Professor Mia Bird is an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy. Her research focuses on criminal justice reform and the intersections of criminal justice, health, and social safety net policies. Prior to joining the Berkeley faculty, she spent seven years at the Public Policy Institute of California as a research fellow. At PPIC she founded and directed the creation of a criminal justice data system that standardized and integrated individual-level data from 12 county justice systems, representing 60…

Josefina Baltodano is currently serving at UC Berkeley as Senior Associate – External Relations of the Center for Studies in Higher Education and Founding Executive Director of the Executive Leadership Academy (ELA). Ms. Baltodano was highlighted in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education in the “Top 35 Women in Higher Education” in 2019. Previously, she served as President of Marian University until 2009. During her presidency, she led the transition from a college to university status. She served on the Higher Education…

Professor Sarah Anzia is a political scientist who studies American politics with a focus on state and local government, elections, interest groups, political parties, and public policy. Her book, Timing and Turnout: How Off-Cycle Elections Favor Organized Groups, examines how the timing of elections can be manipulated to affect both voter turnout and the composition of the electorate, which, in turn, affects election outcomes and public policy. She also studies the role of government employees and public-sector unions in elections…

Elisabeth Kersten is the former director of the California Senate Office of Research, a position she held for 20 years. The Senate Office of Research is a bipartisan think tank developing policy and preparing studies for the 40 members of the California State Senate. In addition, the office assists the Senate Rules committee in background investigations into gubernatorial appointees subject to Senate confirmation. She served under three Pro Tems and supervised a staff of up to 35 professionals. Prior to joining the Senate…

Deanne Pearn has been the Executive Director for Hope Solutions: the Heart of Housing and Services since early 2017. The mission of Hope Solutions is to heal the effects of poverty and homelessness by providing permanent housing solutions and vital support services to homeless and poverty-impacted families and individuals. Founded in 1997 as a partnership between Lafayette Orinda Presbyterian Church, Temple Isaiah, and many other faith communities, Hope Solutions has grown into an $8.5M organization with over 60 staff offering a range of…

One week after Daryel R. Dunston (MPA ‘18) accepted his job as homelessness administrator for the City of Oakland, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Northern California. Given his public safety background (he used to be a firefighter and an EMT), he was appointed the emergency operations section chief and tasked with coordinating the response from law enforcement, fire and rescue, health and human services, and those overseeing community resilience. Needless to say, it was an all-consuming experience.

Garance Burke is a global investigative journalist with The Associated Press whose work has provoked policy change at significant scale. Grounded in data and documents, her public interest journalism has prompted federal investigations, cabinet-level resignations and congressional hearings. Ms. Burke’s recent stories on the treatment of migrant children on the U.S.-Mexico border were a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the subject of an Emmy Award-winning documentary film partnership between AP and FRONTLINE PBS. Ms.…

Ending affirmative action hurt educational and wage attainments for Black and Latino students and worsened socioeconomic inequality, find a new study from UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education. The study analyzes Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action at California public universities in 1998. Using a highly-detailed, anonymized database of every California high school senior who applied to any University of California campus between 1994 and 2002, and linking those individuals to a wide range of later-life outcomes like degree completion…

When my Dad became ill and subsequently died on June 30th from COVID19, my first thought was not to spark a movement and reshape public health policy. My first thought was, this should not be happening. This was preventable.  The efficacy of health and safety measures such as mask-wearing, maintaining physical distance, and proper ventilation and hygiene were already mainstream public health measures implemented around the globe to minimize transmission to great success. While South Korea, Europe, China, and…

Dennis Wu is an attorney for the US Small Business Administration in the Office of Disaster Assistance. Below, he shares a bit of his journey, from the Judge Advocate General’s office of the US Air Force to helping small business owners cope with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. What did you do prior to the MPA? Prior to the MPA program, I attended the University of Notre Dame Law School and directly joined the US Air Force…