Bill Parent is Associate Dean for Advancement and director of the Policy Forum at the UCLA School of Public Affairs (SPA). He oversees external programs for the School and develops executive education and conference programs. He teaches the first course on Leadership in the Public Sector offered by SPA to undergraduates. He has taught leadership in the public interest to the senior command of the Los Angeles Police Department, the Southern California Leadership Network and the California Association of Leadership Programs, as well to government officials in Beijing and Tianjin, China. He recently designed the original framework for an Executive Master in Public Administration (EMPA) program for Mid-Career Professionals at UCLA, which is now under faculty review. Before coming to UCLA, Bill was on the senior staff of the John F. Kennedy School of Government for 14 years, ending with the four-year stint as executive director Harvard University’s Innovations in American Government Program, the largest single-grant program of the Ford Foundation. He was also Teaching Fellow in Harvard College. A former newspaper reporter and public school administrator, Bill worked in the Paterson, New Jersey, and New York City school systems. He holds a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has published articles in Urban Age, The Washington Post, New England Monthly, and The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, New Perspectives Quarterly, and writes the annual chapter on state political challenges in California Policy Options.

VC Powe
Executive Director of External Programs
Phone: (310) 206-4776
Fax: (310) 206-5773
E-mail: powe@spa.ucla.edu

VC Powe is Executive Director of External Programs at the UCLA School of Public Affairs. She is responsible for the development and implementation of comprehensive dialogue programs that inform and educate the UCLA community and SPA constituents including students, faculty, donors, friends, alumni, government officials, and the general public. She manages the Senior Fellows Program, which brings accomplished policy leaders onto campus to share ideas and enrich students' educational experiences by participating as mentors. She is also responsible for Government Relations, Special Events and Protocol, and Alumni Relations. VC has taught "Strategies for Writing Public Service Announcements" for Social Welfare classes and facilitates workshops and seminars. She has initiated partnerships to co-sponsor at UCLA such major events as "Los Angeles County: Health Care in Crisis" and "Panel on Decision 2000: What Matters and Why" during the 2000 Democratic National Convention. Prior to coming to SPA, VC was Director of Professional and Academic Programs, and Director of Student Recruitment Programs for the UCLA Alumni Association. Her corporate work experience includes Marketing Research Project Manager at the Los Angeles Times and Newspaper Advertising Manager at the May Company (now Robinsons-May). She is a business management instructor at Los Angeles City College and a certified trainer. VC is a member of the Southern California Leadership Network, the American Society for Public Administration, and The UCLA Anderson School of Management's Alumni Civic Leadership Initiative. She received her MBA and BA in English from UCLA and holds professional certifications in Organization and Human Resource Development (sponsored by the American Society for Training and Development) and Online Teaching from UCLA Extension.

Stan Paul is Director of Communications for the UCLA School of Public Affairs. He serves as the School’s liaison for media relations, oversees content on the School’s Web site, and manages production of School publications. He has designed and edited a wide range of SPA special publications including: Impact LA: The Work of the UCLA School of Public Affairs in the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County; annual surveys of the Los Angeles nonprofit sector for the Center for Civil Society; and The Concord Handbook: How to Build Social Capital Across Communities.

NEIGHBORHOOD KNOWLEDGE RESEARCH CENTER

Neal Richman, Associate Director
Phone: 310-825-0577
Email: nrichman@ucla.edu

Neal Richman is on the faculty of the UCLA Department of Urban Planning, where he teaches courses in community development, with a specialization in housing. Dr. Richman has consulted on community development and neighborhood revitalization both domestically and internationally, and has contributed to the production of more than 1,000 affordable housing units in the Southern California region. He has lectured and published widely on the topic of community development, and oversees the Advanced Policy Institutes’, Community Information Technology Center.

Yoh Kawano, Information Technology
Phone: 310-825-5435
Email: yohman@ucla.edu

Yoh Kawano is the Director of Information Technology at UCLA's Advanced Policy Institute. He has been actively involved in integrating community development with innovations in information technology, and has conceptualized and implemented landmark projects such as Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles (http://nkla.ucla.edu) which provides access to a searchable database for information on property tax delinquencies, code violations, and other city and county data. With his internet mapping skills, he has developed the Mapping interface for NKLA. Mr. Kawano also has experience with a variety of web-technologies and database integration tools including HTML, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Visual Basic, MapObjects Server, and SQL Server. Mr. Kawano has a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from the International Christian University in Tokyo, and received his Master's Degree in Urban Planning from UCLA in 1997.

Alan Toy, Living Independently in LA Phone: 310-825-5435 Email: atoy@ucla.edu

Alan is a lifelong activist/organizer in the disability community, working to increase individual and community-based empowerment. He is a Project Director at the UCLA Policy Forum’s Neighborhood Knowledge Research Center, in the School of Public Affairs, where he is the manager of several online projects that assist people with disabilities with their day-to-day independent living needs; coordinate disaster management volunteer trainings and opportunities; and map a wide variety of community health resources . Previously, he was a senior organizer for the Los Angeles Homecare Workers Union, where his work on In-Home Supportive Services policy issues was critical to the development of a model IHSS Public Authority in LA County to improve the personal assistance programs for both consumers and workers. After SEIU, Alan was the Senior Executive Analyst at Access Services, Los Angeles County’s paratransit agency, where he wrote and got enacted legislation beneficial to California’s paratransit agencies. As an actor for over 25 years, Alan has worked to bring changes to the way people with disabilities are portrayed in entertainment media. He has over 200 television and film credits and was the co-founder of the Hollywood SAG-AFTRA-AEA Inter-Guild Committee of Performers with Disabilities. Alan’s film and TV jobs have included playing “Professor Finley,” the nasty cult leader on “Beverly Hills 90210,” as well as a wide variety of characters - parents, lawyers, doctors, scientists, veterans, teachers – in “In the Line of Fire,” “Kansas,” “Equal Justice,” “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Matlock,” “Profiler,” “Diagnosis Murder,” “Highway to Heaven,” “M*A*S*H” and many others, including the upcoming Martin Scorsese film, “The Aviator.” He served on the Board of the Media Access Office, which consults with industry leaders about disability portrayals and casting. Alan is also a twice-elected member (and currently vice-chair)of the Santa Monica Rent Control Board and has served on that city’s Social Services Commission. He is an appointee of former Governor Gray Davis to the California State Independent Living Council, where he is the 2004 vice-chair. He is also currently the Treasurer of the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Southern California. Alan has a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a Masters degree in Urban Planning from the UCLA School of Public Affairs.

Charanjeet Singh, Neighborhood Knowledge California (NKCA)
Phone: 310-825-5435
Email: charan@ucla.edu

Charanjeet Singh holds a Masters degree in Planning from the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), India. Currently he is pursuing graduate studies in the Urban Planning program at UCLA. His experience comprises of working on diverse research projects pertaining to urban Planning Issues in India including urban management, needs assessment, etc. he has also been involved in land suitability assessment studies using GIS and remote sensing data. Charanjeet also has experience in real estate development and project finance and management. At API he has been working on Web technologies and database integration tools including HTML, ColdFusion, Arc IMS and SQL Server.