Jackelyn Hwang
Jackelyn Hwang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and a faculty affiliate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and the Urban Studies Program. Jackelyn’s main research interests are in the fields of urban sociology, race and ethnicity, immigration, and inequality. In particular, her research examines the relationship between how neighborhoods change and the persistence of neighborhood inequality by race and class in US cities. Her current projects focus on the causes and consequences of gentrification and developing automated methods for measuring neighborhood change using Google Street View imagery.
Jackelyn received her B.A.S. in Sociology and Mathematics from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University. After completing her Ph.D., she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. Her research has been supported by the American Sociological Association, the Joint Center for Housing Studies, the National Science Foundation, among others. Her work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Demography, Social Forces, and other academic journals.
Benjamin Grant
Benjamin Grant is a city planner, urban designer, curator and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2009 he has led SPUR's Ocean Beach Master Plan, an award-winning climate adaptation strategy for San Francisco's open coast. He leads SPUR's policy research on physical planning and urban design, including the 2013 report Getting to Great Places, supporting the transformation of San Jose and other suburban communities into walkable, sustainable places.
He has developed exhibitions on a range of urban issues, including Agents of Change, a historical survey of San Francisco urbanism for the opening of the SPUR Urban Center. He has been a lecturer and studio instructor in the graduate program in Urban and Regional Planning at San Jose State University and has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Benjamin has contributed to a range of planning and urban design projects in the Bay Area and beyond. His areas of practice include conceptual urban design, adaptive coastal management, open space planning and policy, code reform, transportation and land-use integration, and targeted client and stakeholder communications. He is a frequent commentator and participant in juries and studio reviews and has published dozens of articles and reports. Benjamin also co-founded CITY|SPACE, a nonprofit cultural institution exploring cities and urbanism through fine art, film, design and cultural landscape research.
Donald Barr
Barr received his MD from the University of California, San Francisco and his PhD in sociology from Stanford University. He is professor of pediatrics in the Stanford School of Medicine, and in the Graduate School of Education by courtesy. He teaches courses in U.S. Health Policy and in Health Disparities as part of Stanford’s undergraduate Program in Human Biology. He was awarded the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contribution to Undergraduate Education at Stanford, and the university’s Miriam Aaron Roland Volunteer Service Prize for his integration of teaching, scholarship, and service to society.
Barr’s research interests include the study of racial and ethnic disparities in health care, and factors associated with higher rates of attrition from pre-medical studies among under-represented minority students. The third edition of his book, Health Disparities in the United States, will be published by Johns Hopkins Press in fall of 2019.
During his fellowship year at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Donald Barr will explore the many ways the recent social and political turbulence in the U.S. is likely to impact the future direction of our health care system. He will give particular emphasis to the potential impacts on vulnerable populations such as the elderly, those in poverty, and children. Barr will use this analysis as the basis of a new edition of his textbook, Introduction to U.S. Health Policy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2016.
Rachel Wright
Rachel Wright is Director of Research at Sacred Heart Community Service in Santa Clara County. helps the agency use existing research to develop high-impact programs, collect data about community needs, and track our own impact for learning and accountability. She earned her PhD in Sociology and Public Policy from Stanford University in 2015 specializing in studies of poverty, social movements, nonprofits, and social policy. Prior to her graduate studies, Rachel worked in the nonprofit sector for 10 years in social service, education, religious, and recreational organizations including YMCA and Red Cross. She also completed a fellowship in nonprofit management with El Pomar Foundation in Colorado. Outside of work, Rachel can be found jogging behind a stroller, hiking, and sharing meals with the social justice co-op in her building.
Flavia Tsang
Flavia Tsang is a principal analyst at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her primary responsibility is the development and application of the region’s activity-based travel model. Most recently, she has been working on incorporating autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing into the model.
Prior to joining MTC in 2018, Flavia worked at the RAND Corporation for 12 years, where she applied econometric methods, surveys, interviewing and systematic reviews to public policy questions. Her work spans a wide range of policy areas, including transportation, energy, climate change, and catastrophic risk management. Some of her major projects include: “Re-estimation of the Sydney Car Ownership Model” for the New South Wales Bureau of Transport Statistics, “What Works in Changing Energy-Using Behaviors in the Home” for the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, and “The Impact of Changing Wildfire Risk on California’s Residential Insurance Market” as part of the State of California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment.
While working at RAND, Flavia also held a concurrent research associate position at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Architecture (2007-2012), undertaking research into the relationship between transportation and land use.
Ann Cheng
Ann Cheng serves as an Interim Co-Executive Director with Jo Ann Prompongsatorn Farrant. Ann has been a leader at TransForm for 12 years as founder and director of TransForm’s GreenTRIP program, which is advancing a paradigm shift to create more homes with less driving. She brings deep expertise on housing and transportation policy, fundraising and budget management, data analysis and GIS, and community engagement.
Ann led the development of the GreenTRIP Parking Database and GreenTRIP Connect, two powerful free online tools to support the development of more transit-oriented development with right-sized parking. She was instrumental in the passage of AB 744, a state law that lowered parking minimums for transit-oriented development and new homes for seniors and people with disabilities. In its first 10 years, the GreenTRIP program has certified over 6,500 units in almost 50 projects, and diverted over $100 million from parking spaces to transit and other benefits for residents.
Ann has 19 years of experience in county government, consulting, and the nonprofit sector. She was a councilmember and former Mayor of El Cerrito in 2008-2012, where she grew up and still lives today. Her leadership was recognized in the San Francisco Business Times Top 40 Under 40 award in 2014, and the U.S. Green Building Council’s Green-Building Super Hero Award in 2015.
David Garcia
David Garcia is the Policy Director for the Terner Center. He leads the center’s engagement in local, state and federal housing policy and supports the generation of research-driven policy ideas, proposals, and papers.
Prior to joining the Terner Center, David worked as the Chief Operating Officer for Ten Space, a real estate development company in Stockton, California focused exclusively on infill projects in the downtown neighborhood. As COO, David managed various aspects of the development process, including development agreements, environmental review, and project design. During his tenure, Ten Space won several awards for their projects, including the American Planning Association’s Award of Excellence in Urban Design for their California chapter.
David has also worked as an advocate in the Central Valley, serving on numerous boards and commissions related to a wide array of planning issues such as increasing cycling infrastructure, implementing smart growth policies, and developing incentives for infill growth.Prior to his work with Ten Space, David was a Research Analyst at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Washington, DC. At the GAO, David conducted evaluations and analyses of several different federal programs using a variety of methods, both quantitative and qualitative. These reports helped inform various policy debates at the national level.
David holds a Bachelors of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles as well as a Master's in Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies in Baltimore, Maryland.
Heather Peters
Ms. Peters served under Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown as the Deputy Secretary for Business Regulation and Housing from 2007-2012. Her portfolio included seven state departments including the Departments of Housing & Community Development, Real Estate, Financial Institutions and CalHFA.
She currently serves as the Senior Housing & Community Development Policy Analyst for San Mateo County where she has been instrumental in cultivating regional support for homeowners seeking to building Accessory Dwelling Units including: www.secondunitcentersmc.org which received a 2019 Award of Excellence for Best Practices from the California Chapter of the American Planning Association.
Heather holds a Real Estate Broker’s license, a license to practice law, has remodeled eight homes and is currently building a custom modular home that includes an ADU.
Michael Lepech
Professor Lepech's research focuses on the integration of sustainability indicators into engineering design, ranging from materials design, structural design, system design, to operations management. Such sustainability indicators include a comprehensive set of environmental, economic, and social costs. Recently his research has focused on the design of sustainable high performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (HPFRCCs) and fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs), the impacts of sustainable materials on building and infrastructure design and operation, and the development of new life cycle assessment (LCA) applications for building systems, transportation systems, water systems, consumer products. Along with this he is studying the effects that slowly diffusing sustainable civil engineering innovations, and the social networks they diffuse through, can have on achieving long term sustainability goals.
Hoi-Fei Mok
Fei is the Sustainability Manager for the City of San Leandro.
Formerly, Fei was the climate equity lead at ICLEI USA, bringing 8+ years of social justice and community organizing experience to manage partnerships with local environmental justice organizations and engage local governments. In addition, Fei’s environmental science background grounded their technical support around climate action planning, greenhouse gas inventorying, community resilience, and renewable energy. Fei developed much of the educational curriculum for the training cohorts around inventorying, climate adaptation, and climate action planning. Fei coordinated the US Department of Energy’s Cities Leading through Energy Analysis and Planning (Cities-LEAP) Program on the contribution analysis, managed the California Statewide Energy Efficiency Collaborative (SEEC) climate action planning technical assistance, and was an adviser for the SolSmart Program.
Before joining ICLEI, Fei worked with the City of Emeryville in CA on developing their climate action plan 2.0, updating their greenhouse gas inventory, and implementing a diversity of climate and sustainability initiatives as their CivicSpark AmeriCorps 2015-16 fellow. Fei’s interdisciplinary background includes work with the Resilient Communities Initiative, an environmental justice coalition in the Bay Area; substantial ecological field research in Costa Rica, Tibet, and Australia; and community organizing and art projects with anti-racist, anti-imperialist queer trans people of color organizations in Australia and the Bay Area.
Fei holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia with a dissertation on the feasibility of wastewater reuse for agricultural irrigation and a BA in Biochemistry with Honors from Wellesley College, MA.
Lynn Hildemann
Lynn Hildemann's current research areas include the sources and dispersion of indoor aerosols, the physicochemical properties of organic aerosols, and assessment of human exposure to PM.
Prof. Hildemann received BS, MS, and PhD degrees in environmental engineering science from the California Institute of Technology. She is an author on >90 peer-reviewed publications, including two with over 1000 citations each, and another 6 with over 500 citations each. She has been honored with Young Investigator Awards from NSF and ONR, the Kenneth T. Whitby Award from the AAAR (1998), and Stanford's Gores Award for Teaching Excellence (2013); she also was a co-recipient of Atmospheric Environment’s Haagen-Smit Outstanding Paper Award (2001).
She has served on advisory committees for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and for the California Air Resources Board. She has been an Associate Editor for Environmental Science & Technology, and Aerosol Science and Technology, and has served on the advisory board for the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
At Stanford, Prof. Hildemann is currently chair of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. She has served as an elected member of the Faculty Senate, and chaired the School of Engineering Library Committee, the University Committee on Judicial Affairs, and the University Breadth Governance Board..
Shireen Malekafzali
Shireen manages the Health Policy and Planning Program in Get Healthy San Mateo County with a focus on achieving healthy, equitable places where all San Mateo County residents have the opportunity to lead healthy, prosperous lives. She brings over 15 years of experience advancing health and equity through multi-field partnerships, community leadership, policy advocacy, grant-making and research.
Jack Baker
Jack Baker is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford. Jack Baker's research focuses on the use of probabilistic and statistical tools for modeling of extreme loads on structures. He has investigated probabilistic modeling of seismic hazards, improved characterization of earthquake ground motions, dynamic analysis of structures, prediction of the spatial extent of soil failures from earthquakes, and tools for modeling loads on spatially distributed infrastructure systems. Dr. Baker joined Stanford from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), where he was a visiting researcher in the Department of Structural Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University, where he also earned M.S. degrees in Statistics and Structural Engineering. He has industry experience in seismic hazard assessment, ground motion selection, construction management, and modeling of catastrophe losses for insurance companies.
Ibrahim Almufti
Ibbi Almufti, SE, PE, PEng, is an Associate Principal in the Advanced Technology + Research group in Arup’s San Francisco office where he leads the Risk and Resilience practice. He is the City Resilience skills network leader for Arup Americas and past Seismic skills leader.
Ibbi works at the intersection of design, risk, and resilience across multiple scales from buildings to campuses to utility infrastructure. He is a licensed structural engineer with expertise in earthquake engineering. He leads a multidisciplinary team which helps corporate, higher education, data center, healthcare, and government clients understand the physical and business impacts of natural and man-made hazards and develops resilience strategies integrating physical and operational measures to reduce risk. His specializations include PSHA, probabilistic risk analysis, performance-based design, nonlinear seismic analysis, and risk-based cost-benefit analysis.
Ibbi led the development of the REDi™ Rating System which provides owners, architects and engineers a framework for implementing “resilience-based design”, a holistic design, planning, and risk verification approach for achieving “beyond-code” resilience objectives. The REDi downtime assessment method he developed has become adopted throughout the industry. He and his team are now developing similar guidelines for floods, hurricanes, and anti-terrorism.
Ibbi serves on the FEMA/USGS Project 17 Committee and the Building Seismic Safety Council (BSSC), which determine acceptable risk targets for national building codes. In the past he has served on the LEED Resilience Working Group and the EERI Resilience Panel. Ibbi has been recognized as an industry expert on resilience topics and has spoken at major conferences and events around the world. He has published extensively to contribute to the field of earthquake engineering. He is a trusted source for news media including the New York Times, the Business Times, and Business Insider.
Gabrielle Wong-Parodi
Gabrielle Wong-Parodi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth System Science and Center Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Her research focuses on applying behavioral decision research methods to address challenges associated with global environmental change. Dr. Wong-Parodi uses behavioral decision science approaches to create evidence-based strategies for informed decision making, with a particular focus on building resilience and promoting sustainability in the face of a changing climate. She has a background in energy resources, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and risk perceptions of emerging technologies, such as unconventional shale gas development. She was an invited speaker at the Sackler Colloquia at the National Academy of Sciences on the Science of Science Communication. She recently served on the National Academy of Sciences committee titled "Long-term Coastal Zone Dynamics: Interactions and Feedbacks between Natural and Human Processes and their Implications for the U.S. Coastline." Dr. Wong-Parodi is a faculty affiliate at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and is the social science research liaison for the Climate Advocacy Lab. Dr. Wong-Parodi received her B.S. in Psychology at the University of California Berkeley, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Risk Perceptions and Communication from the University of California, Berkeley.
Molly Peterson
Molly Peterson is an independent reporter based in Los Angeles who covers climate change, disaster risk, water, and other environment issues. Most recently, she has been writing for KQED. She worked with ISeeChange, a NASA-funded crowd-sourced climate journal, reporting on observations from the world over, connecting them to current science. For eight years she was the environment correspondent at Southern California Public Radio. Before that, she lived and worked in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. She has worked for NPR in Culver City and in Washington, DC. on programs including Morning Edition and Day to Day. Current projects will appear in High Country News, on PRI, on WWNO in New Orleans and WRKF in Baton Rouge, and throughout California.
Bruce Cain
Dr. Bruce E. Cain is the Spence and Cleone Eccles Family Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West, and Charles Louis Ducommun Professor in Humanities and Sciences. Professor Cain succeeded the Center's founding faculty co-director, David M. Kennedy, and is tasked with carrying on the Center's study of the past, present and future of the American West. Professor Cain brings a wealth of experience in U.S. and California politics. A pioneer in computer-assisted redistricting, he is a well-known expert on elections, term limits, polling, and the relationships between lobbyists and elected officials. He is a frequently cited source in media coverage of politics.
Melissa Stevenson Diaz
With over twenty-eight years of professional local government management experience, Melissa began serving as the City Manager for the City of Redwood City in October 2015. She is committed to strengthening communities through effective public services, building organizational capacity, and solving complex problems in a collaborative manner. As City Manager, she directs the work of City staff to ensure fulfillment of the City Council's policy priorities.
Prior to joining Redwood City, Melissa was the Assistant City Manager for the Cities of Mountain View and Fremont. In those roles she led strategic initiatives, continuous improvement efforts, and human resources and organizational development. Additional experience includes managing the functions of housing and redevelopment, information technology, and city communications, as well as coordinating the development of City-owned property and the creation of City budgets. She also worked for the City of Morgan Hill in a variety of capacities including Assistant to the City Manager and Acting Human Resources Manager.
Melissa received her Bachelor's Degree in History from Mills College, and her Master's in Public Administration from San Jose State University. She is a member of the International City/County Management Association.