UCLA Public Policy Community Celebrates Exceptional Alumni and Students Reception highlights the 'incredible, influential, important, world-transforming things our alumni are doing'

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The UCLA Luskin Public Policy community came together this spring to connect and reconnect with one another and honor selected students and alumni for their outstanding achievements.

The April 20 reception at the UCLA Faculty Club gave Master of Public Policy students, graduates, faculty and staff the opportunity to network face-to-face for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his welcoming remarks, interim chair and Professor Mark Peterson said that hearing updates about the work of former students leaves him “simply dazzled — not just by the numbers, but by the incredible, influential, important, world-transforming things our alumni are doing.”

During the pandemic, individuals honored as UCLA Luskin Public Policy Alumni of the Year were announced virtually. This year’s reception put a long-awaited public spotlight on award recipients from the past four years:

Regina Wallace-Jones MPP ’99 is Alumna of the Year for 2023. With a background in engineering and policy, Wallace-Jones ascended to several prominent Silicon Valley positions, culminating in her selection this year as CEO and president of ActBlue, the tech nonprofit that facilitates online donations to progressive organizations and candidates. She has also served in public office as a city councilwoman, vice mayor and mayor in East Palo Alto.

Sandeep Prasanna MPP/JD ’15 is Alumnus of the Year for 2022. After serving in staff positions in the U.S. Congress and Department of Justice, Prasanna recently completed work as investigative counsel on the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. “Working to preserve democracy is quite a good gig for an MPP alum,” Peterson remarked. Prasanna is now a senior advisor with the law firm Miller & Chevalier Chartered.

Isaac Bryan MPP ’18 is Alumnus of the Year for 2021. Bryan turned his record of effective advocacy and community leadership in Los Angeles into a successful bid for the California Assembly in 2021. Since taking office, he has authored over 24 bills and co-authored over 300 bills and resolutions. Bryan’s chief of staff is former classmate Caleb Rabinowitz MPP ’18.

Max Gomberg MPP ’07 is Alumnus of the Year for 2020. Gomberg was selected for his work mapping out strategies for climate change mitigation for the California State Water Resources Control Board. He has since resigned the post, publicly accusing the state of being unwilling to adopt transformational policies. Gomberg now works as an independent consultant on water policy. “Max took a bold step when he resigned from his position in protest,” Peterson said. “Sometimes standing out means really standing up.”

Bryan accepted his award in person. Addressing current students and recent graduates at the reception, he said, “The dreams you have about how you can make a difference in the world, the things that you want to do for the community, for society, for your family, for whatever drove you to a program like this, instead of an MBA or something else — you can make that difference and you can make it as quickly as you need to.

“Just stay focused, stay hungry and build the kind of relationships like the ones in this room, to do good work together.”

Also honored at the reception were students who received the Alumni Leadership and Service Fellowships, made possible by donations from MPP alumni. The awards recognize public service, resilience and leadership at UCLA and in the community. The 2022-23 recipients are Lana Zimmerman and Donald Zelaya, and the 2023-24 recipients are Samuel Newman and Sydney Smanpongse.

Peterson reminded those at the reception of the many paths students can take to make an impact after graduation.

“Just take in that range of alumni careers: federal, state and local government. Legislative and executive branches. Appointed and elective offices. Nonprofit organizations on the front edge of the tech revolution. All making a difference,” he said. “That’s what is on your horizons, current MPP students!”

View photos from the UCLA Luskin Public Policy reception on Flickr.

UCLA Luskin Public Policy Alumni Reception

Lens on Mixed Results of Efforts to Combat Housing Segregation

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, co-authored a Health Affairs policy brief about the effectiveness of different programs designed to combat residential segregation. Over more than a century, exclusionary policies embedded in land use and housing codes have kept Americans separated by race, ethnicity and income, leading to significant health disparities. The authors review the historical impact of several interventions, including housing vouchers that allow residents to move to more advantaged neighborhoods; local and state policies to expand the housing stock by increasing density in resource-rich communities or redeveloping public housing; and federal legislation and regulations to compel fair housing practices. “There are many policies, programs, laws and lawsuits that have tried to chip away at segregation in America’s cities and towns,” but many have been underfunded or deprioritized, the authors wrote. While some progress has been made, they conclude that the fight against residential segregation has yet to see consequential gains.

Read the policy brief

 

Robert Fairlie Appointed Chair of Public Policy at UCLA Luskin Distinguished scholar has nearly three decades of teaching and research in the University of California system

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By Stan Paul

Robert Fairlie, longtime professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz and a distinguished senior scholar, has been recruited to serve as the next chair of UCLA Luskin Public Policy.

Fairlie, a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), is a “prominent and prolific scholar who brings with him a strong portfolio of research interests, a record of policy-relevant and impactful research findings, and an overall commitment to social justice,” said Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris in announcing his appointment.

“Robert Fairlie is one of the most productive and most cited economists in the world,” said Mark A. Peterson, a past chair and current interim chair. “He personifies the ideal public policy faculty member, generating robust evidence on major issues of the day using sophisticated and innovative research and communicating directly with policymakers to inform their decision-making.” Peterson is a professor of public policy, political science and law.

Fairlie’s research has been published in leading economic and policy-related journals. Topics include public policy, entrepreneurship, education, information technology, labor economics, developing countries and immigration, typically with close attention to the implications for racial, ethnic and gender inequality.

He has strong ties to the state, arriving in California at age 2 and growing up in San Jose. He attended Stanford University, earning a bachelor’s in economics. He previously held visiting academic positions at Stanford and UC Berkeley. He also serves on the Faculty Council of the UC Sacramento Center.

Outside California, he has held visiting appointments at Yale and Australian National University. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from Northwestern University.

A new book on entrepreneurial job creation and survival — seven years in the making — will soon be published with MIT Press. Fairlie and his co-authors at the U.S. Census Bureau created a new dataset to track the universe of startups in the country — the Comprehensive Startup Panel, or CSP.

“We find that startups, on average, create fewer jobs and have lower survival rates than previously documented,” Fairlie said.

The COVID-19 pandemic also has determined the direction of some of his research, which has had substantial academic and policy influence.

“At the start of the pandemic I realized that, from all the work that I had done in the past, I was in a good position to compile and analyze data on the first impacts of COVID-19 on racial and gender inequality in business ownership, unemployment and work effort,” he said.

As the pandemic progressed, Fairlie said he also became interested in the $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), examining whether PPP funds were distributed proportionately to communities of color and finding delays in equitable distribution.

Fairlie said he recently has been routinely contacted by both the U.S. President’s Office and Vice President’s Office for an update on his research findings amid the pandemic’s continued impact on racial inequality in entrepreneurship.

“My latest research that goes through December 2022 shows promising improvement in the number of Black, Latinx and Asian business owners,” he said. “For all three groups, business owner levels are higher now than where they were at before the pandemic started. In contrast, the number of white business owners is down from pre-pandemic levels.”

Fairlie’s award-winning research and efforts to inform policymakers in California have also garnered recognition. He has provided testimony before the California State Legislature on several occasions. A joint resolution from the State Assembly and State Senate commended his “innumerable achievements and meritorious service to the State of California and beyond.”

On the national stage, Fairlie has testified before the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Department of the Treasury. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Academies and Russell Sage Foundation, as well as numerous government agencies and foundations. Most recently, his work was cited in the 2023 edition of the “Economic Report of the President.”

Fairlie is regularly interviewed by print and online media about economic, education, small business, inequality and policy issues.

Fairlie’s scholarly work will continue when he takes his new post this summer.

“Luskin is an amazing place with so much timely and important research going on. I look forward to contributing to those efforts as part of the team,” he said. “I am also looking forward to working at one of best and most exciting universities in the world.”

Pierce on Water Safety Issues in Los Angeles

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Gregory Pierce, director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab within the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, was interviewed by People Places Planet Podcast about access to drinking water in Los Angeles County. Compared to energy and gas, utilities providing drinking water are much more fragmented because some systems are public while others are private. “A lot of the issues that are being faced particularly in East and Southeast Los Angeles are rounds of chemical and emerging contaminants, and a lot of them have been under the regulatory radar,” Pierce said. “A lot of the issues are classified legally as ‘secondary’ but really affect what’s coming out of people’s taps. And people don’t trust the water because it’s discolored, tastes bad, smells bad, and a lot of the issues there are actually coming from the plumbing inside buildings where landlords are technically responsible, not water systems.”

Listen to the podcast

 

Segura Elected to National Academy of Sciences

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Gary M. Segura, professor of public policy, political science and Chicano and Chicana Studies at UCLA, has been elected a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Segura is one of four UCLA faculty members newly elected to the academy in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. The four UCLA scholars will be among 120 U.S. and 23 international members who will be inducted into the Washington, D.C.-based organization in April 2024. “The Luskin School is extremely proud of Gary’s election to the National Academy of Sciences,” said UCLA Luskin Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. “This is a top honor! He is joining a very elite group of the best and the brightest in the United States and the world.” Segura’s work has focused on issues of political representation and social cleavages, the domestic politics of wartime public opinion and the politics of America’s growing Latino minority. During his tenure as dean of the Luskin School from 2017 to 2022, he co-founded the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, which later became the Latino Policy & Politics Institute. Segura was recommended for inclusion in the social and political sciences section, one of the organization’s 31 disciplinary areas, said Susan R. Wessler, home secretary of the academy, which was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Wessler said the new inductees will join in the work of the academy. “We are an active, working academy that addresses important matters in science and advises the nation on problems where scientific insights are critical,” she said.

Read the full story.

 

Shining a Light on Hidden Corners of Environmental Injustice Catherine Coleman Flowers fights for the health and dignity of rural communities where water and sanitation systems are failing

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By Mary Braswell

Catherine Coleman Flowers calls it “America’s dirty secret” — the lack of decent sanitation systems in many rural communities where residents must live alongside their own sewage.

It’s a public health calamity that takes the highest toll on poor people of color, and Flowers has made it her life’s calling to shed light on these appalling conditions found in one of the world’s wealthiest nations.

Her work, which began in Lowndes County, Alabama, where she grew up, has now become a national movement with echoes around the world, vaulting her into the top tiers of environmental advocacy and U.S. policymaking. Flowers shared the triumphs and frustrations of her journey, and the work yet to be done, with a UCLA audience as part of the Meyer and Renee Luskin Lecture Series on April 27.

“Catherine has found that the problems of inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure reach across rural America, including California, and these problems … are tied deeply to systems of racial and class oppression,” said Megan Mullin, professor of public policy and faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, as she introduced Flowers to a packed room at the university’s Kerckhoff Hall.

In addition to founding the nonprofit Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, Flowers has received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and serves as vice chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. A week before her Luskin Lecture, she introduced President Joe Biden as he signed an executive order making environmental equity a priority of federal agencies.

Flowers works with policymakers, researchers and advocates around the country, earning her a spot on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2023. But she told the UCLA audience, “I’m better being out in the community because that’s where my strength is, to help people tell their stories when they wouldn’t be listened to otherwise. …

“Who wants to talk about sewage coming back into your home? Most people won’t do that,” she said. “But now we have to because we don’t have a choice.”

‘Is it possible that there could be diseases in the United States that American doctors are not trained to look for? Because we have not even acknowledged that we have a problem of sanitation in this country.’

Flowers told of impoverished rural communities where residents are by law responsible for disposing of their sewage. Some people own septic tanks that have fallen into disrepair, pushing waste back into sinks and bathtubs. Others simply cannot afford the systems and instead pipe their sewage underground or onto nearby land.

At times, those with substandard waste systems are hit with fines or imprisonment in a system that reveals the interplay of economic, health and criminal justice inequities.

The sanitation emergency has been made more acute by climate change, with its flooded coasts and rising water tables, Flowers said. And the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted public health risks that threaten rural and urban areas alike.

“One of the things that COVID has taught us is that we have to deal with these issues or the next disease is not going to come from China and a wet market, it’s going to come from somebody’s wet backyard that has sewage on the ground,” she said.

Flowers told of a rash she developed after being bitten by mosquitos near a pool of untreated sewage. Her doctor and a dermatologist could find no cause and offer no relief, so she contacted an infectious disease expert.

“Is it possible that there could be diseases in the United States that American doctors are not trained to look for?” she asked him. “Because we have not even acknowledged that we have a problem of sanitation in this country.”

The experience led Flowers to partner with researchers on a peer-reviewed study of the health of Lowndes County residents. It revealed that a third of those tested had been infected by hookworm, an intestinal parasite associated with poor sanitation and thought to have been eradicated in the U.S. decades earlier. The findings were covered by media around the world, and the United Nations special rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights came to Alabama to investigate.

“The people of Lowndes County, by speaking up and telling the truth, have given a lot of other people permission to talk about these problems as well,” Flowers said.

Her Luskin Lecture was followed by a dialogue with Mullin and Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, who shared both his professional expertise and lived experience as a native of the rural Eastern Coachella Valley.

The panel spoke about the key role of research and data in shaping equitable policies, and the new technologies that could lead to solutions in places where water and sanitation infrastructure is failing.

Esquivel described the state’s decision to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars in water bill debt that built up during the pandemic in low-income households. The stakes were too high to ignore, he said.

“That lack of access to sanitation and drinking water could actually create a system where you could lose your house, you could lose your kids if your water is shut off,” Esquivel said. “There are huge consequences for those at the bottom of the system.”

Flowers said her organization is speaking with NASA engineers to determine whether technologies used to create waste management systems in space could inspire new innovations on the ground.

“We decided that we’re not going to just wait on someone to change policy. We’re going to reengineer the septic tank. And we’re looking to collaborate,” she told the UCLA audience.

“We need your ideas. Because this is not just an Alabama problem. It’s a California problem too.”

View photos from the lecture on Flickr.

 

Coleman Flowers Luskin Lecture

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.”

Brozen on How to Increase Safety on L.A. Metro

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Madeline Brozen, deputy director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed about ways to make L.A. Metro trains safer for riders. Agency officials have added more security and transit ambassadors to create a safe environment, but Brozen also suggested looking at ways to increase ridership, as the bus system has done. “The best way forward is to take lessons from the bus and get more people on board to enforce public transit’s social norms,” Brozen wrote. “The bus system’s relationship between more riders and less crime is proof positive.” Bus ridership is 77% of what it was in the days before COVID-19, while train ridership has remained below 50% of its pre-pandemic levels. The sparsely populated cars have led to concerning behavior, with some train riders smoking cigarettes or openly using drugs.

Read the op-ed

 

Making Sense of School Safety News, Good and Bad

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Students from across UCLA gathered at the Luskin School on April 27 to hear school safety expert Ron Avi Astor’s insights on a complex question: If the overall level of violence on California campuses is in steep decline, why do we continue to see mass shootings that take young lives and terrorize communities? After decades of research, Astor has concluded that the two realities should be considered separate phenomena. The shootings, perpetrated by troubled individuals seeking lasting fame, dominate headlines, and Astor shared that he, too, had feared for the safety of his grandchildren when they started preschool. Yet his newly published research analyzing survey responses of more than 6 million California middle and high school students from 2001 to 2019 showed dramatic declines in physical fights and weapons-related behaviors, as well as non-physical types of victimization such as harassment and bullying. Astor pointed to stepped-up investment in improving campus climate over the last two decades, including the placement of more social workers, psychologists, counselors and other service providers on school campuses. These professionals have had a great impact on creating safe and welcoming schools but don’t get credit for all the work they have done to protect children, Astor told the students from UCLA’s social welfare, education, public health, law and other programs. Still, firearms remain in our midst, and Astor suggested that gun safety education, including licensing requirements, is one step communities can take to protect residents. “Let’s not let the school shootings take over the whole story and militarize our schools, which is really my greatest concern,” he said.

Professor Ron Avi Astor shares insights from his decades of research on school safety strategies.

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.