Ninez A. Ponce

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Ninez A. Ponce, PhD, MPP, is the director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, and Professor and Fred W. & Pamela K. Wasserman Endowed Chair in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She leads the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the nation’s largest state health survey, recognized as a national model for data collection on race and ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) and immigrant health.

CHIS is the only large-scale population survey that includes Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Cantonese, and Mandarin, in addition to Spanish and English in administering the survey to a representative sample of California’s adults, adolescents, and young children. It is considered a gold standard for other state-level efforts on meaningful inclusion of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through oversampling or special samples, and by developing culturally and linguistically appropriate instruments. This approach has resulted in one of the richest datasets with sufficient subsample of the SOGI population, mixed immigrant status (citizen children with noncitizen parents) families, and several major Asian ethnic groups. CHIS is one of the few population datasets that collects information on American Indian/Alaska Native tribal enrollment and whether the tribe is state or federally-recognized.

Ponce is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and has served on the Board of Scientific Counselors, National Center for Health Statistics. She has participated in committees for the National Academy of Medicine and the National Quality Forum, where her expertise has focused on setting guidance for health systems in the measurement and use of social determinants of health as tools to monitor health equity.  She has received numerous awards from community organizations recognizing her work in community-engaged research. In 2019 Dr. Ponce and her team received the AcademyHealth Impact award for their contributions to population health measurement to inform public policies.

Ponce serves on the Data Disaggregation workgroup for the White House Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander Commission. Currently, she is an Associate Editor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at JAMA Health Forum. Her portfolio includes a mixture of scholarly work and real-time knowledge diffusion studies, with over 140 peer-reviewed publications, over 60 policy reports, and various creative data access tools to democratize health data.

Ponce champions better data, especially for people from marginalized racial and ethnic, sexual orientation and gender identity, and immigrant populations.  She firmly believes that equity-centered data will lead to more meaningful program and policy inferences and better care for overlooked groups.

Ponce earned her bachelor’s degree in science at UC Berkeley, her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University, and her PhD in health services at UCLA.

Ellen Epley

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Ellen is a licensed landscape architect working, exploring, and researching in Los Angeles since 2017. A Tennessee native, she is drawn to landscape architecture for its implicit mission to reconcile built and natural systems through a human lens. Ellen’s work focuses on amplifying and acting on community needs across sites and scales. She is currently working as an associate at Kounkuey Design Initiative in Los Angeles, where she works on design and planning projects in and around the Salton Sea, in Mar Vista, and in San Fernando. Ellen is a lecturer at the UCLA Luskin School of Urban Planning, and has served as a guest gritic at the GSD, USC, UCLA, UT Knoxville, and UW Eugene. Previously, she worked as a Designer at SALT Landscape Architects. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Anthropology and Photography from the University of Tennessee and a Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellen-epley-4a403235/

Joshua Schank

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Joshua Schank is a Managing Principal at InfraStrategies, a transportation and financial advisory firm, where he leads a practice focused on innovation, strategic planning, and technology. He is also a Senior Fellow in the Institute for Transportation Studies and an Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Research Associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute.

Prior to joining InfraStrategies and UCLA, Dr. Schank was the first-ever Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro). Dr. Schank joined Metro in 2015 to establish the agency’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation (OEI), which is responsible for fostering innovations that improve mobility, equity and environmental outcomes across LA County. Dr. Schank led an office that shaped Metro’s high-level strategic vision, serving as a liaison to the academic community, designing, piloting and implementing innovative programs and policies, and engaging entrepreneurs and businesses to develop public-private-partnerships. Dr. Schank helped create and lead numerous transformative Metro projects including the Vision 2028 Strategic Plan, Metro Micro, Mobility on Demand, Metro’s Traffic Reduction Study, Better Bus, two Pre-Development Agreements for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor, a Public-Private-Partnership for the West Santa Ana Branch, and an aerial tram from Union Station to Dodger Stadium.

Dr. Schank previously served as President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, a leading national transportation policy think-tank based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that he led the National Transportation Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center and has worked as a consultant for Parsons Brinkerhoff (now WSP) and ICF International. Dr. Schank served as Transportation Policy Advisor to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) during the authorization of SAFETEA-LU and is the co-author of All Roads Lead to Congress: The $300 Billion Fight Over Highway Funding. Dr. Schank holds a Ph.D in Urban Planning from Columbia University, and a Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his career working on behalf of the riders of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City and has never lost that spirit. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.

 

Selected Publications

Panagopoulous, C. & Schank, J. (2007). All Roads Lead to Congress: The $300 Billion Fight Over Highway Funding. CQ Press.

How to Imagine a Los Angeles Without Traffic: The City Has the Solutions to Congestion, Pollution, and Accidents—We Just Need to Use Them

Partnerships with Technology-Enabled Mobility Companies: Lessons Learned

Microtransit: A Good Idea Just Got Even Better

Free Transit: It All Depends on How

Transportation Equity – Says Who?

America’s Highways, Running on Empty

Air traffic control shouldn’t be a government responsibility

 

Isaac Opper

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Isaac M. Opper is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an applied microeconomist, who uses and develops a range of empirical techniques to shed light on important policy-relevant questions. Much of his work combines quasi-experimental variation with either economic theory or novel econometric techniques to better understand the full policy implications of educational interventions. His work has been published in academic journals (e.g., American Economic Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Nature Human Behavior, and PNAS), written about in popular media (e.g., New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Barrons), and cited by policy makers.

Prior to joining UCLA, he worked at RAND where he also conducted studies on a wide range of topics, including a number of reports on how the U.S. Army can best recruit, develop, employ, and retain talent. Dr. Opper received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and his bachelor’s degree from Colby College.

 

For more information, please visit his personal website at https://sites.google.com/site/isaacopper/.

Carlo Medici

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Carlo Medici is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is an applied microeconomist working in the areas of labor economics, political economy, and economic history. His research examines the economics of immigration, labor market institutions, and public sector organizations, drawing on both contemporary and historical contexts. He studies these questions empirically, leveraging administrative records, newly digitized archival datasets, and publicly available microdata.

Before joining UCLA, Carlo was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2024, and holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Bocconi University.

More information about his work can be found at carlomedici.com.

Daniel J. Benjamin

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I am a Professor in the Behavioral Decision Making Area at the Anderson School of Management and in the Human Genetics Department at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. My research is in behavioral economics, which incorporates ideas and methods from psychology into economic analysis, and genoeconomics, which incorporates genetic data into economics.

Some current research topics include understanding errors people make in statistical reasoning; exploring how best to use survey measures of subjective well-being (such as happiness and life satisfaction) to track national well-being and evaluate policies; and studying genetic predictors for behavioral and social phenotypes such as educational attainment and subjective well-being. Past work has addressed how economic behavior relates to cognitive ability and social identity (ethnicity, race, gender, and religion).

I earned my Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and was a postdoc at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Before coming to UCLA, I held faculty positions in the Economics Department at Cornell University and at the Center for Economic and Social Research and Economics Department at the University of Southern California. I am also a Faculty Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

For more information about my work, check out my website: danieljbenjamin.com

Mahonri “Mo” Sapiga

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Mahonri “Mo” Sapiga, MSW, is a seasoned leader in public child welfare with over three decades of experience in frontline social work, program administration, and systems-level leadership. As Deputy Director for the Orange County Social Services Agency’s Children and Family Services Division, he has overseen vital programs including Emergency Response, Adult and Child Abuse Hotlines, and Family Maintenance Collaborative Services, leading over 250 staff in delivering trauma-informed, family-led, prevention based, community-centered care.

Mo currently serves as the UCLA, LA County DCFS Stipend Program Coordinator, supporting the development of future child welfare professionals through field education, advising, and academic mentoring.

He has taught MSW courses for over 17 years at CSU Long Beach and CSU Dominguez Hills, where he is known for fostering cultural humility, critical thinking, and applied skill development. Mo’s teaching is grounded in mentorship, coaching, and a commitment to professional excellence.

As an active advocate for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities, he has led numerous community engagement initiatives and presented nationally on equity in education, workforce development, and culturally responsive leadership and practice. Mo’s work centers on empowering marginalized communities and preparing a diverse, competent child welfare workforce.

Edith de Guzman

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Edith de Guzman (she/her) is an interdisciplinary researcher, practitioner, educator, curator, and consultant working with diverse audiences to understand and address the impacts of climate change in under-represented communities. She is a Cooperative Extension specialist with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, where her work investigates best practices for the sustainable transformation of the Los Angeles region and beyond. Her work has included research, demonstration projects, public policy and planning in the areas of water management, climate adaptation, heat mitigation, and urban forestry. She tackles these topics through the lenses of urban planning, public health, behavioral sciences, biophysical sciences, and public policy.

From 2014 to 2020, Edith served as Director of Research at Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization TreePeople, where her projects included: the City of Los Angeles Stormwater Capture Master Plan; facilitating the creation of a Greening Plan with the communities of Inglewood and Lennox; bringing to fruition multiple urban water management demonstration projects; leading an extensive study tour of Australia’s response to its historic Millennium Drought and gleaning lessons for California; and producing the first interactive, high-resolution public map and spatial analysis of Los Angeles County’s urban forest.

Edith co-founded multisectoral partnerships including the Los Angeles Urban Cooling Collaborative and the Los Angeles Urban Forest Equity Collective, aimed at alleviating the public health risks of extreme heat and removing the policy barriers to cooler, greener neighborhoods. Their research has found that one in four lives currently lost to extreme heat could be saved if L.A.’s land cover had additional trees and its built surfaces were more reflective, particularly where low-income communities and communities of color live and work.

More recently, she co-launched ShadeLA with her colleagues at USC Dornsife Public Exchange – a people-powered campaign to make it easier for Angelenos countywide to bring more shade to their neighborhoods and businesses, leveraging the attention and investment that mega-events are bringing to LA.

Edith earned her PhD at the UCLA Institute of the Environment & Sustainability, where she conducted applied, interdisciplinary research on climate adaptation and climate health equity using community-based methods. Edith earned a master’s in urban planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a bachelor’s degree in history and art history, also from UCLA. When not working or studying, she can be found hiking, playing guitar, or creating art exhibitions that explore the human connection to the environment.

Wesley Yin

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Wesley (“Wes”) Yin is a Professor of Economics at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and the Anderson School of Management. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT.

Yin’s research focuses on health care, consumer finance, and economic inequality. His recent work studies competition and market power, and the links between health care financing and consumer financial health and well-being.

His work has been published in leading economics and policy outlets such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, JAMA, Health Affairs, and the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, and has been covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Forbes, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, Vox, and others.

From 2023-24, Yin served in the Biden Administration as Associate Director for Economic Policy, and Chief Economist, in the Office of Management and Budget. Previously, he served in the Obama Administration as Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy in the Department of the Treasury, and as Senior Economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Previously, he was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and Boston University, and a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at Harvard University. He received his PhD in economics from Princeton University.

Working Papers

Provider Market Power and Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets: Evidence from the California Health Benefits Exchange (with Nicholas Tilipman). Draft available, upon request.

Selected Publications  

The Effects of Medical Debt Relief: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong). The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 140(2): May 2025, 1187–1241. NBER Working Paper version (WP#32315, April 2024).

Pre-registrations: J-PAL Summary. AEA Pre-registration 1 (Collector Debt). AEA Pre-registration 2 (Hospital Debt).  Media coverage: New York Times, The Guardian, Forbes, St. Louis Public Radio, Bloomberg, Vox, The Atlantic, Vox Today, Explained (Podcast), Tradeoffs (Podcast)

The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization (with Alyce Adams, Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Jinglin Wang, and Francis Wong). American Economic Review: Insights. 4(3), September 2022: 389-407. Online Appendix.

Personalized Telephone Outreach Increased Health Insurance Take-Up for Hard-to Reach Populations (w/ Rebecca Myerson, Nicholas Tilipman, Andrew Fehrer, Honglin Li, and Isaac Menashe) Health Affairs. 41(1): 129–137, January 2022.

Trends in Medical Debt During the COVID Pandemic (with Raymond Kluender, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, and Xuyang Xia) JAMA Health Forum 3(5):e221031, May 2022.

The Role of Behavioral Frictions in Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment and Risk: Evidence from a Field Experiment. (with Richard Domurat and Isaac Menashe) American Economic Review 111(5): 1549–1574 , May 2021. [Online Appendix] Media Coverage: Tradeoffs Podcast

Medical Debt in the United States, 2009-2020 (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong) Journal of the American Medical Association 326(3), July 2021. Media Coverage: NY Times, Washington Post, Vox, Marketwatch, CBS Evening News, Marketplace. JAMA editorial.

The Market for High-Quality Medicine: Retail Chain Entry and Drug Quality in India. 2019. (with Daniel Bennett) Review of Economics and Statistics 101(1) p.76-90 [Appendix]

Insurers’ Negotiating Leverage and the External Effect of Medicare Part D. 2015. (with Darius Lakdawalla), Review of Economics and Statistics 97:2 p.314-331 (an earlier version appears as NBER working paper no. 16251). Media coverage: New Yorker

Value of Survival Gains in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (with John Penrod, J. Ross Maclean, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) American Journal of Managed Care 2012 Nov;18(11 Suppl):S257-64

R&D Policy, Agency Costs and Innovation in Personalized Medicine. 2009. Journal of Health Economics 28(5): 950-962.

Market Incentives and Pharmaceutical Innovation. 2008. Journal of Health Economics 27(4):1060-1077.

Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2010. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) World Development 38(3): 333-344.

The Effect of the Medicare Part D Prescription Benefit on Drug Utilization and Expenditures (with Anirban Basu, James Zhang, Atonu Rabbani, David Meltzer, and Caleb Alexander) Lead article at Annals of Internal Medicine 148(3): 169-177. Annals’ Summary for Patients.

Designing Targeting Schemes with Poverty Maps: Does Disaggregation Help?. 2007. (with Berk Özler, Chris Elbers, Tomoki Fujii, Peter Lanjouw) Journal of Development Economics 83(1).

Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2006. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) Quarterly Journal of Economics 121(2). Winner of TIAA-CREF 2006 Certificate of Excellence.

Deposit Collectors (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan). 2006. Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy 6(2), Article 5.

 

Other Publications and Policy Articles  

Options To Improve Affordability In California’s Individual Health Insurance Market, (with Peter Lee, Katie Ravel and Nicholas Tilipman), a Covered California report for Gov. Newsom, California State Senate and State Assembly pursuant to AB1810, February, 2019

How retail drug markets in poor countries develop (with Dan Bennett) VoxDev.org, August, 13th, 2018.

Potential Impacts of Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson on Californians and the Individual Health Insurance Market (with John Bertko) Covered California Report, September 25, 2017

Evaluating the Potential Consequences of Terminating Direct Federal Cost-Sharing Reduction (CSR) Funding (with Richard Domurat) Covered California Report, January 26, 2017  [Appendix]

Trump’s “populist” economic proposals come with massive catches. Here’s what to watch for. Vox, November 18, 2016

Strengthening Risk Protection through Private Long-Term Care Insurance. Brookings Institution, Hamilton Project Discussion Paper 2015-06, June 2015. Policy Brief.

The impact of Medicare Part D on Medicare-Medicaid Dual-eligible Beneficiaries’ Prescription Utilization and Expenditures (with Caleb Alexander and Anirban Basu), Health Services Research, February 2010, 45(1), pp. 133-151   

Valuing health technologies at NICE: Recommendations for Improved Incorporation of Treatment Value in HTA (with Dana Goldman, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) Health Economics October 2010, 10(11) pp. 1109-1116

Solutions and Challenges to Curing Global Health Inequality Innovations 2(4), October 2007, 2(4), pp. 72-80

Testing Savings Product Innovations Using an Experimental Methodology (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan), Asian Development Bank, Economics and Research Department Technical Paper No. 8. November, 2003

A Review of Commitment Savings Products in Developing Countries (with Nava Ashraf, Nathalie Gons, Dean Karlan) ERD Working Paper, July 2003.

 

Teaching

Public Finance and the Economics of Inequality (Econ 415)

Health Care Finance and Management (MBA and MPP elective) (MGMT298 & PP290)

Econometrics for Policy Analysis (MPP Core) (PP208)

Applied Policy Project (APP) Capstone Advisor (PP298)

Ajwang Rading

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Ajwang Rading is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. An entrepreneur-investor, lawyer, and policy advisor, his interdisciplinary research and teaching examine the nexus of emerging technologies (with an emphasis on artificial intelligence), law, public policy, ethics and safety, and the societal and economic implications of innovation.

In addition to his academic appointment, Rading serves as Co-Founder & Partner at Silicon AI Advisory, the leading global law firm and consultancy dedicated exclusively to artificial intelligence matters. He is also the Managing Partner of AMR Ventures, a fund focused on catalyzing American economic prosperity through strategic investments in small and medium businesses, and Partner of Lekadora Group, a real estate holding company.

Previously, as an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Rading advised large technology companies, startups, and venture capital firms as “outside General Counsel” on emerging technologies, corporate governance, venture financings, mergers & acquisitions, and public markets, as well as national security, regulatory compliance, and strategic crisis management.

Rading’s public service includes a U.S. Congressional campaign (CA-16, 2022) and work as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Cory Booker and then-U.S.-Congressman (now-U.S.-Senator) Adam Schiff. At the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, Rading researched and documented over 4,000 lynchings throughout the American South and helped establish the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Today, Rading serves on the boards of LifeMoves and Human Rights Watch (Silicon Valley committee), and is a Humanity in Action Senior Fellow and Perplexity AI Fellow. He writes -1 to 1, a newsletter on building businesses from scratch, followed by over 35,000 people across Silicon Valley and California. He is regularly invited to speak at events such as SXSW and SF Tech Week, and has guest-lectured at institutions such as Stanford Graduate School of Business, UC Berkeley School of Law, and the University of Lucerne in Switzerland.

Rading holds a J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where he served as Articles Editor of the UCLA Law Review, and a B.A. in Political Science from UCLA.

Personal website: www.ajwangrading.com
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