Faculty, staff, and students at the USC Bedrosian Center share a deep commitment to developing ideas and illuminating strategies to improve the quality of life for people in low-income urban communities.

The faculty affiliates who work with us offer expertise on a variety of policy issues related to all aspects of governance, including: housing and urban development, homelessness, health, transportation, economic development, immigration, and education, among others.

Please learn more about our team below.

Judith & John Bedrosian

John C. Bedrosian, LL.B., served as chair of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development Board of Councilors. He is the former co-founder and chairman of the board of Auto-by-Tel Corporation, the largest Internet-based car marketing referral service covering the United States and Canada. Previously he was senior executive vice president, director and co-founder of National Medical Enterprises (now known as Tenet Healthcare). In that capacity, he was a prominent industry spokesman on healthcare issues.

Prior to founding NME in 1969, Mr. Bedrosian practiced law extensively in the healthcare field. He is a past chair of the Board of Councilors of the USC School of Medicine and a past member of the board of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. In 1992, he was appointed by Governor Pete Wilson to the California Economic Development Corporation. Mr. Bedrosian is a past president of the Federation of American Health Systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from UCLA and an LL.B. degree from the USC School of Law.

Leadership

Jeffery A. Jenkins

Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law
Judith & John Bedrosian Chair of Governance and the Public Enterprise
Director, Bedrosian Center
Director, PIPE Collaborative

Jeffery A. Jenkins is Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law, Judith & John Bedrosian Chair of Governance and the Public Enterprise, Director of the Bedrosian Center, and Director of the Political Institutions and Political Economy (PIPE) Collaborative. He previously held tenure-stream positions at the University of Virginia, Northwestern University, and Michigan State University.

Anne M. Johnson

Programs & Events Manager
[email protected]

Johnson manages the public programming arm of the Bedrosian Center. Prior to joining USC, Anne was an executive assistant at the Auto Club of Southern California. She also served as an insurance market research analyst. Anne holds a BS in Business Administration from Mount St. Mary’s College, Los Angeles.

Students

Heonuk Ha
Heonuk Ha is a Ph.D. student of the USC Price School of Public Policy, he has concentrated on studying and researching about the political economy of federal fiscal policy.

Alison Holt
Alison Holt is a Ph.D. student in the USC Price School of Public Policy. Her studies focus on bureaucratic discretion, rule-making, and the interactions between the judiciary and the administrative state.

Nicholas G. Napolio
Nicholas G. Napolio is a Ph.D student in political science and Provost Fellow at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on the political ramifications of institutional structures and procedures, and how the vertically and horizontally fragmented American political system enables or constrains elite preferences.

Olivia Olson
Olivia Olson is a sophomore double majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Law and Economics at USC Dornsife. She is interested in pursuing a career in politics and is particularly invested in the role of government in food, nutrition, and sustainable agriculture. She volunteers to tutor local elementary schoolers in reading and writing through the Teach for Los Angeles program.

Joseph Saraceno
Joseph (Joey) Saraceno is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science and Elizabeth von KleinSmid Bannerman Fellow at USC. He studies American political institutions and quantitative methodology. He has written and published research examining representation of minority interests within the U.S. Congress. As of Fall 2020, he will be the administrator of USC’s Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC).

Faculty

Emma Aguila
Assistant Professor

Emma Aguila is an Assistant Professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public of Policy. She was previously a Senior Economist and Director of the RAND Center for Latin American Social Policy (CLASP). Dr. Aguila earned her Bachelor’s Degree at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de Mexico in Mexico City. She completed her master’s and Ph.D. in Economics at University College London in the United Kingdom. Her research interests include pension reform, saving for retirement, and social security coverage and labor dynamics of immigrants.

Jody David Armour
Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law

Jody David Armour is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. He has been a member of the faculty since 1995. Professor Armour’s expertise ranges from personal injury claims to claims about the relationship between racial justice, criminal justice, and the rule of law. Professor Armour studies the intersection of race and legal decision making as well as torts and tort reform movements.

Marlon Boarnet
Professor
Director, Graduate Programs in Urban Planning

Marlon Boarnet is Professor of Public Policy and director of graduate programs in urban planning and development in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Boarnet’s research focuses on land use and transportation; links between land use and travel behavior and associated implications for public health and greenhouse gas emissions; urban growth patterns; and the economic impacts of transportation infrastructure.

Carla Della Gatta
Assistant Professor

Carla Della Gatta is an assistant professor at Florida State University. Her recent monograph, Shakespeare & Latinidad: The Staging of Intracultural Theatre, explores how Latinx culture is constructed dramaturgically and textually in recent Shakespearean adaptations and productions.

Robert B. Denhardt
Professor
Director of Leadership Programs

Robert B. Denhardt is Professor and Director of Leadership Programs in the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He was previously ASU Regents Professor and Director of the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Delaware.

Nicolas Duquette
Assistant Professor

Nicolas Duquette is an Assistant Professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. Duquette’s research uses the tools of economics, politics and history to trace the development and behavior of nonprofit organizations, and he teaches courses in nonprofit management informed by an interdisciplinary perspective.

Nicole E. Esparza
Assistant Professor

Dr. Esparza is an assistant professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. She teaches courses on public policy and management and program evaluation.

Liz Falletta
Associate Professor (Teaching)

Liz Falletta teaches architectural and urban design at USC’s Price School of Public Policy. She has over fifteen years of experience teaching design across disciplines at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Her courses focus on design as an interdisciplinary activity and explore how the intersecting values of architecture, planning and development can inform the design process and improve design outcomes. She is currently at work on By-Right | By-Design, an interdisciplinary housing reference text.

Elizabeth Graddy
Professor
Jeffrey J. Miller Chair in Government, Business, and the Economy Vice Dean

Elizabeth Graddy, Ph.D., teaches courses in quantitative analysis, governance, and business and government. Her research focuses on the private sector role in public service delivery, how industry and organizational structure affect performance, and how information asymmetry and uncertainty affect institutional design and effectiveness.

Alexandra Graddy-Reed
Assistant Professor of Public Policy

Alexandra Graddy-Reed is an Assistant Professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. Graddy-Reed’s research is focused on the evolving strategies of grantmakers to be more outcome and impact minded. Grounded in theories of public economics, institutional change, and innovation production, her current research involves evaluating the effect of competition between grantmakers on outcomes to assess if it promotes or deters innovation.

Richard Green
Director and Lusk Chair in Real Estate
Professor

Richard K. Green, Ph.D., is the Director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. He holds the Lusk Chair in Real Estate and is Professor in the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC Marshall School of Business. His research addresses housing markets, housing policy, tax policy, transportation, mortgage finance and urban growth. He is a member of two academic journal editorial boards, and a reviewer for several others.

Christian Grose
Associate Professor of Political Science

Christian Grose is Associate Professor of Political Science in Dornsife College at the University of Southern California. He is also Associate Professor in the Price School of Public Policy (by courtesy). Christian’s research interests include political institutions and political representation. Current and recent research is on U.S. legislatures, the presidency, race and ethnicity, the effect of war casualties on U.S. voting behavior, financial interests and stock market investments of legislators, and field experiments.

Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro
Dean’s Professor of Gender Studies, Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies

Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro is Professor and Chair of Gender Studies at the University of Southern California and a globally recognized scholar of intersectionality theory, the world’s leading analytical framework for analyzing and resolving inequality. She has written numerous articles and three books on the intersections of categories of difference like race, gender, class, sexuality and citizenship and their impact on policy.

Michael E. Harris
Professor of the Practice of Health Services Administration and Policy

Mr. Harris is Professor of Practice for Health Services Administration and Policy at the Sol Price School of Public Policy for the University of Southern California. His focus and interest includes health policy and the transformation of the US Health Care Delivery System, as well as, addressing health care disparities to improve health care access.

Jeffery A. Jenkins
Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law
Judith & John Bedrosian Chair of Governance and the Public Enterprise
Director, Bedrosian Center
Director, PIPE Collaborative

Jeffery A. Jenkins is Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law, Judith & John Bedrosian Chair of Governance and the Public Enterprise, Director of the Bedrosian Center, and Director of the Political Institutions and Political Economy (PIPE) Collaborative. He previously held tenure-stream positions at the University of Virginia, Northwestern University, and Michigan State University.

LaVonna Blair Lewis
Teaching Professor
Director of the USC Diversity in Healthcare Leadership Initiative
Associate Dean of Diversity, Inclusion, & Eguity

LaVonna Blair Lewis, Ph.D., MPH, is a Teaching Professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, and the Director of the USC Diversity in Healthcare Leadership Initiative. Dr. Lewis joined the USC faculty in 1996 and she was selected Professor of the Year at Price in 1998 and 2001. Dr. Lewis’ areas of research and professional interests consistently focus on cultural competency and health disparities, both targeting the health status and health care needs of underrepresented groups.

Oliver Mayer
Associate Professor of Dramatic Writing, Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives, Associate Dean of Faculty, USC School of Dramatic Arts

Oliver Mayer is an expert in contemporary American theater, drama and playwriting. His is Associate Professor at the USC School of Dramatic Arts, with expertise in playwriting, drama in the 21st century, contemporary American theater and Latinx theater.

Daniel A. Mazmanian
Professor

Dr. Mazmanian was the founding Director of the Bedrosian Center on Governance, from 2005-2012. He is a professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and the director of new initiatives at the Center for Sustainable Cities. He served as the school’s Ione L. Piper Dean and Professor from 2000-2005. Before coming to USC, he served as dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation since 1994.

Pamela Clouser McCann
Associate Professor

Pamela Clouser McCann, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. Dr. McCann previously served as an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Washington.

Her research interests include U.S. political institutions, bureaucratic delegation, federalism, intergovernmental politics, legislative behavior, public policy, health policy, policy diffusion, state and local politics.

Juliet Ann Musso
Associate Professor
Houston Flournoy Professor of State Government
Associate Director, MPA, Sacramento

Dr. Juliet Musso holds the Houston Flournoy Professor of State Government at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. She has expertise in federalism and urban political economy, with specific research interests in intergovernmental fiscal policy, state and local institutional reform, and collaborative governance. She has published on state budgeting and intergovernmental finance, the political economy of municipal incorporation, and neighborhood governance in the City of Los Angeles.

Deborah Natoli
Associate Professor (Teaching)
Director, Professional Doctorate Program

Deborah Natoli, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor (Teaching) and director of the professional doctorate program at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. She teaches research methods, human behavior in organizations, leadership, and conducts teaching seminars.

Dr. Natoli began her career as a public high school social studies and psychology teacher with special assignment to support students from underprivileged communities. During her graduate study at Saint Louis University, she was selected by the Dean of the Graduate School to coordinate the Teaching Resource Center, her charge to work with a team to design and implement an interdisciplinary Future Faculty and Teaching Certificate Program for teaching assistants and pre-tenured professors across all schools and colleges.

Anthony W. Orlando
Assistant Professor, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Anthony W. Orlando is an Assistant Professor in the Finance, Real Estate, & Law Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is a Faculty Affiliate of the Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise at the University of Southern California. He is a contributor to the “Bill of Health” blog at Harvard Law School. His writings have appeared in the Huffington Post, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and the Hazleton Standard-Speaker. He serves as the Managing Partner of the Orlando Investment Group, as well as the Co-Advisor of the Cal Poly Pomona Finance Society.

Kelly Rawlings
Assistant Professor

Kelly Campbell Rawlings, Ph.D. is an assistant professor (nonresident teaching) with the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California where she develops and teaches courses on organizational behavior, nonprofit management and leadership, strategic planning, and the nonprofit sector and philanthropy. Her research focuses on identifying innovative approaches to public participation and civic engagement and explores the notion of civic capacity and the ways in which the skills, behaviors, and attitudes necessary for participation in public life can be developed.

William G. Resh
Associate Professor

Bill Resh earned his doctoral degree at the American University’s School of Public Affairs in 2011. From 2011 to 2014, he was a tenure-track assistant professor in public management at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Beginning 2014, he was an assistant professor, and in 2018 he was appointed tenured professor at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.

Peter J. Robertson
Associate Professor
Director, Master of Public Administration

Peter J. Robertson, Ph.D., brings to the School’s faculty a focus on improving the capacity of organizations to successfully accomplish their objectives while attending to the needs and interests of the individuals and communities with whom they interact. He is particularly interested in the application of “new paradigm” ideas to the development of new models of organization and governance, with a recent paper proposing a model of ecological governance applicable in the context of complex, multi-party policy problems.

Author of the Counterpoint column

Lisa Schweitzer
Professor

Lisa Schweitzer specializes in urban studies, and, in particular, normative theory and empirical analysis of social justice, environment and transport in cities. Her work has appeared in multiple popular and scholarly outlets, and her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. She maintains a blog about urban ethics, her new book project, at lisaschweitzer.com.

Moderator: Bedrosian Book Club Podcast

David Sloane
Professor

David Sloane is a professor and director of USC Price Undergraduate Programs in the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Dr. Sloane researches issues related to community health, public safety, and commemoration from both historical and contemporary perspectives. He has written extensively about neighborhood level institutions and activities, especially related to food systems, street gangs, and public memory.

Erroll Southers
Professor of the Practice of Governance

Dr. Erroll G. Southers is an internationally recognized expert on counterterrorism, public safety, infrastructure protection, and homeland security. He is the Director of the Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies Program at the University of Southern California, where he is also a Professor of the Practice of Governance.

Shui Yan Tang
Frances R. and John. J. Duggan Professor in Public Administration

Dr. Tang is Research Director for the Bedrosian Center, a position he took at the founding of the Center in 2005. In this role, he leads the Bedrosian Center Faculty Research Awards program, which awards grants to USC Price faculty doing research in collaborative governance.

Eduardo Tinoco
Associate University Librarian, USC Libraries

A first-generation college student, Eduardo Tinoco holds a Master of Library and Information Science Degree from San Jose State University, a Bachelor of Arts Degree, in English, from California State University, Northridge and begins his Doctorate of Education studies at the USC Rossier School of Education, with a concentration on Higher Education, during the fall of 2014. Ed is also a 2012 participant, and graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Leadership Institute for Academic Libraries (LIAL). He recently completed his three-year term as the Associate Dean for Public Services with the University of Southern California (USC) Libraries.

Abby K. Wood
Assistant Professor of Law, Political Science and Public Policy

Wood is an Assistant Professor of Law at USC Gould School of Law. She teaches Administrative Law and Analytical Methods for Lawyers. Wood’s research centers around efforts to improve public governance via information provision. She uses empirical methods to help answer questions about how laws — especially laws aimed at transparency — incentivize behavior.

Frank Zerunyan
Professor of the Practice of Governance
Director, Executive Education

Frank Vram Zerunyan, J.D. is a Senior Fellow and Director of Executive Education at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. His key areas of expertise include Local Governments, Public Private Partnerships, Land Use, Regulation and Executive Education.

(In)Equality Fellow

Ehsan Zaffar, J.D.

Ehsan Zaffar serves as a Senior Advisor at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington D.C. where he advises the Secretary of Homeland Security and DHS components on the civil rights and civil liberties implications of existing and proposed national security policies, programs, and procedures. Mr. Zaffar works with young adults and diverse communities throughout the country to promote resilience against bigotry, intolerance and extremism in the wake of homeland security incidents. Mr. Zaffar also leads the Department’s efforts to implement UNHRC Resolution 16/18 to combat intolerance and violence against persons on the basis of religion or belief.

He is a member of the faculties of Washington College of Law at American University, John Marshall Law School, George Mason University, and George Washington University. He teaches courses on homeland security policy, as well as privacy and surveillance law and has lectured to audiences on these issues in Spain, Greece, Indonesia, Norway, Dubai, Italy and Pakistan.

Prior to government service, Mr. Zaffar worked on human rights and rule of law issues in post-disaster and post-conflict environments both domestically and abroad. Mr. Zaffar earned his JD in 2008 from Pepperdine University School of Law where he also completed his Certificate in Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute. He is licensed to practice law in California and the District of Columbia and is a panel mediator on national security and civil rights matters with the Agency for Dispute Resolution. He serves on the board of directors at Developments in Literacy (DIL), a non-profit organization that develops teacher training tools for women in South and Southeast Asia as well as the Amani Institute, a social entrepreneurship curriculum training institute in Kenya. He has previously served as a liaison to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Standing Committee on National Security Law and as Vice-Chair of the ABA’s Section of International Law (Asia/Pacific Committee).

Mr. Zaffar’s writing has appeared on CNN.com, Slate, and The Huffington Post. His book Understanding Homeland Security: Foundations of Security Policy will be published in late 2019 by Routledge Press.

Scholar-in-Residence

Brettany K. Shannon
Brettany Shannon, Ph.D., is an urban planning and development scholar who studies how people use digital communications for urban and social placemaking. Her research agenda is broadly defined. That is, she looks at how people can and do use media arts to foster community engagement and participatory placemaking, as well as how real estate developers use websites, social networks, and the constituent media for marketing or to reinforce power. Dr. Shannon believes digital communications hold promise in that they engage with such planning phenomena as identity, participation, and process, and uphold context as a decisive factor in all. But her research reminds us that technology is a social production, and that just as we extol the virtues of the information age, planners must not forget planning’s complicated history owes in part to its uncritically technophilic tendencies.

In support of her research, she studies community planning, the cultural economy, cultural landscapes, digital media, media arts, public space, the public realm, and comparative urbanism. Brettany received the 2016 John Dyckman Award for Best Dissertation for her thesis, Avoiding Middle-Class Planning 2.0: Media Arts and the Future of Urban Planning. Her co-edited volume on authenticity in community development, Planning for AuthentiCITIES (Routledge) was published in summer 2018. In addition to her residency with the Bedrosian Center, Dr. Shannon is part-time faculty at California State University, Northridge and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

PIPE Fellows | 2021-22

Heonuk Ha
Heonuk Ha is a Ph.D. student of the USC Price School of Public Policy, he has concentrated on studying and researching about the political economy of federal fiscal policy.

Alison Holt
Alison Holt is a Ph.D. student in the USC Price School of Public Policy. Her studies focus on bureaucratic discretion, rule-making, and the interactions between the judiciary and the administrative state.

Nicholas G. Napolio
Nicholas G. Napolio is a Ph.D student in political science and Provost Fellow at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on the political ramifications of institutional structures and procedures, and how the vertically and horizontally fragmented American political system enables or constrains elite preferences.

Joseph Saraceno
Joseph (Joey) Saraceno is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science and Elizabeth von KleinSmid Bannerman Fellow at USC. He studies American political institutions and quantitative methodology. He has written and published research examining representation of minority interests within the U.S. Congress. As of Fall 2020, he will be the administrator of USC’s Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC).