Alumnus Looks Back on UCLA Social Welfare in the Turbulent 1960s Mickey Weinberg MSW '69 on his education and career as a grassroots organizer and advocate for the disadvantaged

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Mickey Weinberg earned his Master of Social Welfare at UCLA in 1969, a year when the country was divided by war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon arrived in the Oval Office and humans first set foot on the moon. Trained in grassroots organizing, Weinberg was well-positioned to be of service to disadvantaged communities at a turbulent time.

An Ohio native, Weinberg earned his bachelor’s in political science from University of Cincinnati in 1963, then headed to New York’s Columbia University to study law. Realizing this was not his calling, he left Columbia and took a job at Manhattan State Hospital, where he worked for close to two years before returning to University of Cincinnati for graduate courses in poli sci. In the autumn of 1966, he came to UCLA to continue his graduate education, eventually switching to Social Welfare and its program on community organizing.

His classmates were an impressive group, Weinberg recalls. They included Maury Samuel, a minister nicknamed Father Sam who had delivered food to distressed neighborhoods during the Watts riots, and June Sale, who introduced Weinberg to historic East Los Angeles and later became prominent in the field of child care services.

Weinberg’s career path led to Los Angeles’ federal veterans affairs hospital, where he spent nearly three decades. He helped many Vietnam veterans secure housing and other services, all the while challenging the medical model of mental health. He has continued this advocacy since his retirement in 2000.

This year, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of social welfare education at UCLA, Professor David Cohen, associate dean of UCLA Luskin, spoke at length with Weinberg to hear about his days as a student in the ’60s and his long career as an organizer and medical social worker. The interview was edited for space and clarity.

On the experiences that drew Weinberg to a career in social work:

As an undergraduate student, I worked in the summers in Cincinnati playgrounds, first as a maintenance man but later as a play leader, as they called it. I recall a lot of Appalachian kids there, they could relate to me, and at the end of the day, when the swimming pools were drained, perhaps for polio reasons, we would sit on the edge of the pool and talk quietly. Cops were often called to the playgrounds because the teenage boys were rowdy, but they were never called to my playground. Later, my work at Manhattan State Hospital changed my life — not only because of the harmful things I saw, but the good things, too.

On his recollections of a boy named Frank, born in Manhattan State Hospital and confined to the hospital grounds after his mother died:

Frank was very upset because he didn’t want to stay there all the time. He wanted to get into Manhattan, but couldn’t because someone had written in his chart that he was homicidal. The reason: He had one possession, a transistor radio, and they took it away from him as punishment and he blew up. I went to the psychiatrist in charge of male patients, and I said “This is a good kid, it can’t be good for him to spend his whole life in this place. What do you think about letting him do what he wants to do?” So we did it. The kid’s going back and forth between the hospital and Manhattan. Very quickly he got a job as a bicycle messenger. He joined a church. They loved him in the church, he got adopted by a family, he could leave the hospital. So what I learned from that as a twenty-something-year-old, is that sometimes the best thing you can do for hospital patients is get off their back.

On his education in grassroots organizing at UCLA Social Welfare:

There were just six of us in that concentration, and I recall that we were very separate from the rest of the students. Our grassroots group met almost exclusively with Warren Haggstrom. He was an incredible teacher. The way he talked about power, the simple and clear language that he used, was inspiring. Part of his pitch was not only about the use of power, but how to talk to people. But we didn’t just talk. He took us out to Delano, where he introduced us to farm workers and their organizer Cesar Chavez. I recall that we were frisked and patted down before meeting Chavez, indicating the nature of the situation.

On a student walkout organized by Weinberg and his classmates:

We wanted some changes, so we organized a walkout of all the students. Haggstrom told us later that he thought we would never do it, couldn’t pull it off. But it was he who gave us the tools and confidence to make it happen. What we wanted was more minority students admitted. There was only one Black student in our grassroots major. We also wanted curriculum change. My friend and classmate Jack Carney and I were on the phone every night to pull it off. I remember that we wanted to make sure that older students in the program, there were a few, would be on the picket line. We wanted our faculty to notice, we wanted people who walked on campus to notice. One measure of its success was a meeting the faculty had with Black students in the School to discuss increasing minority enrollment, a meeting that was open to everybody.

On his Social Welfare field placements:

My first-year placement was in East L.A. at welfare rights offices. I spoke to a lot of moms, moms of schoolchildren, moms who were worried about drug dealers in their neighborhoods. My second-year field placement was at the Veterans Administration, and it grew out of a summer job when I worked in what they called the domiciliary, where vets lived who had no other place. It was during that summer job that I met George Katz, a psychologist who had supervised psychology students there. He learned of my background working in the state hospital and that I was skeptical of psychiatry, and he took me under his wing. After my placement ended and I graduated, they hired me to organize the people living in board and care homes. Because at that time, we had decided to redefine helping these people, into helping people learn how to help themselves. Essentially, to organize them.

On his work on a grant-funded project to organize residents of board and care homes, many of whom had been labeled mentally ill:

We put a classified ad in the L.A. Times, looking for former psychiatric patients interested in organizing to meet with us. We got a meeting room somewhere in Hollywood, and I recall a woman in that group, very quiet, who hardly ever spoke at meetings. But people thought she was intelligent, and it was suggested she take minutes of meetings. Later, she and her husband had to leave the state, and she approached me and said, “I want you to know that I was planning to commit suicide, and if it hadn’t been for how respectfully and kindly I was treated in these meetings, I would not be alive today.” People can be helped in many ways. Another learning experience for me.

On learning the power of teaching people to advocate for themselves:

At the board and care homes, we organized people to do what they wanted to do — if there was vermin in the board and care homes, if the food was bad. For the first weeks, all I did was sit around, just observing. And you know, they’d come up to me, and say, “What are you doin’ here?” I’d say: “I’m here to help.” This went on for six weeks. They’d come back, insisting, “What d’you want to do?” And me: “Well, what do you want to do?” And they said whatever their problems were, and then I said, “Oh, you want to do it. OK. If you want to do it, help me get the rest of the people who live here together, and we’ll have meetings.” And we had meetings, and what we did was to find ways to have meetings with the ownership, to solve problems. When it was over, some state people researched it and found that the people who were in the organizations were much more confident than those who weren’t, and they were better able to function and solve their own problems. Because that’s what we talked about: how to solve the problems. No talk at all about mental illness or anything. It was just: you have a problem and let’s all figure out a way to resolve it.

‘Have the Courage to Create the World We All Deserve to Live In’ Commencement speaker Michael Tubbs challenges UCLA Luskin's Class of 2023 to use their education for the greater good

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By Mary Braswell

Savor the moment, then get to work.

That was the Commencement Day message from anti-poverty advocate Michael Tubbs, who called on UCLA Luskin’s Class of 2023 to use their education and training to restructure society from the ground up, with justice as a guide.

“We’re here not because of what you’ve done but who you will become and how you will use the precious gift of this UCLA education,” Tubbs said. “We need you all to have the courage to imagine and create the world we all deserve to live in.”

Tubbs spoke to public policy, social welfare and urban planning scholars earning advanced degrees at a morning ceremony on June 16 at UCLA’s Royce Hall. In the afternoon, he addressed students awarded the bachelor of public affairs at a festive gathering on the patio of Kerckhoff Hall.

Tubbs made history in 2016 when he was elected the first Black mayor of Stockton, California, at age 26. He recalled his own educational journey as a first-generation graduate of Stanford University, and offered this reminder to UCLA Luskin’s newly minted BAs, MPPs, MSWs, MURPs and PhDs:

“The alphabets behind your names don’t mean you’re better than people … and dare I say they don’t even mean you’re smarter than the people who raised you,” he said. “But what it does mean is that you’re better equipped to serve. It does mean you’re better able to self-actualize. It does mean you’re better positioned to use your privilege and your access to do some good.”

Students who earned the bachelor of public affairs receive their degrees on the patio of Kerckhoff Hall. Photo by Todd Cheney

This year, more than 420 students earned bachelors, master’s and doctoral degrees from UCLA Luskin. Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris offered congratulations while also underscoring the stakes at play as the national election cycle is now picking up steam.

“You are taking your places in the workforce during a critical time not just for America but for the entire world. Who are we as a people? What are our values? Will we make the right decisions to better all of society? …

“As I look at you, I take comfort. I know you have been well prepared,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “I trust that you will remain dedicated to a future in which geography, income, gender or race have little bearing on an individual’s ability to access opportunity and have a fulfilling life. I can’t wait to see all that you will accomplish.”

At each commencement ceremony, students delivered greetings in different languages, 16 in all, a reflection of the School’s cultural diversity. Four students were selected by their peers to offer words of inspiration: Chinyere Nwonye of Public Policy, Jhorna Islam of Social Welfare, Antonia Izuoga of Urban Planning and Mina Anochie of the Undergraduate Program.

In his remarks, Tubbs urged the graduates to make the most of both the triumphs and the inevitable disappointments in life. As Stockton’s mayor, he led a program of reforms to reduce poverty, provide scholarships to students, bring down the homicide rate and improve the city’s fiscal health — yet his bid for reelection in 2020 failed.

The defeat ultimately led to an important realization: “Your job, your title, your accolades — that’s a means to an end … but your purpose remains the same.”

Tubbs went on to join the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom as special advisor for economic mobility and opportunity, and is widely viewed as a rising star in progressive politics. He is a leading advocate for a guaranteed basic income to provide stability to American households, and last year he founded End Poverty in California, a nonprofit devoted to breaking the cycle of income inequality.

“Today is such a wonderful day because it’s a mountaintop day. It’s one of those days where everything comes together,” Tubbs told the graduates. “But I submit to you, over the course of the next several decades of your life, every day won’t feel like this day. …

“As you figure out what it is you want to do, maybe your purpose, maybe part of what you’re supposed to do, will be found in the pain you’ve experienced, in the things that make you angry, in the things that feel unfair, in the things your parents had to experience.”

Tubbs advised the students to take the long view as they work toward change. As a younger man, he had the privilege of meeting Bob Singleton, a UCLA alumnus and one of the original Freedom Riders, civil rights activists who boarded buses to Southern states to challenge segregation. Singleton was arrested for his actions on June 4, 1961. The same day, Barack Obama was born.

“He said he had no idea that the choice he made as a 21-year-old UCLA graduate to do something to change the world would pave the way so that 50 years later a child born with no opportunity would have the chance to be president,” Tubbs said.

“Class of 2023, the question before you all today as you get your degrees is what are you prepared to do today, tomorrow and next week so that 50 years from now, we’re not having the same conversation? So that 50 years from now we don’t have hundreds of thousands of people in our state sleeping in tents right next to luxury apartments and mansions? … So that 50 years from now, we live in a country that’s deserving of your talent, of your time and of your treasure?”

View photos and video from the UCLA Luskin undergraduate commencement ceremony:

Commencement 2023: Undergraduate

View photos and video from the UCLA Luskin master’s and doctoral commencement ceremony:

Commencement 2023: Graduate

 

Fernando Torres-Gil, a Lifetime of Service and Resiliency  As an educator and public official, the UCLA Luskin professor has spent four decades 'finding a silver lining' amid life’s misfortunes  

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By Stan Paul

Fernando Torres-Gil has worn many hats — including a stylish white fedora he favors — in a long career as an educator and as a public official dating back to the Carter administration. 

As UCLA Luskin Social Welfare celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding, Torres-Gil will retire after more than three decades helping to advance the School’s educational mission as a professor of social welfare and public policy. He has served as chair of Social Welfare, associate dean and acting dean, as well as founding director of UCLA’s Center for Policy Research on Aging. 

Comparing his early years to the tale of “Forrest Gump,” Torres-Gil said the travails of his “personal circumstances created unexpected opportunities for higher education.”  

His mother, Maria, made education “the first, second and third priority,” Torres-Gil said. “Growing up in Salinas, California, as the second of nine siblings to Mexican farmworkers and an extended immigrant family from Mexico created the likelihood that none of us would go beyond farmwork,” he said. “Factory jobs, at best.” 

And yet, Torres-Gil, his siblings — and later their children — would gain admission to Brandeis University, UCLA and five other University of California campuses, Pomona College, Cal Poly Pomona, San Jose State, USC and Occidental. 

family photos show siblings as children and adults

Family photos show Torres-Gil with siblings as a child and adult.

His mother became an expert at navigating community services. She fought fiercely to avoid foster care and to keep her family intact despite poverty and the “drama and challenges of her circumstances,” which included Fernando contracting polio at six months and becoming unable to walk.  

“To our everlasting gratitude, … after many years of surgical interventions and rehabilitation, I acquired a modicum of mobility,” Torres-Gil said. “This led to key milestones that informed my academic journey.”  

In the 1950s and 1960s, higher education was rarely an option for the children of working-class families from Mexico. Most young Latinos from public housing projects like him ended up in the military, fighting in the Vietnam War. But Torres-Gil’s disability put him on a different course — community college, then San Jose State, where he excelled academically and was active in the Chicano movement.  

Torres-Gil had few role models at the time for the next step — graduate school. “We knew of no Chicanos/Latinos from our region that had ventured afar for graduate education,” he recalled.  

He wound up studying social policy and management at Brandeis University near Boston because he could continue working with the United Farm Workers there to promote a lettuce and grape boycott in New England. He went on to earn master’s and doctorate degrees from Brandeis.  

Torres-Gil chose the emerging fields of gerontology and  geriatrics as his emphasis after attending the 1971 White House  Conference on Aging. He remembers skeptical Chicano friends  in Boston questioning his choice to work with old people, calling  it “depressing” and asking how he would find a job. Fifty years  later, he said, they “are all elders and deeply interested in all things about aging.”   

His circle of contacts expanded to include the Jewish, Irish, Italian and Portuguese communities in New England, and those connections later led to high-level policy and governmental positions. He earned his first presidential appointment in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the Federal Council on Aging. Over the next few decades, he held staff positions or advisory roles during the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  

As a scholar at both USC and UCLA, his mantra has been to prove himself as an “independent scholar with original ideas” respected by peers. 

Torres-Gil’s research has focused on the politics of aging, health care and long-term care reform, and disability policy. He has continued to provide expertise on aging to elected officials about the intricacies of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Older Americans Act. 

“This has given me a most satisfactory career as a scholar, public servant and policy entrepreneur,” said Torres-Gil, who was recently elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.   

During retirement, he plans to continue being an advocate for older adults, the disabled and the homeless, although mostly at the local level.  

He also wants to continue teaching part time, offering the type of advice to students that has exemplified his own life — to view difficult situations as learning opportunities.  

“Never let misfortune keep you from achieving greater resiliency and … finding a silver lining,” Torres-Gil said. “For any bad breaks I may have had, I’ve had a lot of silver linings.”

Capstone Projects Tackle Complex Social Issues Clients explore tough policy decisions with help from graduating UCLA Luskin students, including those in Urban Planning 

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By Les Dunseith  

Antonia Izuogu, a second-year urban planning student, came to UCLA with an interest in affordable housing, and as a Bohnett Foundation fellow, she has had an opportunity to participate in initiatives relating to homelessness for the Los Angeles mayor’s office. 

“I was homeless at one point, actually twice, within my childhood,” Izuogu said. 

But when the time came to choose a topic for her required capstone research project, Izuogu chose to pursue an emerging interest in the community development side of urban planning, particularly work cooperatives. She ended up doing a feasibility study for a partner group of the Downtown Crenshaw Rising community organization. 

“My capstone and my mayor’s work didn’t really touch each other — they’re just two passions of mine that I was able to work on this past year,” Izuogu said.

Read about Graham Rossmore’s capstone on al fresco dining and its influence on policy in L.A.

Throughout the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, soon-to-graduate students pursue monthslong deep dives into pressing policy issues with social relevance. In the Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program, the capstone experience may involve individual students like Izuogu working with community groups, government officials or public agencies to investigate real-world policy issues.

Other MURP candidates work in small teams or participate in one of two longstanding group-learning opportunities — the Community Collaborative and the Comprehensive Project classes.

The Community Collaborative is a unique pairing of students with community-based organizations in need of the expertise that academic researchers can provide. In turn, the students benefit from the insights of activists and others with lived experiences, fostering a mutual learning experience. 

This year’s Spatial Justice Community Collaborative course was taught by Professor Ananya Roy, and it focused on issues relating to life in homeless encampments. Class participants included individuals who had been among the unhoused populations at encampments forcibly cleared by law enforcement.  

The second group option is the Comprehensive Project class, which is a more traditional group project experience led by a faculty member who directs student researchers through an examination of a complex policy issue. Interested students had to apply nearly a year in advance to be admitted to the class, which this year focused on heat equity under the direction of Gregory Pierce BA ’07, MURP ’11, PhD ’15, an adjunct associate professor of urban planning and co-director at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation.

The client for the class of 13 MURP students was Marta Segura, chief heat officer and director of the city of Los Angeles’ Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, which is known informally as CEMO. Segura and her staff are developing strategies for Los Angeles’ efforts to deal with rising heat from climate change in an equitable manner. 

“The work that CEMO is doing is really important, and they have a huge mandate, particularly on heat,” Pierce said. “But they have very little actual staff capacity to do a lot of the research they need to do.”

The office’s agenda is driven by nonprofit and community-based organizations, which “aligns with the social justice orientation of the Luskin School, for sure,” Pierce said. 

The students, whose research has also been guided by Ruth Engel, project manager for environmental data science at the Luskin Center for Innovation, have divided the task into three subtopics — cooling centers, emergency response and bus shelters. Their final report was due to CEMO on June 9, just one week before UCLA Luskin’s commencement. 

Pierce said the report commends Los Angeles for being at the forefront of government efforts on extreme heat, but it notes room for improvement in terms of action and having systems in place to ensure public safety and equitable distribution of resources. 

“This is a pretty new space for a lot of cities, so it’s in its early days,” Pierce said of the strategic planning. “But there’s a lot of work to do to really follow through on what needs to be done as it gets hotter all the time.”

Among the students’ recommendations: 

  • increasing cooling center density in underserved areas of the San Fernando Valley and Harbor Gateway;
  • developing heat responses in cooperation with unhoused residents and their advocates to better meet their needs; 
  • utilizing more expansive definitions of heat emergencies and heat warnings, with lower heat thresholds than existing city policy;
  • shifting the priority for bus shelter development — often guided in the past by political considerations or the revenue potential of shelter advertisements —  toward geographic equity, thus prioritizing the placement of shelters in hotter neighborhoods with high numbers of bus riders.

Among the bus shelter group was Miguel Miguel, a second-year urban planning student who grew up in an area of the San Fernando Valley that often sees dangerously high temperatures. 

“I grew up seeing people suffer from what happens without adequate heat protection. It was really important for me to be involved, and to bring lived experience and emotional compassion into this project,” Miguel said. He said the capstone experience helped position him to play a role in shaping the nature of environmental justice in Los Angeles moving forward.

young woman in blue jacket gestures while talking about research shown on poster to her right

Pearl Liu’s capstone research looked into safety issues on public transit in San Francisco. Photo by Les Dunseith

Equity was a foundational element of many urban planning capstone projects completed this year, including one by Pearl Liu. Her capstone project focused on public transit safety issues among women and gender minorities.

An international student, Liu was accustomed to getting around her home city of Taipai, Taiwan, via ready access to a clean, safe public transit system. She didn’t find the same conditions in Los Angeles or San Francisco, where she did an internship with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, or SFMTA. 

“As a woman, and living without a car at all for two years in L.A. and also in S.F., I totally understand how women feel when they travel,” Liu said. “I have all these struggles. I have all this … built-up anger and complaints. I hope to change all these things as a transportation planner.”

At SFMTA, she had an opportunity to become familiar with a grant-funded gender equity initiative. During the internship, she started building a transit safety survey that eventually led to her capstone project.

The survey was launched through the Transit app for riders of San Francisco’s public transportation system, known as the Muni. Within a month of launching, a total of 1,613 people had filled out the survey. 

“Sexual harassment is a very common experience for many transit passengers, but especially to women and gender minorities  —  transgender people and those with non-binary gender identities,” Liu said. 

Another MURP, Greer Cowan, worked with Liu on the survey about Muni usage and travel patterns among women and gender minorities in San Francisco, with special attention paid to riders’ experiences. Gender-based violence can include inappropriate swearing or leering, as well as physical assaults. Were the survey respondents victims? If not, had they witnessed it? If so, where? When? Was it on a train, a streetcar or a bus? While riding or while waiting for a ride? Night or day? And so on.

Cowen focused on the reporting of incidents, noting that many people only tell their friends or family, so authorities have insufficient data to take action. Liu’s capstone focuses more heavily on how respondents feel about their safety, and where incidents occurred.

Among gender minorities, more than half of respondents felt the least safe at a bus stop, for example. But for male and female transit users, harassment and the fear of it happening was more intense during transit rides, particularly on buses. 

She did a spatial analysis of the data, overlaying the incident maps with the transit lines and transit stops, and produced a “heat map” to determine places with higher concentrations of incidents of gender-based violence. The bus system showed the most problems.

“It is mostly happening in the downtown area,” she found. “A lot of it was on Market Street,” in the financial core of San Francisco.  

Therefore, her capstone recommends that safety and equity initiatives by the SFMTA focus heavily on bus routes near Market Street. She also advocates for a safety toolkit for women and gender minorities. A transit ambassador program to monitor stops, stations and vehicles could focus more attention on buses. And the No. 1 suggestion to benefit women and gender-minority riders? Install more lighting.

“That always — always — is something that we’re pushing for,” Liu said. “Most people … feel at least somewhat safe during the daytime or when a station is well-lit.”

Liu said the capstone project helped refine her career aspiration. 

“This project … it really sparked an interest in me in how safety is so important in public transit,” Liu said, “and I feel like that has given me a passion to want to work in this area in the future.”

In some cases, the capstone projects serve as a reality check for the client organizations. Such was the case for Izuogu’s research for Downtown Crenshaw Rising. 

Her capstone project focuses on cooperative ownership, or co-ops, as a means to foster economic development in lower-income areas. The project was built on work that had been done by the previous year’s Community Collaborative class  — a project that ended up being recognized by the American Planning Association’s Economic Development Division for its Student Project Award. 

That project had recommended several possible ways to improve economic conditions in the Crenshaw area of Los Angeles, and her client was interested in the possibility of creating a cooperatively owned manufacturing facility in the area. 

Izuogu is a native of North Carolina who had gotten her undergraduate degree at Spelman College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, Georgia. She was excited for an opportunity to familiarize herself with a neighborhood like Crenshaw with a sizable Black population and do work that might benefit its residents.

“I was like, ‘That sounds really interesting, and I want to work with Black communities, too,’” Izuogu remembered thinking. 

two Black women pose in front of a poster about a research project

Antonia Izuogu, right, had an opportunity to discuss her research with Eve Fouché, who represented the project’s client during the poster event at UCLA. Photo by Les Dunseith

Her feasibility study reflects the Crenshaw group’s interest in launching an eco-friendly manufacturing site for electric vehicle charging stations to take advantage of incentives created by the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that President Biden initiated in 2021.

“I didn’t know much about clean energy before coming [to UCLA] or about working with co-ops. At the same time, I’ve been taking economic development classes,” she said, “so everything was … fleshing out well together.”

Once she delved into the data, however, it became apparent to Izuogu that manufacturing electric vehicle charging stations was not the best option for the group. They lacked startup financing. No one in the group had experience building charging stations, nor connections within the industry. That led to the reality check. 

“As a consultant, I’m saying that maybe we should take a pause on that,” Izuogu said. Her capstone report suggests that the group instead create a co-op to install such stations and maintain them as part of a long-term strategic plan that would start small — a bakery/restaurant co-op is already in the works — and build over time into a hub for economic activity. 

Izuogu said her client expressed gratitude for her insights. 

“They like the idea that I didn’t stop and just say, ‘OK, this is not a good idea. Goodbye,’” said Izuogu, who has urged the group to think beyond Year 1. “Let’s go further than that. And they’ve been very appreciative of the information.”

The capstone project also helped inform Izuogu’s future plans. She will be pursuing a law degree, envisioning a career focusing on “solidarity economy lawyering,” helping small businesses and worker co-ops organize, drafting contracts and successfully navigating government regulations. 

Izuogu is a big fan of the UCLA capstone requirement.

“I love how they’re community-based, and this is not just a theory, but we’re actually applying what we’re learning in the classroom,” she said. “I love that I had the opportunity — even though I’m not from L.A. — to benefit the residents here. And getting to know their names and, basically, that we’re continuing this connection between academic institutions and the residents around them.”

View photos of other individual capstone projects in Urban Planning in this Flickr album:

Careers, Capstones and Conversations 2023

Click the links below to view photos from the numerous other capstone project presentations at UCLA Luskin this year:

Comprehensive Project class

Community Collaborative class

Public Policy’s Applied Policy Presentations

Master of Social Welfare capstones

Undergraduate Public Affairs capstones

Click here and enter “capstone projects” to find stories from previous years and other information about student research at UCLA Luskin.

Toasting Social Welfare’s Diamond Anniversary Alumni, faculty, students and friends gather to celebrate 75 years of advancing justice

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The UCLA Luskin Social Welfare family came together May 6 for an evening of festivity and reflection to celebrate a memorable milestone: 75 years since the study of social work began at UCLA in 1947.

Alumni, faculty, staff and friends from across the decades joined current students at the gala event at the UCLA Luskin Conference Center, the culmination of a yearlong lineup of special events in honor of the anniversary:

  • A fall gathering of Social Welfare PhD students and doctoral alumni highlighted the research and scholarship aimed at advancing justice in both society and academia.
  • A reception in winter quarter honored the many community groups and agencies that have guided Social Welfare students in field placements over the decades.
  • And a special UCLA Luskin Lecture by Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell put a spotlight on the alleviation of poverty, a key focus of the social welfare discipline.

The importance of field education was underscored at the spring gala with the presentation of the 2023 Joseph A. Nunn Social Welfare Alumnus of the Year award to Gerardo Laviña MSW ’86. Laviña, the longtime director of field education, is retiring at the end of the academic year. His award was presented by field faculty Larthia Dunham and Laura Alongi MSW ’92.

Adjunct Professor Jorja Leap MSW ’80 emceed the gala, which included a welcome from UCLA Luskin’s interim dean, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, as well as perspectives shared by Laura Abrams, chair of Social Welfare; Rosina Becerra, professor emerita and former dean; current MSW student Elisse Howard; and alumni Stephen Cheung MSW ’07 and Diane Terry MSW ’04 PhD ’12. Adjunct Assistant Professor Khush Cooper MSW ’00 PhD ’10 raised a champagne toast to end the formal program and invite guests to the dance floor.

Read about 75 years of social welfare education at UCLA, including an account of the program’s “finest moment” during the Los Angeles riots.

Read profiles of key figures in UCLA Social Welfare’s history:

  • Rosina Becerra, former dean and professor emerita
  • Jack Rothman, professor emeritus
  • Joe Nunn, professor emeritus
  • Gerry Laviña, director of field education
  • Coming soon: Fernando Torres-Gil, retiring professor of social welfare and public policy

Watch a video celebrating the importance of field education at UCLA

View photos from the gala on Flickr

SW 75th Anniversary Gala

L.A. County Supervisor Advocates ‘Poverty Disruption’ at Luskin Lecture Holly Mitchell wants to reweave the social safety net with an equity focus in the wake of COVID-19 and the stark inequalities it exposed 

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By Les Dunseith

Poverty has been a cornerstone of the professional life of Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell as an elected official and in her prior work within child and family welfare organizations. Today, she is at the forefront of next-generation approaches that she thinks could fundamentally dismantle poverty in our society.

Speaking on the UCLA campus during a May 3 Luskin Lecture organized by the Luskin School of Public Affairs, Mitchell urged a crowd of faculty, staff, alumni and students to rally behind a current movement that goes beyond simply strengthening the social safety net.

“I think we have to reweave it, reimagine it and remake it to serve with equality, inclusion and humanity,” Mitchell said. “We have got to be as intentional about equity as previous generations have been intentional about exclusion.”

Organized in conjunction with a yearlong 75th-anniversary celebration of social work education at UCLA,  Mitchell was invited to speak because her focus on poverty coincides with the Luskin School’s mission.   

Social work was born as a profession to respond to poverty and inequality in society, said Laura Abrams, professor of social welfare and department chair, in her introductory remarks. Yet, social services programs like welfare and food stamps “have too often been coercive and judgmental, [with] caste stigma and population stereotypes racialized and inflicting harm on communities.”

Since being elected as a supervisor in 2020, Mitchell has pushed help for disadvantaged communities as a countywide priority, and her office’s effort to ensure that equity is a centerpiece of the local COVID-19 recovery plan has been held up as a national model.

In the wake of the pandemic, public officials have access to what Mitchell described as a “once-in-a-generation onslaught of public funds called COVID-19 recovery dollars.” Past tradition in L.A. County would have meant simply splitting those dollars equally among the five supervisorial districts. That made no sense to Mitchell. 

“From my perspective, it’s really pretty simple math: Those who have been disenfranchised and hit the hardest deserve the disproportionate investment in their recovery,” she said. 

This led to the creation of the first-ever countywide equity formula and public dashboard to ensure that federal dollars reach those most impacted by the pandemic. The L.A. County formula incorporates economic, social and environmental factors to identify the communities with the highest need, so far allocating $1.9 billion to 120 projects from the Antelope Valley to East L.A. to South L.A. and beyond. 

“For many of these neighborhoods, it’s the first time that government puts them at the front of the line for investments,” said Mitchell, who led one of the largest private, nonprofit child care and development corportations in California, Crystal Stairs, before entering politics and going on to serve in the California Assembly and Senate.

‘The era of invasive and patronizing social welfare in L.A. County is over,’ says Holly Mitchell.

A centerpiece of her policy history has been fighting against so-called benefit cliffs — eligibility restrictions on social services benefits that can trap people into cycles of poverty just to remain eligible for public assistance.

During her time at Crystal Stairs, Mitchell said, “my most painful days” related to working mothers faced with the prospect of losing public assistance because a work promotion would put them “pennies, literally, over the eligibility limit. And they were having to decide whether to walk away. ‘Do I keep this $3,000-a-month childcare voucher? Or do I take this promotion at work?’” 

Eliminating such dilemmas requires radically new approaches, Mitchell said.

“The era of invasive and patronizing social welfare in L.A. County is over. I’ll put the final nail in that coffin right now,” she said, prompting supportive applause from the UCLA audience.

“Research has shown us that things like work requirements and impossible barriers to eligibility do nothing to truly address poverty. It just continues to criminalize poverty,” Mitchell said. “We’ve got to go beyond, in my humble opinion, poverty alleviation and focus on poverty disruption.”

Central to her poverty disruption agenda for L.A. County is a pilot program called Breathe L.A., which is one of the largest guaranteed income programs in the nation. Since March 2022, it has been providing 1,000 Angelenos with $1,000 a month. The payment will continue for three years, no strings attached, for randomly selected participants who are 18 years or older and have been negatively affected by the pandemic.

Assistant Professor Judith Perrigo is among the researchers at UCLA Luskin helping to evaluate Breathe L.A., joining scholars currently evaluating similar guaranteed income efforts across the nation and around the world. 

Mitchell said that early results of that research belie the misguided perception put forth by opponents attempting to cast doubt on whether recipients will spend the money wisely.

“What’s the No. 1 thing participants in Breathe L.A. have spent the money on?” Mitchell asked the crowd, pausing a moment to let her listeners think about an answer. “It’s food. Food and basic necessities to feed their families. And making sure one less child is going to bed hungry, I believe that’s a good thing.”

people seated at tables in a conference room watch a speaker at the front of the room speak at a podiumHolly Mitchell spoke about her career to a packed room in the Luskin Conference Center at UCLA.
people seated at tables in a conference room watch a speaker at the front of the room speak at a podium
people seated at tables in a conference room watch a speaker at the front of the room speak at a podium
woman in purple dress gestures at podium
woman in purple dress gestures at podium
Black woman leans forward as a woman holding a child speaks with her
Black woman leans forward as a woman holding a child speaks with her
woman in dark jacket and yellow top sits in chair
woman in dark jacket and yellow top sits in chair

After her prepared remarks, Mitchell was joined on stage by Perrigo for a Q&A session. “You have fire inside of you,” Perrigo told Mitchell, then invited her to describe where she finds the courage to advocate for poverty approaches like guaranteed income that have a history as political lightning rods.

Mitchell stressed the public servant aspect of her role, saying she thinks about the new mothers among her constituency who dream of creating a better life for their children. 

“Everyone has the right to have that dream. And the role of our society is to not create barriers to lift those possibilities,” Mitchell said. “When I think about things like that, it gives me the courage to go against the grain and fight.”

She recalled her effort in Sacramento to do away with a state provision that penalized low-income families receiving cash aid for having another child. After three frustrating defeats, she found success on the fourth try.

It will take similar perseverance to make guaranteed income a cornerstone of social services policy. 

“It’s a righteous fight,” said Mitchell, urging supporters in the audience to look at the gradual rollout of guaranteed income efforts as “an opportunity to expand your warrior base of people who will fight.”

She noted that the basic idea of guaranteed income is not new — Martin Luther King Jr. was a proponent, in fact. Decades later, it’s only now taking hold.

“It’s a movement,” said Mitchell, comparing Breathe L.A. to today’s bedrock public aid programs like Medicare and Social Security. 

“Those were, in their time, cutting-edge, innovative concepts around income security,” she said. “When I think about those game-changing, life-saving policy initiatives that I’m sure had a very rough start also, I believe we can get there.” 

The name, Breathe L.A., implies providing the means to weather a crisis — a little time to breathe — directly to people facing financial hardship.

Perrigo noted the popularity of the idea among lower-income, underserved communities and their advocates. But how will policymakers like Mitchell persuade skeptical taxpayers? 

 “If we are able to create healthier communities, safer communities, everybody benefits,” Mitchell said. 

Public education is also necessary. 

“It’s trying to acknowledge and help [skeptics] understand they started out 10 steps ahead, and this other community is trying to catch up. I think it’s important to have those kinds of conversations,” she said, “because that’s the honest truth.”

Mitchell is also a board member of LA Metro, and in response to a question from the audience, she said her priority for public transportation in the county is bus service “because that’s what a lot of our poor rely on.”

Eventually, she said, her goal is an entirely fareless bus system. For now, she takes heart in the success of Metro’s GoPass pilot program, which has provided more than 241,000 youths a free transit pass since it launched as a pandemic recovery measure in October 2021.

“The data … on school attendance is mind-blowing,” Mitchell said. “For some of us, it may be hard to imagine that $1.75 can stop a lot of people from going to school, but it can. Our K-12 ridership is double the pre-pandemic numbers.” 

Much of Mitchell’s presentation focused on touting accomplishments, but she acknowledged that L.A. County has no shortage of problems yet to be solved. Homelessness is a primary ongoing concern, “and we are 500,000 housing units short in L.A. County,” she said. “So, we have to build.”

Mitchell acknowledged that reality leads to difficult conversations. Want to stir up a political hornet’s nest? There’s no surer way in Los Angeles than going to a community homeowners association and talking about building more densely in neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes, she said.   

“People will roll up on me, and it’s, ‘What do you do about the homeless?’ And I say, ‘Well, as soon as you tell me how you are willing to have the composition of your own block change, I’ll tell you what I’ll do about the homeless,’” Mitchell said. 

“It is our moral dilemma,” she said. “And only when we have decided that we are sick and tired of being sick and tired — and that we’re not going to allow people to live like this anymore — can [developers, public agencies and governments] expand and build the diversity of housing that people need.”

View additional photos on Flickr:

UCLA Luskin Lecture With Holly Mitchell

Gerry Laviña, Paying It Forward and Passing the Torch ‘You cannot do this work alone,’ says longtime field education faculty leader as he prepares to retire after four decades at UCLA

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By Stan Paul

For Gerry Laviña, the 75th anniversary of UCLA Social Welfare is something to celebrate, but it’s also a bittersweet moment — the Luskin School’s longtime field education director is retiring at the end of the academic year.

“I was here for the 50th anniversary, which was really significant, and now I’m going to end at the 75th. I’ve seen lots of changes, lots of positive changes in our program,” said Laviña, who has worked at the Luskin School for more than three decades.

His 40-plus-year affiliation with UCLA, which began as an undergraduate student, is a story of personal connection as well as collective achievement — a group effort, he said, that extends far beyond the School and into the community.

“I can happily — and realistically — say there’s been a lot of positive changes in our program due to the hard work of a lot of us who’ve been committed to making it a better place,” he said.

Making Connections

Before Laviña was a master’s student in social welfare in 1986, he was already reaching out to faculty and making connections with the School.

“I made it a point because I was in these large [undergraduate] classes and I wanted to get to know faculty as much as I could. … I just wanted to know why they chose social work. And it was interesting to me. I never imagined it would lead to a position here.”

UCLA Social Welfare instructors and field education faculty became mentors and colleagues to Laviña, continuing after he got his MSW in 1988 and went to work in the community. Among these, Laviña noted, were faculty alumni Joe Nunn and Wanda Ballenger, as well as field education faculty members Jane Kurohara and lecturer Rebecca Refuerzo.

“Rosina Becerra, who became my mentor right before I became director of field education, was a really great mentor to me later in my career,” he said.  “We can always use mentors at any point in our career.”

During his time as a social worker at the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services in Culver City, Ballenger was the field liaison.  “She would say, ‘I’m coming by to say hi,’” Laviña explained, and they stayed connected that way during the time when he was a secondary field instructor for some of the UCLA students at Didi Hirsch.

‘My “life lessons,” I called them — my truths — [are] the importance of mentorship, of finding, establishing and maintaining relationships.’

In 1993, Laviña was hired into the field education faculty himself by UCLA Social Welfare. It was a great match.

Nunn also was a longtime director of field education, and he has fond memories of his association with Laviña. When email came into popular use decades ago, Nunn said it was Laviña who sent him his very first email.

“I was fortunate to work with some really good people in the field, and some of them have gone on to do other things,” he said. “It’s been good to see Gerry as the director.”

Now it’s his former student, mentee and colleague who is retiring and passing the torch to someone else, as Nunn did to Laviña.

“You know you’re getting older when the person you hired is retiring,” joked the professor emeritus of Social Welfare. “Gerry was one of the best hires I made while I was there.”

Laviña’s roles and recognitions have included being faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Diversity, Disparities and Difference Initiative (D3) and garnering accolades and awards over his career. This year, he is being honored as UCLA Luskin Social Welfare’s Alumnus of the Year. But, for Laviña, the payoff has always had a forward trajectory.

Paying It Forward

Laviña said Didi Hirsh has long served as a vital training center for social workers and interns.

“Because of that, I got to work with interns from UCLA and other schools and disciplines, and I was constantly asked to present and supervise and teach at Didi Hirsch,” he said.

When Refuerzo was still teaching at UCLA, she would ask Laviña to lecture in her classes. Despite not being keen on public speaking at first, Laviña quickly discovered that he enjoyed mentoring students and that they found value in what he had to say.

“It’s always been the students — what our parents taught us about always giving back — and what my mentors had really given me and pushed me to do,” he said. “Even when I felt I wasn’t ready, they pushed me into other roles. And I honored them by paying it forward in the work I do with students.”

Paying it forward remains a significant part of his teaching and mentoring.

“One of the things I did at orientations this year for first- and second-year students is I gave them — my ‘life lessons,’ I called them — my truths,”  Laviña said. “The importance of mentorship, of finding, establishing and maintaining relationships.”

Forging connections is a big part of what social workers do, he said, and he’s always tried to connect students with jobs and internships. “That’s one thing that I feel I’ve done and been pretty successful at for 30 years — one of the things I hope is remembered,” he said.

UCLA students are smart and capable, and this has led to strong relationships building up over time with participating agencies.

“They are committed to taking our students and to working with us, whether the student is excelling or whether the student is having difficulties,” Laviña said. “One of the things that I learned as an MSW student from the first year and throughout my career … you cannot do this work alone.”

Luskin School Reaches Top 10 Among Public Affairs Schools Nationwide Subcategory rankings include seventh in urban policy and ninth in social policy

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By Stan Paul

UCLA Luskin has achieved Top 10 recognition among public affairs graduate schools in the nation based on newly released U.S. News & World Report ratings.

The School is in good company, sharing the spot with prestigious programs including Princeton, NYU, Georgetown and the University of Texas, Austin.

“I am very proud of our School’s rapid and continuing rise in the rankings, reaching now the Top 10 Public Affairs Schools in the U.S.,” said Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. “The recent rankings represent only one indication of the excellence that characterizes the Luskin School and its faculty, staff and students.”

In congratulating the School, Gary Segura, who served as dean from 2017 until the end of 2022, said that it is particularly gratifying that the academic community is taking notice.

“The improvement in our rankings is a reflection of the efforts of faculty and staff across the School and the unique constellation of expertise here at UCLA Luskin,” Segura said.

Mark Peterson, interim chair of UCLA Luskin Public Policy, also pointed out that the achievement is particularly notable for the Luskin School, which is significantly younger — and smaller — than the schools that ranked higher and thus have larger faculties and longer histories from which to develop reputations.

“With our national standing, one might say that we are the proverbial little engine that could,” Peterson said.

Among public institutions, UCLA Luskin was among the top eight nationwide, second among public colleges and universities in California, and third among all public affairs programs in the state. UCLA Luskin Urban Planning is ranked No. 1 in North America by Planetizen, a planning and development network based in Los Angeles that is the only entity that ranks urban planning programs.

The School — with graduate departments in Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning, and a Public Affairs undergraduate program — also received high marks from U.S. News & World Report for subcategories that include urban policy (No. 7), social policy (No. 9), environmental policy and management (No. 14) and public policy analysis (No. 14).

The latest rankings of public affairs programs, released in May 2023, are based on peer assessment survey results from fall 2022 and early 2023, according to U.S. News & World Report, which surveyed deans, directors and department chairs representing 269 master’s programs in public affairs and administration.

The lists of all the schools, all the individuals surveyed and all the names of the specialty areas evaluated were provided to the news organization by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration, known as NASPAA, and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

See the full list of the 2023 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools.

‘We’re Beginning the Work of Rewriting the Next Chapter of Los Angeles History’ Top officials join scholars and advocates to tackle the region's most pressing problems at the fifth annual UCLA Luskin Summit

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By Mary Braswell

A search for solutions to Southern California’s most urgent problems brought top researchers together with government and civic leaders at the fifth annual UCLA Luskin Summit.

Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian gave the keynote address at the April 19 gathering, attended by more than 200 scholars, students and community members seeking to learn more about how the region is responding to homelessness, climate change, racial disparities, voting rights violations and more.

Krekorian spoke about the state of governance at L.A. City Hall, acknowledging that citizens’ faith has been shaken by corruption cases, politicized redistricting and the release of a racist recording that led to high-profile resignations. But he added that the upheaval has opened the door to a period of change.

“The kind of city hall that the people of Los Angeles deserve [is] a city hall that’s more ethical, more transparent, more trustworthy, more urgent, more collaborative and hopefully much more effective,” Krekorian said.

He laid out a roadmap that includes a top-to-bottom charter review that could add more seats on the City Council, change who decides land-use issues to reduce incentives for corruption, and take the power of setting district boundaries away from elected officials.

“Together, we’re turning the page on a very dark time and we’re beginning the work of rewriting the next chapter of Los Angeles history,” Krekorian said.

Zev Yaroslavsky, who oversees the annual UCLA Quality of Life Index, reports on this year’s findings. Photo by Les Dunseith

The Luskin Summit, held in person at the UCLA Faculty Club after three years of remote and hybrid convenings, continued its tradition of spotlighting the UCLA Quality of Life Index (QLI), a wide-ranging survey of Los Angeles County residents.

This year’s QLI revealed deep dissatisfaction with many aspects of life in L.A., a sign of the region’s slow emergence from the dual shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and soaring inflation, said Zev Yaroslavsky, who oversees the survey as director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin.

In conversation with ABC7 News reporter Josh Haskell, the emcee of this year’s Luskin Summit, Yaroslavsky said the high cost of housing continues to sow anxiety, with 28% of respondents saying they worry about losing their home and becoming homeless as a result.

“Now, let me put this in more stark terms than just percentages,” Yaroslavsky said. “The county’s population is a little over 10 million people, so 28% means that there are 2.8 million people in this county who are going to bed every night worried about whether they’re going to lose their home. Think about it that way. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of stress.”

The region’s housing emergency also took center stage at a plenary session that illustrated a hallmark of the Luskin Summit: the participation of key elected and appointed officials in a position to turn social science research into policies for change.

Lourdes Castro Ramírez, secretary of California’s Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, moderated the dialogue with L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, L.A. City Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson and the city’s chief of housing and homelessness solutions, Mercedes Márquez.

The conversation emphasized a new push to coordinate efforts by a multitude of agencies to relieve California’s housing emergency.

“A challenge of this magnitude requires all levels of government to work together, and that’s exactly what we have been doing over the last two years, working very closely with our federal partners, working very closely across the state agency and department, and working in a unified and coordinated manner with local cities, counties, continuums of care and folks on the ground that are doing this work every single day,” said Castro Ramírez, a UCLA Luskin Urban Planning alumna who oversees 11 state departments and boards.

The Luskin Summit’s plenary session on the region’s housing emergency featured, from left, Lourdes Castro Ramírez, secretary of California’s Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency; Mercedes Márquez, Los Angeles’ chief of housing and homelessness solutions; L.A. City Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson; and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. Photo by Les Dunseith

With the end of pandemic-era eviction moratoriums, Horvath said her office is working with cities to implement new protections for both renters and mom-and-pop landlords, with the aim of keeping residents in their homes.

“We have no time to waste,” she said. “We’re not going to wait until every detail is perfect. People are dying on our streets and we have to do something.”

The panelists credited newly elected Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for jumpstarting efforts to shelter the homeless, including the appointment of Márquez to cut the red tape that has delayed the construction and acquisition of desperately needed housing.

“We have identified 360 projects that are 100% affordable. That’s over 8,000 units that are now on a fast track,” Márquez said, adding that her team is also reviewing government-owned land including Metropolitan Transit Authority car lots that could be converted to residential development.

Harris-Dawson, whose district includes South Los Angeles, said housing strategies must be guided by a sense of equity to prevent poverty from becoming concentrated in pockets of the city.

“The commitment has to be both to build and build fast, but also to build where it’s difficult to build,” he said. That includes parts of the city where the prevailing attitude is “ ‘send all the poor people over there, build housing over there and build it as dense as you need to, but keep them over there’ — as if poverty is a communicable disease and living near it damages your quality of life somehow.”

The Summit also featured a series of breakout sessions where scholars, officials and advocates zeroed in on critical issues. They included representatives from UCLA Luskin research centers, including the Luskin Center for Innovation and its Human Rights to Water Solutions Lab, the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies  and the UCLA Voting Rights Project. The sessions explored:

  • vehicular homelessness, the unique circumstances of those who must shelter in their cars;
  • persistent disparities based on race and ethnicity in the mortgage industry;
  • how to build popular support and political momentum for investments in climate infrastructure;
  • whether California’s plan to transition to zero-emission vehicles is sufficient to meet climate goals;
  • the uncertain future of voting rights pending decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court;
  • and the activation of far-reaching programs to bolster the region’s water supply.

Following the Summit, several participants gathered for a lunch presentation on equity and clean energy that included UCLA experts and representatives from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the lead sponsor of this year’s Luskin Summit. Other sponsors include Bank of America, the Weingart Foundation, David Bohnett Foundation, California Community Foundation and California Wellness Foundation. The media partner is ABC7.

View photos from the 2023 UCLA Luskin Summit on Flickr.

Luskin Summit 2023

Advocate for Ending Poverty Named UCLA Luskin Commencement Speaker Former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, first elected at age 26, now champions reforms to battle income inequality

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Michael D. Tubbs, who made history in 2016 when he was elected the first Black mayor of Stockton, California, at age 26, then used the platform to plant the seeds of a nationwide campaign to end poverty, has been named 2023 Commencement speaker for the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Tubbs is a champion of social and economic reforms that have earned him a reputation as a rising star in progressive politics. On Friday, June 16, he will deliver two Commencement addresses: At 9 a.m., he will speak to students graduating with master’s and doctoral degrees in public policy, social welfare and urban planning at UCLA’s Royce Hall. At 3 p.m., he will address students earning the bachelor’s in public affairs on the Kerckhoff Hall patio.

“Michael Tubbs has shown us all that a clear vision and strong resolve can uplift the lives of people across our state and nation,” said UCLA Luskin Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. “His leadership, innovative spirit and ability to turn bold concepts into real action are exceptional, and as a School committed to improving the human condition at all levels, we look forward to hearing his inspiring message.” 

Tubbs is widely known for his work advocating for a guaranteed basic income to provide stability to American households. As mayor, he created a pilot program providing direct, recurring cash payments to Stockton residents and founded the nonprofit Mayors for a Guaranteed Income to support similar efforts across the country. He also raised more than $20 million to launch the Stockton Scholars, a universal scholarship and mentorship program for the city’s students.

Under Tubbs’ leadership, Stockton was recognized as one of California’s most fiscally healthy cities; saw a 40% drop in homicides in 2018 and 2019; and led the state in the decline of officer-involved shootings in 2019. The National Civic League named Stockton an “All-America City” in 2017 and 2018.

After he left office in 2021, Tubbs joined the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom as special advisor for economic mobility and opportunity. Last year, he founded End Poverty in California, a nonprofit devoted to breaking the cycle of income inequality.

Tubbs’ 2021 autobiography, “The Deeper The Roots: A Memoir of Hope and Home,” relates how hardship in his early years shaped his vision for leadership and policies that are responsive to those who are struggling. Tubbs writes about his father’s incarceration, the strong women who raised him, his scholarship to attend Stanford University, the opportunity to intern in the Obama White House, and his calling to return to his hometown to improve the quality of life. 

Tubbs served as a high school educator and city council member before running for mayor. His experiences advocating for reform in the city’s top job are chronicled in the 2020 HBO documentary “Stockton on My Mind.”

Tubbs is a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. He was named to Fortune magazine’s 40 under 40 list and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 All-Star Alumni, as well as The Nation’s Progressive Honor Roll, which recognized him as the “Most Valuable Mayor” of 2018. He earned the 2019 New Frontier Award from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and the 2021 Civic Leadership Award from The King Center.

Learn more about UCLA Luskin’s 2023 Commencement.