SCG's 2022 Virtual Policy Conference

Sky Allen is the Executive Director for IE United, a collective impact table of community leaders and agents in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. Born, raised, and educated in the Inland Empire, Sky strives to uplift communities to advocate for what they need by challenging institutions and chipping away at structural issues at the local level. Prior to serving as Executive Director, Sky was the Program Director, where she fostered relationships with local community based organizations, statewide non-profit organizations, local government officials, and other regional stakeholders in order to bolster civic engagement and strengthen civic infrastructure. She led programs such as IE United's 2021 redistricting work and the organization's 2020 Census campaign. Sky first began serving the IE community as a fellow with the Warehouse Worker Resource Center after graduating from UC Riverside with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. She is currently a graduate student in the Master of Public Policy program at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Isaac Bryan was elected in May 2021 to represent California's 54th Assembly District, which consists of Baldwin Hills, Cheviot Hills, the Crenshaw district, Century City, Culver City, Ladera Heights, Mar Vista, Palms, Rancho Park, Westwood and parts of South Los Angeles and Inglewood.
Prior to his election to the Assembly, Isaac served as the founding Director of the UCLA Black Policy Project – a think tank dedicated to advancing racial equity through rigorous policy analysis – served as the first Director of Public Policy at the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center, as well as Director of Organizing for the nationally recognized Million Dollar Hoods project, a community-based participatory research project.
Isaac also co-chaired the successful Measure J campaign in Los Angeles County, a ballot measure that allocated hundreds of millions of dollars a year to address racial injustice and strengthen communities. Measure J sets aside money for investment in youth development, small business support, job training, alternatives to incarceration, affordable housing, community mental health and substance abuse treatment, and other systems of care.
Isaac is a community organizer, highly regarded policy expert, and a published academic. He authored the first holistic report for the City of Los Angeles on the needs of the formerly incarcerated Angelenos, and exposed a gap in youth justice policy – research that was ultimately used by then Senator Holly J. Mitchell to advance SB439. His academic and organizing work has been at the intersection of environmental, economic, education and housing justice.
These issues aren’t just academic or policy questions – they are deeply personal. Isaac grew up in a family of fifteen, as one of nine adopted children. Several members of his family have struggled with houselessness, faced incarceration, and have struggled with substance abuse and mental health challenges.
Isaac has a Masters in Public Policy from UCLA, and lives in Los Angeles.

Christine Essel joined SCG as President and CEO on February 1, 2013. As president, she sets the strategic direction and priorities for the organization, overseeing programming, communications, member services and public policy. Prior to joining SCG, Essel held leadership roles in the government, corporate, philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, where she has shaped legislation and public and corporate policy. She brings a wealth of experience to SCG including a deep knowledge of the region and a passion for forging creative solutions to complex community challenges, along with extensive relationships and expertise in corporate philanthropy, finance, real estate development, government and community relations. For over three decades, she worked at Paramount Pictures, serving as Senior Vice President, Government and Community Affairs, a department she built from the ground up. In that role, she was responsible for the studio’s philanthropic efforts and for shaping Paramount’s civic presence while managing all political and legislative activity, corporate social responsibility and fundraising activities. During her tenure she was also responsible for overseeing in excess of $500 million in real estate development projects on the studio lot.

Most recently, she served as CEO for the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles (CRA/LA), with an annual budget exceeding $600 million, a staff of 260 employees and 32 project areas throughout the City of Los Angeles. In response to a statewide call by the legislature, Essel's leadership helped lay a critical foundation for the dissolution of the agency, leading to a successful redistribution of resources for schools and local governments, while ensuring the completion of many crucial affordable housing projects and other developments vitally important to the economic growth of the region.

She has been named to numerous Boards and Commissions over the years, serving as chair of the California Film Commission, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, the Hollywood Community Advisory Council, Alternative Living for the Aging and Central City Association. She also served as Vice‐Chair of the California Workforce Investment Board and FilmLA and was a member of the powerful Los Angeles World Airports Commission, Grand Avenue Project Joint Powers Authority and Los Angeles Development Fund. Essel has been honored by esteemed organizations such as City of Hope, National Women’s Political Committee, Alternative Living for the Aging, Weingart Center Partners, Central City Association and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. In 2016, she received the Leader of the Year Award from the Southern California Leadership Network. She has been named to the Non‐Profit Times “Power and Influence Top 50” for the past two years (2016 and 2017).

Shimica Gaskins is the President & CEO of GRACE & End Child Poverty CA. She has worked in law and public policy specializing in legislative, regulatory and policy issues associated with criminal justice reform and children’s rights. Prior to joining GRACE, she was executive director of Children’s Defense Fund-California, where she led statewide advocacy, policy, program and organizing efforts to ensure access to quality affordable health coverage and care for children and low-income families, reform the juvenile justice system, promote educational equity, end child poverty, and improve outcomes for children of color. She formerly served as the Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (OLP) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) where she worked to develop and implement innovative policy initiatives of the department and administration in areas such as smart on crime, law enforcement and emerging technologies, prison reform, reentry, and issues affecting children with incarcerated parents. Prior to joining DOJ, she was in private practice at Covington & Burling LLP where she managed complex civil litigation. Shimica began her career as a law clerk for the Honorable Roger L. Gregory on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the Honorable Victoria Roberts on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Shimica serves on the boards of Impact Justice, California Budget & Policy Center, and the Liberty Hill Foundation and is a commissioner on the LA County Commission for Children and Families.

Shimica earned her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and graduated cum laude with BA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America.

Her writings have appeared in USA Today, Sacramento Bee, Los Angeles Daily News, CalMatters, and legal journals.

Jeremy Gaspar-Lahoud is a fourth generation, mixed race Arab American and white organizer who has worked for and with grassroots organizations focused on youth organizing for racial and social justice since 1994. In 2004, he joined Californians for Justice as Long Beach Lead Organizer and subsequently served as Organizing Co-Director in 2007-2008 and Executive Director from 2009-2012. Prior to moving to California, he spent a decade organizing for racial and educational justice with African American, Latinx, and Palestinian youth at the Southwest Youth Collaborative in Chicago. Since 2018, Jeremy has served as Co-Director of Youth Organize! California. Jeremy lives in South Los Angeles on Tongva land with his partner, Maria, a high school social studies teacher, and their three children, Adila, Tecún, and Amar.

Josh Green focuses on reforming overly punitive criminal and juvenile justice systems and supporting and developing policies that meaningfully address the needs of residents in high violence areas. Josh partners with communities and individuals to reform overbroad gang suppression strategies. He also develops and advocates for system level reforms through UPI’s work on reforming the Los Angeles Probation Department and supporting the creation of the Los Angeles Office of Youth Diversion and Development. Josh currently serves as a member of the Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council (JJCC) and as the co-chair of the JJCC’s Community Advisory Committee. He also serves on several of the County’s justice advisory bodies, including the CCJCC Youth Diversion Subcommittee and the County’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Safety.
Previously, Josh served as the Equal Justice Works Fellow at Advancement Project, sponsored by Munger, Tolles & Olson, LLP and Edison International. As a fellow, Josh developed and implemented a program to minimize the negative consequences of civil gang injunctions in Los Angeles communities and to provide representation to individuals who believed that they had been wrongly added to a gang injunction. Prior to his work as a fellow at Advancement Project, Josh graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice.

Dr. Kyra R. Greene joined the Center on Policy Initiatives’ staff in 2014 and became the Executive Director in June 2017.

Dr. Greene earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University. She also holds a B.A. in Social Sciences from Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Her past research has focused on social movement messaging/framing, legislative processes, and public policies affecting the lives of people of color and people with disabilities.

Before joining CPI, Dr. Greene was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University. She served as an instructor in sociological courses on public policy at both Rider University and Stanford University.

Presently, Dr. Greene serves on numerous boards. She is the Chair of the Engage San Diego Action Fund and Board Chair of PowerSwitch Action.

Mary Ignatius is the Statewide Organizer of Parent Voices, a parent-led grassroots organizing effort fighting to make quality child care accessible and affordable for all families. As the Statewide Organizer since August 2005, she coordinates the work of its 12 chapters and implements the leadership development model Parent Voices has crafted for 25 years. Under her tenure, Parent Voices has won the most progressive child care eligibility policies in the nation, restored a child care program that was eliminated, and protected child care subsidies for thousands of families.

Born and raised in the Bay Area by Indian immigrants and as a mother of 2 budding feminist sons, Mary's commitment to social and economic justice is both personal and political. She holds a Master of Social Work in Administration and Social Planning from Temple University and a Bachelor of Social Work from Rutgers University. She was a fellow of the Ms. Foundation for Women's OpEd Project-Public Voices program and received the Foundation’s prestigious Woman of Vision Award in April 2016. In 2018, Mary joined the Assembly's Blue Ribbon Commission on Early Care and Education as a Community Commissioner. In 2019, she was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom for three years to serve as the Co-Chair of the Parent Advisory Committee to the state's Early Childhood Policy Council.


Her previous experience includes work with the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, Instructor- City College of San Francisco, and Project SURVIVE. Mary loves to travel and is inspired by the curiosity and wonder that her sons bring to this world.

Lindsay Imai Hong is the California Director of Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network, where she organizes employers of nannies, house cleaners, and home attendants and their families to partner with domestic workers to transform the care economy to ensure that all Californians can live, work and age with dignity.  Her organizing work has contributed to the passage of the Ca Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, the first statewide Domestic Workers Rights Education and Outreach Program and the San Francisco-based Support at Home Program.  Prior to joining Hand in Hand in 2013, Lindsay worked on issues of racial equity in Bay Area transportation and housing policy at Urban Habitat and community reinvestment policy with The Greenlining Institute. 

Jennifer Ito is the Research Director at the USC Equity Research Institute. Her primary focus has been to advance an understanding of, dialogue about, and funding towards building power among historically excluded communities by developing data-driven frameworks and tools for key learning and strategizing opportunities. She is currently exploring measures of community power-building processes and efforts directed at structural change and linkages to the forms of change that increased community power produces. Before joining USC, she was the Research Director for Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education. Appointed by the California Assembly Speaker, she served on the California Commission on the 21st Century Economy in 2009. In 2015, she served on the California State Controller’s Council of Economic Advisors. She currently serves on the boards of the Economic Roundtable, Asian Pacific Environmental Network Action, and Liberty Hill Foundation. She holds a Masters in Urban Planning from UCLA.

Felicia Jones is the Managing Director of Programs & Operations with Social Good Solutions and is responsible
for leading program strategy, development, and implementation across the firm’s portfolio of services; and
ensuring operational effectiveness in the firm’s business practices.
She has extensive experience as a non-profit leader, she has spearheaded and facilitated multiple collective impact efforts bringing communities and institutions together to advance racial equity through creation of new institutional policies, practices, and investments in racial equity. In her former role as Deputy Director with Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE), she co-lead a community effort leading the county of San Bernardino to declare racism a public health crisis and to initiate a series of internal reforms to address racial equity.

While serving as a co-chair, she helped to establish the Black Equity Fund, a pooled fund effort and partnership between the Inland Empire Community Foundation and the Inland Empire Black Equity Initiative to strengthen and scale Black-led and empowering organizations’ sustainability and capacity to lead regional systems change work. She also served on the design and implementation committees and now the interim governance board of a new entity, the Innovation-Center (i-Center). The i-Center is a effort to build infrastructure through a network of Centers to deepen the capacity, impact, and sustainability of California’s grassroots movements for racial and social transformation

She was born and raised in South Los Angeles and is a graduate of Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles, California. She resides in San Bernardino county.

Nicole Jorwic is the Chief of Advocacy and Campaigns at Caring Across Generations, an organization building a movement of all ages and backgrounds to transform the way we care. Before joining Caring Across Generations, Nicole was the Senior Executive Officer of Policy at The Arc, a national community-based organization advocating for and serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. Prior to joining The Arc Nicole served as Senior Policy Advisor for the state of Illinois. Prior to that appointment, Nicole served as the CEO/President of the Institute on Public Policy for People with Disabilities where she continued the Institute’s mission to improve the lives of people with disabilities, paid care workers, and families, and assisted the leadership of the state of Illinois in developing public policy driven best practices in serving individuals with disabilities. Nicole is also an accomplished special education attorney and an advocate for students with disabilities. Nicole co-chairs the Disability and Aging Collaborative, the Consortium with Disabilities LTSS Taskforce, is on the board of Allies for Independence and the National Association of Direct Support Professionals. Nicole is also a family caregiver, her brother Chris is 32 and has autism.

Maria Guadalupe Lozano is the owner of Medicinas Lupita. Maria provides individual counseling/therapy to folks in her private practice. In these roles as a post-partum doula and clinical therapist, Maria helps new parents and mujeres navigate an ocean of emotions while living through transitions and changes in their lives by holding space for words, breath, and sips of tea as they regain empowerment to reconnect to their innate power.
Maria has over 15 years working in Los Angeles County contracted community mental health agencies working with her teams as a case manager, clinician, and supervisor to ensure that the families, mothers, and teens they worked with were supported and linked to community resources, provided with psycho-education and empowered to self-advocate in order to reach their optimum goal and outcome for their healing journey.
Maria is a licensed clinical therapist, with a Masters in Social Work from Cal State Long Beach. She is a Certified Lactation Educator and 200-HR Certified Yoga Teacher. Maria integrates holistic approaches and evidenced based tools to support the individuals and families she works with.

Padmini Parthasarathy is a social sector leader with a proven record of success in philanthropy, nonprofits, and local government, and expertise in economic, racial, and gender justice, and public health. Padmini is the Principal & Founder of Sāmya Strategies, an independent consulting firm serving the philanthropic and nonprofit sector. Prior to launching her consulting practice, Padmini served for eight years in various roles in philanthropy, including as strategist for justice, equity, and learning and senior program officer for economic security at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund; and program director at The California Wellness Foundation overseeing statewide grantmaking to advance the Affordable Care Act and health care reform, and promote employment and asset-building opportunities. Before that, Padmini was a program manager for Kaiser Permanente, where she managed its nationwide Community Health Needs Assessment, and she worked for Contra Costa Health Services’ Family, Maternal and Child Health Programs, leading an initiative to incorporate asset building and social determinants of health approaches into maternal and child health programs.

Padmini’s leadership and volunteer experience includes currently serving on the board of directors of Cardea Service and having served on the boards of Asset Funders Network, American Foundation of Suicide Prevention, and March of Dimes. She was 2020-21 Council on Foundations Career Pathways fellow, a fellow in Grantmakers in Health’s Terrance Keenan Institute for Emerging Leaders in Health Philanthropy, and an inaugural member of the Justice Funders’ Harmony Initiative leadership program.

Padmini earned her master’s degree in public health from UC Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and social behavior, with a minor in sociology, from UC Irvine.

Carmen Perez is an award-winning, internationally-known civil and human rights leader and Chicana feminist. She is the President & CEO of The Gathering for Justice, co-founder of Justice League NYC and Justice League CA, two state-based task forces for advancing a juvenile and criminal justice reform agenda, where she spearheaded campaigns to Free Meek Mill and Take a Knee with Colin Kaepernick, among many others. She was one of the National Co-Chairs of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, which drew over 5 million people across the globe. Carmen is also the co-founder of Poderistas and is on the Advisory Board of Monogram. In addition to being named one of Fortune’s Top 50 World Leaders, one of TIME’s 100 most influential people, Glamour Women of the Year and Forbes’ 100 Mujeres Mas Poderosas, Carmen has also been a featured speaker at Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of California - Santa Cruz and she has been featured in numerous media outlets including Forbes, TIME, Newsweek, MSNBC, Univision, ELLE, Glamour, Bustle, Common Dreams and more.

Adriana Ramos-Yamamoto, Policy Analyst, conducts research and analysis on issues that impact the health and well-being of Californians with the goal of advancing health equity: ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to be healthy and thrive, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, income, or zip code. While her work is primarily focused on health care and behavioral health, Adriana also supports the Budget Center’s work on the social determinants of health, recognizing that a wide range of budget and policy decisions can positively impact the health and well-being of Californians.

Prior to joining the Budget Center, Adriana worked as a health policy associate at The Children’s Partnership and as a graduate student intern and health educator at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Adriana earned her master’s degree in public health from the University of Southern California and her bachelor’s degree in government from Claremont McKenna College.

Adriana hails from Wildomar, California and is a daughter of Mexican immigrants. She usually spends her free time creating Spotify playlists or playing video games.

<p>Erik Saucedo is a State Policy Fellow at the California Budget &amp; Policy Center. Erik is a former high school teacher and taught in Sacramento. Recently, he was a program coordinator with the Pipeline Project at the University of Washington focusing on academic support for K-12 students in low-income communities in Seattle. Erik received a master’s degree in education from the University of Washington where he focused on researching alternatives to high school graduation for immigrant youth and access to advanced courses for students of color. He holds a bachelor’s degree in sociocultural anthropology from the University of California, Davis.</p>

David C. Turner III is an activist scholar from Inglewood, California. He earned his Ph.D. in the Social and Cultural Studies in Education program at UC Berkeley, where his research focuses on youth-based social movements, political identity, and resistance to the prison regime. He has published numerous articles and book chapters, including manuscripts in the American Educational Research Journal and the Berkeley Review of Education. As a seasoned community organizer and educator, Dr. Turner brings over a decade of experience to the classroom and community organizing, having worked to negotiate and win demands for racial justice, secure funding, divest resources from punitive and harmful institutions, and coordinate direct actions across the state of California and the nation, all while teaching at both the K-12 and the postsecondary level.

Dr. Turner worked in LA County with Boys and Men of Color at the Brothers, Sons, Selves Coalition, where he co-led campaigns to change school discipline practices, support investments in youth development, and end policies and practices that lead to criminalization in communities of color. David has taught hip hop, research methods, political science, Africana studies, comparative Ethnic studies, and education courses. Dr. Turner has participated in the movement for Black lives as a political education and research specialist, helping organizations with teach-ins, designing curriculum, and community-based participatory action research surveys. Dr. Turner has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, NBC BLK, the Los Angeles Times, Spectrum 1 News, and the New York Times for his activism. David is currently a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. Starting in the fall 2022, Dr. Turner will join the Department of Social Welfare in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA as an Assistant Professor of Black Life and Racial Justice.