistant director of career services. “Our goal is to create meaningful connections between students and working professionals, especially during this critical transition into the workforce. We are committed to supporting our students every step of the way.” 

Learn more about UCLA Luskin’s career-focused events on our website.  

A Quiet Warrior Fights for the Unhoused

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When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass made solving the city’s homelessness problem one of her administration’s top priorities, she turned to a Bruin to get it done.

Now, Lourdes Castro Ramírez, who earned her master of arts in urban planning at UCLA in 2003, is tackling the challenge at an even higher level.

After declaring a state of emergency on her first day in office, Bass appointed Castro Ramírez as the city’s homelessness czar, ostensibly one of the toughest civic jobs in the nation, in 2023.

Castro Ramírez streamlined the approval of more than 20,000 affordable housing units and worked with a network of city and county agencies to get thousands of unhoused Angelenos off the streets.

Her success didn’t go unnoticed. In December, she took over as president and CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, where she now oversees the day-to-day operations of the organization’s 1,000 employees and 13 public housing communities across L.A.

Castro Ramírez has often found herself caught between two very different but very politically potent constituencies: progressives and activists who want the unhoused treated with dignity and respect on one side, taxpayers and NIMBYs tired of seeing all those tents and junker RVs on the other.

“Many people think that the unhoused are there by choice, that they didn’t work hard enough, or that’s where they want to be,” she says. “That is absolutely not correct. We have a housing crisis. People end up unhoused here because there’s just not enough housing that’s affordable.”

Read more about Castro Ramírez’s three-decade career in public service in UCLA Magazine

 

Honors for UCLA Luskin Social Welfare Professor and Alumna

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Two members of the UCLA Luskin Social Welfare community have been honored by the California Social Welfare Archives (CSWA).

Professor Laura Abrams received the Frances Lomas Feldman Award in recognition of her lifetime of work as an educator and researcher. And Aurea Montes-Rodriguez MSW ’99, a vice president at the nonprofit First 5 LA, received the George D. Nickel Award for outstanding professional services by a social worker.

CSWA cited Abrams’ work as an “esteemed social worker who has focused on improving the well-being of youth and adults with histories of incarceration.”

Aurea Montes-Rodriguez MSW ’99 was honored for her career serving Los Angeles’ families.

Abrams, introduced by longtime UCLA Luskin Social Welfare colleague Gerry Laviña, told the gathering that she was honored to receive an award named after Feldman, a social work trailblazer in Los Angeles.

“Working over 50 years, from 1940-1992, she had to innovate to a rapidly evolving society, such as the war on poverty, the movements for civil rights that swept the nation and the growing role of women in the workplace,” Abrams said. She called on social workers to follow Feldman’s lead and meet today’s challenges with determination and creativity.

The CSWA awards committee said Montes-Rodriguez “has a passion for building African American and Latino leadership, capacity and strategies that are inclusive and effective toward community transformation.”

After more than 25 years at the nonprofit Community Coalition, she is now vice president of community engagement and policy at First 5 LA, supporting the region’s youngest children and their families and catalyzing public policy efforts at the local, state and federal levels.

A Feb. 27 luncheon celebrated the achievements of Abrams, Montes-Rodriguez and a third honoree, Andrea Garcia, a physician specialist at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. Garcia received the George Nickel Award for outstanding contributions to social welfare for her work with American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

 

A Report Card on L.A.’s Efforts on Venture Capital Equity

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New research led by UCLA Luskin’s Jasmine Hill tracks the record of dozens of venture capital firms in Los Angeles that have pledged to prioritize equitable access to investments across demographic groups.

The findings are a report card on the PledgeLA initiative, launched by the Annenberg Foundation and the Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles to measurably increase diversity, equity and community engagement in the tech sector.

In 2023, Black and Latina women remained the least represented groups across the PledgeLA portfolio, making up only 1% and 2%, respectively, of companies that received funding, the researchers found. Of all capital deployed by the firms, all-white teams received $5.3 billion, or 66%.

The study did identify a promising development: In 2022, women-only teams received $3.8 million less than men-only teams, but that gap shrank considerably, to $700,000, in 2023.

Hill, an assistant professor of public policy, conducted the analysis with UCLA students who are members of her research lab: Jean-Christian Guichard and Isabella Marshall, who are pursuing master of public policy degrees; Kenneth-Alan Callahan; and Kashish Gupta.

The findings were among the criteria used to identify recipients of PledgeLA’s first Catalyst Awards, honoring 11 Angelenos for their efforts to strengthen Los Angeles’ local economy and entrepreneur community. Mayor Karen Bass, PledgeLA principals and more than 300 tech founders, venture capital investors and community leaders gathered at the El Rey Theater in December to recognize the awardees.

The Annenberg Foundation also commissioned Hill to analyze the Venture Access Alliance, a similar initiative launched by the New York City Economic Development Corp.

Read the 2024 PledgeLA Report

Do Urban Water Supply Systems Put Out Wildfires?

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The January 2025 wildfires devastated Los Angeles,  claiming lives, homes, jobs and whole communities. As the fires raged, discussions erupted across social and mainstream media, questioning whether water supply systems could have been more prepared.

The UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, in partnership with the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute and Faith Kairns of Arizona State University’s Global Futures Lab, compiled a list of frequently asked questions to provide clear, accurate answers to the most common questions from the public, media, and policymakers about fire hydrants, firefighting, water infrastructure and more.

The goal is to offer a better understanding of how water systems work, address common concerns, and provide useful information that can help communities stay informed and prepared.

The information is available in both English and Spanish.

Read the FAQ

Racial Antipathy, Not Just Partisanship, Drives Belief in Voter Fraud, UCLA Study Finds

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A new article in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, authored by a team of scholars from the UCLA Voting Rights Project, is the first published study to document with statistical analysis that many white Americans’ belief in voter fraud was not based on actual election fears but rather was driven by negative views toward minorities.

Specifically, data from three surveys of more than 8,000 white respondents reveal that racial antipathy — particularly a negative view of Blacks, Latinos and Asians — played a pivotal role in shaping beliefs about voter fraud as well as belief that the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was justified.

Authored by UCLA Voting Rights Project scholars Tye Rush, Chelsea Jones, Michael Herndon and Matt Barreto, the study draws on data from the 2020 American National Election Study pre- and post-election surveys and the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey implemented after the insurrection.

While partisan loyalty and allegiance to Donald Trump did play a role, the study suggests that perceptions of voter fraud were inextricably linked to anxieties about the changing demographic landscape of the United States. The widespread adoption of white replacement theory — the idea that racial minorities are “replacing” white Americans in political and social power — was a significant motivator for both supporting the insurrection and ongoing political polarization, the study found.

“Our study highlights an urgent issue in contemporary American politics,” said Rush, lead author of the article, who earned his PhD in political science from UCLA in 2023. “If we do not address the racialized perceptions that underlie many of these political behaviors, we risk undermining trust in democratic institutions and perpetuating political violence.”

Read the full news release

 

UCLA Luskin Scholars Ranked Among Most Influential

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More than 20 current and former UCLA Luskin faculty members have been recognized as among the world’s most influential researchers in the most recent Stanford-Elsevier Top 2% Scientists List.

Compiled by Stanford University in partnership with the publishing company Elsevier and SciTech Strategies, the list includes more than 100,000 researchers across 22 scientific fields and 174 subfields. The ranking is designed to offer visibility across disciplines, bringing attention to work that might otherwise remain niche or underappreciated.

The 2024 list includes numerous current and former UCLA Luskin-affiliated faculty and scholars:

  • Laura Abrams, professor of social welfare
  • Ron Avi Astor, professor of social welfare
  • Evelyn Blumenberg, professor of urban planning
  • Randall Crane, professor emeritus of urban planning
  • Dana Cuff, professor of architecture/urban design and urban planning
  • Robert W. Fairlie, distinguished professor of public policy and economics
  • Martin Gilens, professor of public policy, political science and social welfare
  • Yeheskel (Zeke) Hasenfeld, distinguished research professor emeritus of social welfare
  • Jody Heymann, distinguished professor of health policy and management, public policy and medicine
  • Aurora Jackson, professor emerita of social welfare
  • Duncan Lindsey, professor emeritus of social welfare
  • Susanne Lohmann, professor of political science and public policy
  • Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, distinguished professor of urban planning and interim dean of UCLA Luskin
  • James Lubben, professor emeritus of social welfare
  • Adam Millard-Ball, professor of urban planning
  • Jack Needleman, professor of health policy and management and public policy
  • Ananya Roy, professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography
  • Allen J. Scott, distinguished professor emeritus of public policy and geography
  • Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning
  • Michael Storper, distinguished professor of regional and international development in urban planning
  • Brian D. Taylor, professor of urban planning and public policy
  • John Villasenor, professor of public policy, electrical and computer engineering, management and law
  • Martin Wachs, distinguished professor emeritus of urban planning
  • Lynne G. Zucker, professor emeritus of public policy

 

Balancing Prosperity and Democracy: A Challenge for Mexico

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A new analysis of Mexico’s record on effective governance shows that the nation still outpaces many other Latin American countries yet has struggled to catch up with more developed nations such as the United States and Canada.

The report, using insights from the 2024 Berggruen Governance Index (BGI), sets the stage for Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, whose election in June 2024 extended the leadership of the leftist Morena party.

Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, embarked on ambitious programs of state building and economic nationalism during his tenure from 2018 to 2024, but these efforts have been criticized for contributing to democratic backsliding, particularly in the conservative U.S. press.

“Mexico’s governance trajectory, and specifically the approach taken by the ruling Morena party since 2018, presents a decidedly mixed record,” according to the report authored by researchers from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute and the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany.

“On one hand, Mexico has fostered economic growth, expanded its infrastructure and public goods, and recovered some of the lost ground in state capacity. On the other, Mexico still trails other large Latin American democracies, such as Brazil, in democratic accountability.”

One of Sheinbaum’s key dilemmas will be to balance a more expanded and effective reach of the state without undermining democratic norms. This will be a difficult balance to strike, given resistance to changes like judicial reform as well as the nationalization of resources and use of the military for state-building projects, the report says.

 

A UCLA Luskin Student’s Take on the Rollback of Criminal Justice Reforms

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UCLA Luskin Social Welfare student Francisco Villarruel grew up during a tough-on-crime era in California, was incarcerated as a teen, but emerged to find community-based reentry programs that helped him get back on his feet. Now, he is watching with dismay as the state rolls back criminal justice reforms that he believes have led to healthier, safer communities.

In a letter to the editor published by the Washington Post, Villarruel shares his experiences as an Angeleno who spent half his life behind bars, then found rehabilitative services that have helped him to thrive, eventually leading to graduate school at UCLA.

“Community-based reentry programs have an impressive success rate, reducing rearrest and reconviction rates for participants, and doing so more cheaply than simply keeping people in jail,” Villarruel writes. “California’s Proposition 36, which passed last month, will reduce available funding both for these sorts of supportive programs and for victims’ services.”

The result, he says, is that “more kids will be repeatedly caged for huge portions of their lives and released without the support of programs that help people turn their lives around.”

Villarruel was urged to write the letter as an extra-credit assignment in UCLA Luskin’s “Foundations of Social Welfare Policy” class taught by Assistant Professor Sicong (Summer) Sun.

“Francisco draws on his lived experiences and empirical evidence to engage in a timely discussion of criminal justice policy, specifically addressing the recent passage of California’s Proposition 36,” which stiffens penalties for drug and theft crimes, said Sun, who joined the Social Welfare faculty this year.