Our Team

Evelyn Blumenberg

Director

Evelyn Blumenberg is the Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and a Professor of Urban Planning within the Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research examines the effects of urban structure — the spatial location of residents, employment, and services — on economic outcomes for low-wage workers, and on the role of planning and policy in shaping the spatial structure of cities. Professor Blumenberg’s recent projects include analyses of trends in transit ridership, gender and travel behavior, low-wage workers and the changing commute, and the relationship between automobile ownership and employment outcomes among the poor.

Areas of Work:Transportation, Access to Opportunities

Michael Lens

Associate Faculty Director

Michael Lens is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy and Associate Faculty Director of the Lewis Center. Professor Lens’s research and teaching explore the potential of public policy to address housing market inequities that lead to negative outcomes for low-income families and communities of color. This research involves housing interventions such as subsidies, tenant protections, and production. Professor Lens regularly publishes this work in leading academic journals and his research has won awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate.

Areas of Work:Housing Affordability

Madeline Brozen

Deputy Director

Madeline Brozen is Deputy Director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and a transportation researcher. Her research focuses on the transportation needs for vulnerable populations and how transportation connects people to opportunity, most recently focusing on transportation needs to healthcare. Her previous research includes work on parklet design and evaluation, park design for older adults, and street performance metrics. Madeline is a lecturer in GIS for the UCLA Urban Planning Department and commonly incorporates spatial analysis in her work. She previously managed the UCLA Complete Streets Initiative, was the founding editor-in-chief of Transfers Magazine, and is a member of the Investing in Place advisory board.

Areas of Work:Transportation, Access to Opportunities

Whitney Willis

Assistant Director

As operations manager, Whitney coordinates events and manages the center’s daily business and personnel operations including procurement, student fellowships, facilities projects, center and project budgets, and proposal applications. Prior to joining the Lewis Center, Whitney was the program manager for the Center for Collaborative Education’s Los Angeles (CCE). During her time at CCE, she managed the program and administrative efforts of the Los Angeles Urban Teacher Residency Program and the Los Angeles New Administrators Leadership Program. She also supported the recruitment and communications efforts of both programs. Whitney also worked as a senior supervisor with the Associate Students of UCLA for five years managing a staff of up 40-60 employees. 

Whitney’s interests include fostering change in Los Angeles through community work and  involvement as well as creating diverse leadership. She has volunteered as a math and science tutor in numerous child care centers and mentoring programs. She has also spent time as a wellness coach and volunteer in many educational nonprofits such as the Casa Heiwa Angelina Mentorship Program, the Center for Powerful Public Schools, and the Angel Tree Foundation. In 2013, she was an honoree for the One Faith Fellowship program for her volunteer work. She is a graduate of the 2019-20 cohort of the UCLA Professional Development Program where she currently serves as a peer mentor. Currently, she is an advisor for UCLA Staff Assembly’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Task Force. She earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from UCLA and is currently pursuing a master’s in public administration.

Aaron Barrall

Aaron Barrall

Housing Data Analyst

Aaron is a housing data analyst at the Randall Lewis Housing Initiative for the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, assisting faculty, students, and staff with data analysis and visualization. Before joining the Lewis Center, he worked as a private-sector urban planner, where he developed comprehensive land-use and housing plans. He has also held environmental-related roles at state and local government agencies.

Areas of Work:Housing Access, Environmental Justice

Claudia Bustamante

Communications Manager

Claudia is the communications manager for the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, where she promotes the center’s research, expertise and accomplishments through original content, media outreach, website and social media management, publication dissemination, and community engagement. She also serves as communications manager for the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, and as managing editor for Transfers Magazine, a biannual research publication of the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center.

Claudia has extensive experience running communications programs for other university-based research centers, including most recently the USC Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans and Military Families, UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access, and UC/ACCORD, an all-UC campus research consortium. She has also worked as a development officer for a Hollywood-based community mental health agency and a newspaper reporter in the Inland Empire. Claudia received a master’s in journalism from USC and a bachelor’s in communications and classics from UCLA.

Phoebe Chiu

Events and Operations Coordinator

Phoebe Chiu is the events and operations coordinator for the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. She helps facilitate undergraduate engagement and supports the operations manager in organizing events, processing reimbursements, updating websites, and supervising students. At the Institute of Transportation Studies, she is also a member of research projects, one of which examines how Metropolitan Planning Organizations approach climate and equity in their long-range planning and another investigating changes in time-use and travel due to ongoing shifts in telecommunications use. Before her current role, Phoebe worked part time to support the 2023 UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium while interning at the Ella Baker Center, a nonprofit organization focused on prison advocacy. While serving at the Ella Baker Center, she supported their policy agenda for the 2024-2025 Legislative Cycle and implementation of Hidden Hazards: The Impacts of Climate Change on Incarcerated People in California State Prisons, a project funded by the UCLA Institute on Inequality and Democracy.

Shane Phillips

Housing Initiative Project Manager

Shane Phillips manages the Randall Lewis Housing Initiative for the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. In this role, he supports faculty and student research, manages events, and publishes research, policy briefs, and educational materials. His work covers a wide range of housing topics including tenant protections, housing production policies, and government revenue and financing reforms. Shane is also the author of “The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There),” in which he argues for an “all of the above” approach to housing policy and outlines 55 strategies for improving affordability and household stability.

Areas of Work:Housing Affordability

Jessica Schirmer

Postdoctoral Scholar

Jessica Schirmer is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Her research examines how interest groups and institutions shape policy, and how federal, state, and local policies impact housing affordability, spatial inequality and land use. Her recent projects include analyses of property tax reform and trends in housing production.

Area of Work:Housing Affordability

Angela Wu

Web Assistant

Angela Wu is a UCLA graduate who majored in Computer Science. She works on implementing design changes to the various websites associated with the Lewis Center. She is currently studying and learning more about UI/UX design.

Ariege Besson

Graduate Student Researcher

Ariege Besson is a second-year Masters candidate in the Department of Public Policy with interests in labor, housing, and public space. She is currently a graduate student researcher with the Lewis Center, where she studies upstream determinants of homelessness through LA county housing data, and a teaching assistant with the Labor Studies Department. She greatly enjoys both research and teaching, and looks forward to continuing work at the intersection of labor and housing in California.

tamika l. butler

Graduate Student Researcher

tamika l. butler (she/her or they/them) is a doctoral student in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research employs a critical race, historical, legal, and policy-based approach to examine how transportation policy and infrastructure have been used to segregate, isolate, and prevent the mobility of Black and other historically oppressed groups of people.

John Barber III

Operations Assistant

John Barber III is a fourth-year, second-year transfer Political Science undergraduate student with a minor in Public Affairs. He currently serves as a Student Operations Assistant and has a strong interest in transportation and public policy.

Irene Marie Cruise

Communications Assistant

Irene Marie Cruise is an undergraduate civil engineering student and a Communications Student Assistant at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. Within her studies in civil engineering, Irene has large interest in transportation engineering and improving the local infrastructure and transit systems in the Southern California area. Her interests include in crocheting, interior design, and journaling.

Abigail Guzman

Operations Assistant

Abigail Guzman is a fourth year English major, double minoring in Chicano Studies and Classics. I currently work as one of the Student Operations Assistants to the Lewis Center and has been at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies since Summer 2022.

Melissa Hua

Operations Assistant

Melissa Hua is a 2nd year undergraduate Environmental Science student at UCLA and an Operations Assistant at the Lewis Center and the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. She has an interest in public transit systems, housing development, and local government and looks forward to learning much more while working for the Lewis Center.

Sahithi Lingampalli

Design Assistant

Sahithi Lingampalli is a UCLA undergraduate student double majoring in Design | Media Arts and Cognitive Science with a Specialization in Computing. She is a Student Design Assistant for both the Lewis Center and the Institute for Transportation Studies. In her free time, she enjoys the color purple, reading on her kindle, and digital illustration. (@paneerarts on Instagram!)

Greg Preston

Greg Preston

Graduate Student Researcher

Greg Preston is a PhD student in the Luskin School of Public Affairs Urban Planning department and a graduate student researcher with the Lewis Center. His work focuses on low-income rental housing policy and ownership and the history of residential racial segregation in the United States.

Alejandra Rios

Graduate Student Researcher

Alejandra works as a graduate student researcher with the Lewis Center. She is currently a dual-degree student getting a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning and a Master’s in Latin American Studies. Her current research focuses on examining mobility justice issues relating to safety and extreme commutes. At the Lewis Center, she currently supports the evaluation of the Mobility Wallet pilot program.

Aurelia Santosa

Operations Assistant

Aurelia Santosa is a second-year undergraduate student at UCLA, double-majoring in Business Economics and Statistics. She is Operations Assistant for the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and the Institute of Transportation Studies. As operations assistant, she helps with accounting, data analysis, and event planning.

Kerry Sempelsz

Operations Assistant

Kerry is a fourth-year studying civil engineering and follows his interests in transportation, mega-events, and the Olympic & Paralympic Games. He hopes to use these global phenomena to encourage walking, biking, and transit mode shift in Los Angeles.

Chanaporn (New) Tohsuwanwanich

Undergraduate Research Assistant

New Chanaporn is an Undergraduate Research Assistant at the Randall Lewis Housing Initiative for the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. As a Geography undergraduate student with minors in GIS&T and Urban & Regional Studies, she assists projects with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), cartography, geocoding, and data analyses. She is passionate about affordable housing and community development, conducting her honor thesis on the Baan Mankong slum redevelopment policy in Bangkok, Thailand. Many of her independent research projects tackle various urban challenges, ranging from walkability, extreme heat, to private-public spaces in city.

Joey Waldinger

Communications Fellow

Joey Waldinger is a first-year student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program and the Communications Fellow at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Joey is interested in how communities, especially those on the coast and in other regions vulnerable to environmental shocks, are adapting to the effects of climate change. Before pursuing his master’s degree, Joey was a journalist at newspapers in Beverly Hills and the British Virgin Islands where he covered real estate, crime, city government, sustainable development, hurricane recovery and renewable energy.

Madeline Wander

Graduate Student Researcher

Madeline Wander is a UCLA Urban Planning PhD candidate and a graduate student researcher at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Her doctoral research examines transportation disparities and justice amidst the changing geography of low-income communities of color, particularly in suburbs.