Shaping Hollywood’s Future: UCLA Luskin Student Mehra Marzbani Champions California’s Creative Workforce

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As an actress and student, what does it mean to you to advocate for reforms that help keep California’s entertainment/creative workforce thriving?

As a California native and a once-little girl who was perpetually glued to the screen, I always knew I wanted to play a role in Hollywood–after all, it is a quintessential part of our state’s identity and legacy. It felt surreal to see the huge Hollywood sign on my way to a TV set for the first time, because it struck me that this truly is where dreams are born and come true. As a student, I want to leverage public policy to keep that magical feeling alive for other emerging creatives and ensure equitable access to innovation and opportunity. And that’s what advocating for reforms that sustain and uplift our creative workforce means to me–it’s cheering on that little TV-obsessed girl who doubted whether or not she had a place in the industry and ensuring future generations that the Hollywood dream will stay here, in California.

What inspired you to focus your policy work on California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program, and why is this issue important for the state’s creative economy?

In the conversations I’ve had with filmmakers and others, I’ve been overwhelmed by comments about red tape and permitting costs. It’s impacting not only the scope of productions, but causing more filming out of state and overseas. Now that I’m dabbling in independent production work, I completely understand the struggle; finding a location that’s within our small budget and seamlessly obtaining a permit–all without sacrificing the creative integrity of the project–is a major curveball. California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program does offer strong incentives to reclaim in-state production, but these tax credits should be paired with structural changes to be most effective–and that includes simplifying the permitting process and expanding eligibility to include student and low-budget productions.

Making the investment in California’s entertainment industry and the success of the next generation of creatives here is an investment in California’s economic strength and security. It supports thousands of jobs and livelihoods, attracts tourism, the list goes on. Especially in light of all the recent unprecedented challenges we’ve endured as a state, protecting our creative labor force now is essential.

As you look ahead, how do you hope to use your platform as both an artist and a policymaker to create systemic change or drive social change on a larger scale?

I truly believe in the power of storytelling and would like to continue doing that. Both art and policy tell a story, and the narratives we read and hear can challenge perceptions and spark tangible social change. The tricky part is to understand what makes a story effective for a given audience. Through acting, I’ve learned empathy, and through policymaking, precision. My education has given me the language and tools to translate the creative community’s needs into buzzwords legislative officials can act on, and I see my platform as a bridge–connecting arts workers, young innovators, policymakers, and local leaders to pursue mutually beneficial goals. We’ve all heard the phrase “Lights, Camera, Action,” but the call now is for the entire community to take action together, collectively shaping our dreams for the future.

Designing Patient-Centered Care: Jenny Gao’s Policy Internship with Kaiser Permanente

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From classroom to care strategy: A Luskin Public Policy student’s summer at Kaiser Permanente shaping patient-centered health policy.

Where are you working this summer and what are your primary responsibilities or focus areas day-to-day?

I’m working at Kaiser Permanente this summer as a Care Delivery Strategy Intern on the National Clinical Services team. Our team consists of specialists from multiple disciplines to design care that is more personalized, predictive, and coordinated for patients and members. We focus on creating seamless experiences across settings, from prevention and early intervention to acute care and long-term support. Our work spans a range of areas, from kidney care services to national initiatives like improving end-of-life care through the Dignified Journeys program. In my role, I contribute to multiple projects within these portfolios, supporting strategies that advance our goal of ensuring that patients receive the right care at the right time in the right place.

Have you drawn on any skills, concepts, or lessons from your Luskin coursework in your summer role? If so, how have they come into play?

One of the most valuable skills I’ve been able to apply from my Luskin coursework is stakeholder engagement. At Kaiser, this takes on a unique context because the organization is both the insurance plan and the care provider. My projects have involved collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders that include operations leaders, managerial consultants, project managers, physicians, nurses, and more. Through these projects, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of how each stakeholder’s background, training, and responsibilities shape the way they approach challenges. 

Drawing on what I’ve learned at Luskin, I’ve practiced actively listening to their perspectives while identifying common priorities and finding ways to cater towards different viewpoints to move projects forward. I’ve also been able to apply lessons on decision making analysis, particularly around balancing multiple priorities such as efficiency, equity, and cost. Our Luskin coursework has given me the lens to carefully consider how each decision impacts our overall goal of optimizing the quality of care and quality of life for patients and members.

Describe a specific project, interaction, or milestone this summer that made you think, “Yes, this is why I chose this field.” What did you take away from that moment?

One of my goals this summer has been to connect with colleagues across Kaiser and learn from their career journeys. A memorable conversation I had was with a senior operations leader working on a falls prevention initiative. He shared his journey from starting out as a physical therapist to now leading national research and advocacy efforts to reduce falls, while still working directly with complex case management. Hearing the statistics behind this initiative was compelling, for example, in older adults, a serious fall can increase mortality rates by nearly 50%. In more complex cases, families and clinicians face difficult decisions about whether surgery will improve quality of life, given the risks of recovery. What inspired me was how he balances both the individual impact of serving vulnerable patients with the large scale change of shaping policy and strategy within Kaiser. His work showed me that improving care for vulnerable populations requires both empathy and strategy, understanding lived experiences while building solutions that can optimize their quality of life. Witnessing how much meaning he finds in connecting direct patient care with national strategy deeply inspired me and reinforced why I want to dedicate my career to advancing health policy. 

 

Beyond shade: UCLA researchers improve radiant cooling to make outdoor temperatures feel cooler Approach uses low-cost, scalable, transparent and infrared-reflective surfaces and hydronic panels

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A team of UCLA engineers and researchers has developed a new technique to make it feel up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler outside while preserving a sense of safe and open space.

Nature Sustainability magazine shows thermal imaging of a person sitting in a folding chair inside a radiant cooling structure

Recently featured as the June cover story in Nature Sustainability, the UCLA-led study demonstrated a new way to harness radiant cooling. Instead of relying on dark and windowless spaces, such as a tunnel, to create radiant cooling that raises safety concerns for public outdoor spaces, the new approach combines water-cooled aluminum panels and see-through, infrared-reflective thin polymer film, which allows both efficient cooling and visibility — a top priority, especially for residents in urban communities.

As climate change accelerates, extreme heat events are occurring with greater intensity and frequency, threatening the safety of people who spend significant time outdoors. Active radiant cooling, which uses surrounding surfaces such as cool roofs or floors to absorb heat from a space, has recently emerged as a promising strategy for outdoor thermal comfort, as it offers cooling at a distance without the inefficiency of conditioning unconfined air. However, for radiant cooling structures to be effective, the overwhelming majority of their internal surfaces must be actively cooled, typically with opaque panels, raising practicality and safety concerns. The UCLA team found a way to address these issues.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge’s Heat Resilient LA project.

“This low-cost and scalable design is a practical step beyond shade to help people who have to be outdoors on hot days, especially during periods of extreme heat,” said study co-author Aaswath Raman, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering who specializes in developing new materials and technologies to help lower temperatures. “This additional level of cooling can bring some relief in outdoor places where traditional air conditioning simply isn’t possible, such as metro stops, parks and plazas.”

In field studies, the researchers conducted experiments on the UCLA campus and at the San Fernando Swap Meet on days when temperatures reached the mid-80s at each location. The team constructed a nearly 10-by-10-foot “tent,” comprising semi-transparent, infrared-reflective walls made of half-metallized thin polymer film; a roof built from radiative-cooling sheets; and three hydronic radiant-cooling panels made of aluminum sheets with cold water flowing behind them to keep the panels actively cool. To enhance cooling efficiency, the team also painted the inward-facing side of the panels black to absorb incidental heat, such as body heat from people within the structure. The semi-transparent walls allow occupants to see outside without visual obstruction.

Interior and exterior of a tent structure with three hydronic radiant-cooling aluminum panels and polymer film walls

Raman Lab/UCLA
The interior and exterior of the nearly 10-by-10-foot “tent.”

The researchers found that their structure had a mean radiant temperature of about 78 degrees Fahrenheit. This was not only lower than the ambient air temperature of approximately 84 degrees but also more than 10 degrees cooler than the mean radiant temperature of about 90 degrees that a person would have otherwise experienced due to heat radiating from surrounding surfaces. The team also surveyed participants who stood in the cooling structure, with most reporting feeling cooler and more comfortable than they would in shade alone.

“Radiant temperature” refers to a commonly experienced phenomenon: when a person’s perceived temperature differs from the actual air temperature. For example, when someone walks from an asphalt-paved parking lot to a grassy area, then to a space under a tree, the air temperature stays the same, but it feels cooler because the grass and shade shield the person from heat radiated by surrounding surfaces, such as asphalt. This effect helped inspire the researchers’ new approach to tackling heat.

“Cities need to think about shade as infrastructure,” said study co-author V. Kelly Turner, a UCLA associate professor of urban planning and geography and associate director of the Luskin Center for Innovation who studies heat equity. “This accessible design can help patch in where there is not enough shade for people to be comfortable outdoors on hot days.”

The paper’s lead author is David Abraham, a doctoral student in Raman’s research group at UCLA Samueli. Other authors include Dr. Mackensie Yore, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Health; Kirsten Schwarz, an associate professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; Dr. David Eisenman, a professor-in-residence at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA with a joint appointment at Fielding School; and Walker Wells, an urban planning lecturer at the Luskin School. Other authors from Raman’s group are undergraduate student Robert Yang, former graduate student Xin Huang and former postdoctoral scholar Jyotirmoy Mandal.

This article was originally published on UCLA Newsroom. Read the full article here.

Luskin Alum Edgar Garcia MURP ’06 Welcomes Mayor Bass at Executive Directive Signing Edgar Garcia stands alongside Mayor Karen Bass as city advances protections for immigrants at historic Los Angeles landmark.

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UCLA Luskin alum Edgar Garcia MURP ’06 helped mark a significant moment in Los Angeles history as he welcomed Mayor Karen Bass to El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument on July 11, where she signed a new executive directive to strengthen city protections for immigrant communities.

“In 1931, our plaza here, was the site of the forced repatriation of U.S. citizens of Mexican heritage, where raids occurred on unsuspecting visitors…It’s a sad history but a powerful reminder of what we are facing today,” said Garcia. “The fear and trauma of so many back then, has once again been awakened across our city. But there’s also another history — one rooted in hope, unity and solidarity.”

From the painful legacy of forced repatriations in the 1930s to the sanctuary movement sparked at La Placita Church in the 1980s by Father Olivares, Edgar reminded us our city’s history holds both trauma and hope — and a responsibility to protect our most vulnerable.

Mayor Bass’ directive comes in response to a wave of recent ICE raids in Los Angeles. The directive requires all city departments to comply with L.A.’s sanctuary ordinance, submit preparedness plans, and expand access to resources through Immigrant Affairs Liaisons. It also forms a working group to guide LAPD response to ICE activity and seeks federal records on recent immigration enforcement actions.

Garcia currently serves as Interim General Manager of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, where he uses his educational background in urban planning as a tool for preservation, education, and community empowerment. His leadership reflects a deep commitment to honoring Los Angeles’ diverse history while shaping how future generations engage with and protect the city’s cultural and historic spaces.

Zepeda-Millán on the Meaning of the Red, White and Green

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Chris Zepeda-Millán, Associate Professor of Public Policy at UCLA Luskin, is quoted in a number of media outlets, including the New York Times, about the presence and meaning of the Mexican flag at ongoing protests in downtown Los Angeles. Interpretations and characterizations vary depending on the source. The story notes that government officials have cast the Mexican flag and other Latin American flags as symbols of insurrection by “illegal foreign invaders,” implying that protesters are not U.S. citizens. “They’re the children and grandchildren of immigrants,” said Zepeda-Millán, who also serves as chair of UCLA’s labor studies program and holds appointments in Chicana/o studies and political science at UCLA. “They have no doubt in their own citizenship or their own belonging here, but they understand the racial undertones of the attacks on immigrants,” he said, adding, “So you’re getting this reaction of ‘We’re not going to let you make us be ashamed of where our parents and grandparents came from.’”

Read the story

MPP 2024 Alumni Fellowship Recipient Dorothy Pirtle, MPP '25

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Dorothy Faye Pirtle is a Master of Public Policy student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Luskin School of Public Affairs and a recipient of the UCLA Graduate Opportunity Program award. She also completed the Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Program’s Junior Summer Institute Fellowship at the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. In 2020, Pirtle founded Lily of the Nile 1992, a 501(c)3 organization operating farmers’ markets, farm stands, and food distributions in South Central Los Angeles, celebrating African American culinary traditions. Pirtle holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Science from the University of California, Irvine, and is an alumna of Los Angeles Trade Technical College’s Culinary Arts, Professional Baking, and Restaurant Management programs. Her research interests include Community and Economic Development, Environmental Policy, Food Policy, GIS, and Social Policy.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Dorothy has earned recognition through several scholarships, including the Community Development Corporation of San Diego Arthur H. Goodman Scholarship, Congressional Black Caucus Spouses Education Scholarship, Korean American Scholarship Foundation Western Scholarship Award, LINC TELACU Education Foundation Scholarship, and the Women’s Organization Reaching Koreans (WORK) Hae Won Park Memorial Scholarship.

Please see Dorothy’s LinkedIn for further details.

2024 MPP Alumni Fellowship Recipient Vivana Morales, MPP '25

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Viviana Morales received her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Chicano Studies from UC Berkeley. Viviana’s career interests lie in wanting to improve both educational and economic outcomes for low-income families and youth in California through research and data analytics. Prior to graduate school, Viviana worked in public service for 4 years in the Office of California State Senator Monique Limon as a District Representative in Santa Barbara. During this time she engaged with city, county, and federal stakeholders to help move the needle on critical issues in Santa Barbara and Ventura County relating to issues in Health, K-12 Education, Immigration, and Childcare. As a first-generation Latina student, she is passionate about education and economic policy because she understands, from personal experience, that education not only opens doors of opportunity but also plays a critical role in driving economic mobility and reducing inequality. She believes that investing in education is essential for empowering individuals and fostering broader economic growth, especially in underserved communities. During the school year, Viviana also works as a Graduate Student Researcher with the Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), where she helps conduct research on several projects focused on zero-emission transportation and equity within LCI’s Clean Transportation Initiative. This summer, Viviana is a Fellow at Liberty Hill, where she is working with the Youth Justice team to strategically mobilize community organizers, donors, activists, and allies in advancing transformative social justice initiatives within the Youth Justice sphere across the greater Los Angeles area.

Please see Viviana’s LinkedIn for more information.

Financial Support Advances Timely, Problem-Solving Research Amid rising costs and declining state support, grants and gifts are more important than ever

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By Stan Paul

In the most recent fiscal year, UCLA Luskin received more than $32 million in extramural funding, which includes research grants and contracts, gifts from individuals, foundation funding and endowments. The School’s fundraising efforts contributed to almost $11.5 million of that total.

Amid rising costs and declining state funding for the University of California system, this type of support is more important than ever. External funding sources large and small allow individual scholars and UCLA Luskin-affiliated research centers to continue to pursue important and timely research on numerous policy issues, including such pressing topics as the environment, labor, crime and social justice. Here are just a few examples:

RETREATING FROM FIRE-PRONE ZONES

The devastation of wildfires is well-known in California — loss of life, displacement of people from their homes, and high rebuilding costs to individuals, governments and the private sector.

Liz Koslov, assistant professor of urban planning, studies social dimensions of climate change, environmental and climate justice, and how cities are adapting to effects such as extreme weather and sea-level rise as a scholar at UCLA Luskin and in association with the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA.

This research on wildfires and “managed retreat” has received support from the National Science Foundation, or NSF. The concept, in general, involves moving people and infrastructure out of harm’s way well before disaster strikes and is part a growing debate about managed retreat in high-risk coastal areas and fire-prone zones.

The grant resulted from the NSF’s 2022 call for proposals, which recognized wildland fire as “becoming an increasingly prevalent and pressing phenomenon nationally and globally.”

Her proposal received a one-year planning grant to develop a research agenda on the intersection of wildfire and managed retreat. The award is funded through the NSF’s Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment Program and the independent federal agency’s Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program.

“While there have been recent calls in the media, and by some policymakers and academics, to consider relocating people and infrastructure away from places facing high wildfire risk, little research examines whether retreat is an effective or equitable response in wildfire contexts,” Koslov said. The existing understanding of managed retreat is based almost exclusively on studies by herself and others that focused on flooding and sea-level rise.

Koslov and her co-principal investigator Kathryn McConnell, a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University’s Population Studies and Training Center, argue that the dynamics of wildfire require attention in their own right.

MAPPING RACE, POVERTY, CRIME AND POLICING

Exposure to crime is among the factors that impact police decision-making and public trust in police, and that topic is part of a new study by Emily Weisburst, an assistant professor of public policy.

Thanks to a two-year grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, Weisburst and a UCLA colleague, Felipe Gonçalves of economics, plan to shed light on how and why the experience of crime and police enforcement of crime may differ in the United States for individuals from different races and income groups. The project uses descriptive mapping to look at disparities using high-frequency policing data — information that Weisburst said has not previously been available on a large scale.

Data from 911 calls, crimes and arrests across U.S. cities will be used to measure how Americans of different races and income levels are exposed to criminal activity. The researchers intend to document variations in exposure to crime and policing at a granular level in order to estimate the causal impact of residential segregation on racial gaps in neighborhood crime and arrest exposure.

“The analysis is really exciting, but it’s almost secondary to cleaning the data because the data collection is so ambitious. We’re getting these individual records of 911 calls, crimes and arrests from hundreds of cities around the country,” Weisburst said.

The data will come in different forms from different cities, and it all must be validated. Most of the data is now there to be verified, she said, “which allows UCLA graduate students and undergraduate students to get involved.”

Once disparities are mapped, the researchers will try to understand a primary causal factor: “We’re going to look at how these gaps vary across cities depending on their degree of segregation,” Weisburst said.

Guaranteed Income in L.A.

Assistant Professor of Social Welfare Judith Perrigo is more than two years into a five-year study to evaluate an experiment whereby some Los Angeles residents negatively affected by the pandemic have been receiving a guaranteed income of $1,000 a month.

Perrigo’s work, funded in conjunction with Los Angeles County and the University of Pennsylvania, is part of a larger effort to evaluate similar programs in cities across the nation.

Perrigo is currently looking at L.A.’s version, a pilot program called Breathe in which 1,000 individuals received $1,000 a month for 36 months. She is working with a team that includes co-principal investigator Margaret Thomas, formerly of UCLA and now an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, as well as PhD students.

“We designed a randomized controlled trial following those 1,000 people that are receiving guaranteed income,” Perrigo said. In addition, researchers are contacting about 2,000 people who are not receiving guaranteed income, but applied for the program.

“We’re examining the differences between those two groups on overall health and well-being,” Perrigo said.

A digital dashboard shows in real time how people are using the funds. It includes demographic data on participants, and the economic context for pilot participants in terms of unemployment and inflation.

The spending breakdown shows that food, transportation and housing are among the top expenditures, whereas health care/medical expenses and education are closer to the bottom. “Not surprisingly, the majority are using [the money] for basic needs like rent and utilities,” Perrigo said.

More broadly, she is also interested in understanding the program’s impact on health, mental health, overall well-being and child development. The researchers are looking at a subset of families that have young children under age 5.

“We want to know if this program, or a program like this, can help disrupt intergenerational poverty,” said Perrigo, who specializes in advancing holistic well-being for young children.

A Second Chance for Incarcerated Youths

Laura Abrams, professor and chair of Social Welfare, is among a team of researchers from across the country awarded support by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to lead an extensive national study of young people sentenced to life in prison who are ultimately given a chance at freedom.

The team’s three-year project is building a base of knowledge that supports safe and equitable sentencing and “second-look” policies for people sentenced to life in prison for offenses committed before they were age 18. Some have spent years behind bars.

“This research seeks to answer critical policy questions,” Abrams said. “Can we develop a set of evidence-informed policies that provide second chances for people serving long sentences for violent crimes? Can we reduce our overreliance on long sentences in the future without compromising public safety?”

Kaplan on Men’s Mental Health and Suicide

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Mark Kaplan, professor of social welfare, spoke on WJCT News’ podcast “What’s Health Got to Do With It” in an episode dedicated to mental health care for men. The podcast focused specifically on suicide rates for men in the United States, a health care story that has been an “unspoken subject,” according to the show’s host. Suicide for men in the U.S. is an “underappreciated major public health crisis,” said Kaplan, whose work has focused on using population-wide data to understand suicide risk factors among veterans, seniors and other vulnerable populations. Kaplan noted that men die of suicide at a rate four times higher than women, but, he said, “When you look at age specific groups — once you get into older adulthood — the ratio is up, 12 to one.” Citing Centers for Disease Control data, Kaplan said that death by suicide is “strikingly a male phenomena” and that a distinguishing factor is their use of firearms around the world.

Listen to the podcast

 

2022 MPP Alumni Fellowship Recipient Lana Zimmerman, MPP '23

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Lana Zimmerman received her undergraduate degree in Political Science with a minor in sustainability from California State University, Northridge. Lana’s expertise merges a broad range of fields—from the arts to quantitative data analysis. Before joining the UCLA Luskin Master of Public Policy program, she worked in community organizing and managed a grassroots Congressional campaign in the San Fernando Valley. Following this experience, she served as a curatorial research assistant for the Self-Help Graphics & Art Pacific Standard Time exhibition. In her work as a researcher, Lana presented information on environmental racism and displacement in underserved regions of Los Angeles. In her first year at Luskin, she received the Graduate Opportunity Fellowship Award and worked as a policy fellow for the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians Environmental Protection Division, creating policy responses to development requests for Tribal comments. Lana recently served as the UCLA Bohnett Fellow for the United States Conference of Mayors, exploring the possibilities of local entertainment in the Metaverse. Lana currently works as a graduate student researcher for the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI), writing and editing tabulation code for the research team at LPPI and exploring census data. Lana is a first-generation college graduate from the San Fernando Valley and is deeply committed to serving this city through effective and equitable public policy solutions.

Please see Lana’s LinkedIn profile for further details.