Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation

Fellowship Year: 2012

Academic Background: UC Berkeley - PhD 2013- (City and Regional Planning)

Currently Working On: Dissertation on the relationship, if any, between food policy and changes in access in urban food deserts.

Lisa is a PhD candidate in City & Regional Planning at the University of California Berkeley. She understands planning as a tool for advancing social and environmental equity and justice. A policy wonk since childhood, her dissertation focuses on San Francisco as a case study to explore the disconnection between policy and food access in low-income urban communities of color. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Lisa was the founding director of a California-based program that educated public health and nutrition professionals in land use planning processes, politics and law to give them the tools necessary to partner with land use planners to incorporate health into planning decisions at the front end of the planning process. At the cutting edge of this nascent movement, Lisa developed curriculum, taught planning, and provided technical assistance throughout California and the nation. She has authored the textbook General Plans and Zoning: A Toolkit on Land Use and Health and is a co-author of the textbook Economic Development and Redevelopment: A Toolkit on Land Use and Health. She has also written a number of articles for a variety of publications. Lisa’s extensive career includes work in affordable housing finance and policy, labor, planning, and local government, and she remains closely engaged with work in these communities. Professionally, Lisa plans to pursue her love of teaching at an urban public university, where she can work with lower income students, many of whom are people of color. As a woman of African-American descent who grew up in low-income, inner city East Harlem, she has found that she often has a perspective on planning that her colleagues do not share, a deficiency that is compounded by the dearth of faculty of color in the profession. A longtime resident of San Francisco but a lifelong New Yorker at heart, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their teenage daughter, eating locally, baking, and dabbling in the blood sport that is San Francisco politics.

Expertise: Architecture & Urban Planning, Sustainable Ag / Food Policy, Land / Open Space / Smart Growth