Staff

Fernando J. Guerra, Ph.D.
Director



Fernando J. Guerra, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. Dr. Guerra served as Assistant to the President for Faculty Resources from 1992-96. He is a tenured Associate Professor of Political Science and Chicana/o Studies, and has served as Chairman of the Chicano Studies Department, Director of the American Cultures program and Director of the Summer in Mexico program. He has been on the faculty at Loyola Marymount University, since 1984.

Dr. Guerra earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, and his B.A. in International Relations, with a University Certificate in Latin American Studies, from the University of Southern California in 1980. Dr. Guerra was born and raised in the Northeast section of Los Angeles where he attended Franklin High School. He is currently a resident of Westchester, a community in the City of Los Angeles.

Dr. Guerra has written numerous scholarly articles and has also contributed to popular publications. His area of scholarly work is in state and local governance and urban and ethnic politics. He is currently working on a book on the political empowerment of Latinos in California.

Dr. Guerra has also served as a source for the mass media. He has been quoted in approximately 500 news stories by over twenty publications including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, La Opinión, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Business Week, The Economist and media outlets in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He has appeared on CNN, NBC’s Today Show, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, Fox National News and numerous local television news/public affairs shows, including Life and Times, where he also served as an occasional co-host.

Dr. Guerra serves as a Gubernatorial appointee to the California Historical Resources Commission and previously served on the Blue Ribbon Committee on the Marine Life Protection Act. Locally, he served as a Mayoral appointee to the Board of Transportation Commission and on the Board of Rent Adjustment Commission for the City of Los Angeles. He served on the Racial Harmony and Ethnic Discourse Committee for a “Rebuild L.A.” Task Force and on advisory committees for community and governmental organizations such as the Air Quality Management District’s Ethnic Community Advisory Committee and a similar committee for the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. He was also selected as a stakeholder for the Latino community in the State’s Growth Management Consensus Project. Dr. Guerra has served as a board member of various non-profit organizations in Los Angeles and has been an active member of professional organizations, such as the American Political Science Association, the Western Political Science Association, and the National Association for Chicano Studies. He has served on the Executive Council of the WPSA and the Executive Council of the Urban Section of the APSA as well as serving on other APSA committees. Dr. Guerra has delivered public lectures at Harvard University, Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, USC, UCLA and other universities.

Dr. Guerra is married to Kathleen Guerra (Greene) and they have three children, Adam Carlos, Steven Javier, and Emily Joyce.

fguerra@lmu.edu



Jennifer L. Magnabosco, Ph.D.
Associate Director and Senior Research Associate






Prior to joining the Center in September 2006, Dr. Magnabosco held management, research and clinical practice positions in both public and private sector organizations, including Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Social Work Practice at Columbia University; Associate Policy Researcher of the RAND Corporation; Project Associate of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Mental Health Policy Research Network; and Health Science Research/Formative Evaluation/Survey Specialist, Co-Investigator and Project Director of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs-RAND-UCLA Center of Excellence for the Study of Healthcare Provider Behavior. For the last few years she has served as consultant to the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health.

Dr. Magnabosco’s research has focused on the implementation, improvement and evaluation of government and community-based human services and systems, especially mental health. Her research interests include the analysis of social policy, planning and implementation; organizational change (e.g., translating research into mental health administrative practice), outcomes/performance measurement, quality improvement, and the impact of political culture and politics on human service delivery systems; the development of workforce competency models for public sector organizations; evidence based mental health and health care; and vulnerable populations (e.g. persons with serious mental illness). Her publications include articles in Implementation Science, Administration in Policy Mental Health & Mental Health Services Research, Psychiatric Services, and Obesity Research; book reviews in Administration in Social Work; book chapters; and working reports for the RAND Corporation and the MacArthur Foundation. She is co-editor of the best selling NASW Press book, Outcomes Measurement in the Human Services: Cross-Cutting Issues and Methods. Dr. Magnabosco is a reviewer for academic journals, has been a Technical Reviewer for the Department of Health & Human Services, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, and served as a national and local leader on alumni Board of Directors for two universities. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Policy Administration from Columbia University, and a M.A. in Social Science-Concentration in Human Development and B.A. in Behavioral Science from the University of Chicago. She is currently a member of the University of Chicago Southern California Leadership Council and a former Vice President of the University of Chicago National Alumni Board of Governors and National Board of Governors Member for the Columbia University School of Social Work.


jmagnabo@lmu.edu



Mara A. Marks, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow
Assistant Professor, Urban Studies


Dr. Marks's research focuses primarily on the politics of land use policy and racial and ethnic politics. She has engaged hundreds of students in Leavey Center research. Her publications include articles in Urban Affairs Review, National Civic Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Southern California Quarterly. Dr. Marks earned her B.A. in political science from Colorado College and her Ph.D. in political science from UCLA. Prior to joining LMU, she held postdoctoral fellowships with the Sustainable Communities Leadership Program and with the University of Southern California. She has served as Associate Director of The Leavey Center and consultant to several public and private organizations, including Los Angeles World Airports, the Southern California Association of Governments, the California Assembly Commission on State and Local Finance, and the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission. Currently, Dr. Marks is a senior research fellow with The Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles. She has also been a featured speaker for meetings of various civic, governmental, and private industry groups.

mmarks@lmu.edu



Matt A. Barreto, Ph.D.
Research Scholar and Statistician



Dr. Barreto has been a research scholar with The Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles since 2002 and is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. His primary area of research expertise is Latino political participation and he has published numerous academic articles on Latino voting patterns, urban politics, and political behavior. In 2002 Dr. Barreto collaborated with Drs. Mara Marks and Nathan Woods on research concerning race relations in Los Angeles 10 years after the Rodney King riots, and their research article was published in the Urban Affairs Review. Dr. Barreto’s work on voting and elections has resulted in several interesting research projects conducted by the Center, including the precinct quality assessment, the 2003 absentee voter survey, and the 2005 Los Angeles Mayoral exit poll. Dr. Barreto has published several articles including, “The Effect of Latino Candidates on Latino and non-Latino Voters: New Evidence from Five Mayoral Elections,” in the American Political Science Review. He also published, “Latino Immigrants at the Polls: Foreign-born Voter Turnout in the 2002 Election,” for the Political Research Quarterly. Dr. Barreto received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine.

mbarreto@uci.edu



Nathan Woods, Ph.D.
Research Scholar and Statistician




Nathan D.Woods is an economist with Welch Consulting, a consulting firm specializing in labor economics and statistical analysis. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the Claremont Graduate University’s School of Politics and Economics. His published research concerns the
application of statistics to answering questions surrounding political representation, public opinion, and participation. His research is published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, the American Review of Politics, and the Urban Affairs Review. He serves currently as a research scholar with the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Southern California.

nwoods@welchon.com



Stephen Nuno
Research Associate



Prior to joining the Leavey Center in December 2006 as Research Associate, Mr. Nuno was Research Consultant and Scholar with the Leavey Center for almost two years. He was co-researcher and project director for the Center’s 2005 Los Angeles Mayoral Election Exit Poll, participated in the development of the Latino Coalition’s surveys, was co-researcher on the 2006 New American Exit Poll in Los Angeles (a three-city project between academic institutions and community organizations) and conducted secondary analyses using Center data. As Research Associate, Mr. Nuno continues to conduct data analyses using Center data, and collaborate with other colleagues, to write peer-reviewed published articles. He is co-researcher for the Center’s Los Angels Riots: A 15 Year Retrospective and Leadership Initiative projects. Mr. Nuno has served as a private consultant on several research projects focusing on Latino political behavior for several organizations.

Mr. Nuno is also a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, finishing his dissertation. In this project he is using a multi-method approach to examine the interactive effect between partisanship and ethnicity on partisan efforts to mobilize Latinos. He conducted his own 2006 Congressional Election Exit Poll in Orange County as part of this project. Mr. Nuno has published several articles, including “Controversies in Exit Polling: Implementing a Racially Stratified Homogenous Precinct Approach”, in Political Science & Politics. His article in American Politics Research, “Latino Mobilization and Vote Choice in the 2000 Presidential Election”, uses multivariate statistical analysis to determine whether or not Latinos who were contacted by Democrats and Republicans were more likely to vote for Al Gore and George W. Bush. He is a member of several academic and professional groups that focus on ethnic politics, including the American Political Science Association’s Latino Caucus, the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and the Politics of Race, Immigration and Ethnicity Colloquium. A proud native of Los Angeles, Mr. Nuno is a graduate of Loyola High School and UCLA where he earned a B.A. in Political Science.

stephenanuno@gmail.com



David R. Ayón
Senior Research Associate



Ayón is U.S. Director of the binational ‘Focus Mexico/Enfoque México' project at the Center. This project, in collaboration with three other universities, is studying the political relationships of leaders of Mexican origin in the United States with Mexico. This study is the first of a planned series of projects at the Center on Los Angeles as a 'global city-region' and its reciprocal relations with the world. Ayón, formerly associate director of the California-Mexico Project at the USC School of International Relations, is a contributor to books and publications including the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States (2005); the journal Foreign Affairs en Español (which he also serves on its editorial board); México en el Mundo, an annual review of Mexico’s foreign relations; The American Prospect; and has contributed numerous essays to the op-ed and Sunday Opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times since 1983, when he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies of UC San Diego. Educated at Princeton, Stanford and El Colegio de Mexico, Ayón has taught courses on politics and U.S.-Latin American relations at six colleges and universities, including two campuses of the University of California, Stanford, USC and LMU. Ayón has also worked as analyst, consultant, and special producer for Spanish language television news during nine electoral cycles in the U.S. and three in Mexico since 1992. He is currently writing a book on the Vicente Fox presidency that focuses on Fox’s efforts to reform Mexico and transform the NAFTA relationship with the U.S. and Canada into a ‘North American Community.’

david.r.ayon@mac.com



Lisa Esparza, B.A. '00
Director of Development

Ms. Esparza is the new Director of Development for The Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles and Mexican American Alumni Association (MAAA). Prior to joining the university, she has held development positions in the private sector, and most recently for a non-profit organization. For more than 5 years Ms. Esparza was a Manager for the American Diabetes Association and was instrumental in securing funds for their signature events, galvanizing influential volunteers and partnered with Southern California businesses as well as government officials to fund diabetes research, education, and advocacy. From 1999-2001, Ms. Esparza worked for Origins Natural Resources, Inc., a subsidiary of Esteē Lauder Companies, LLC., as the Southern California Regional Marketing Assistant for department and retail stores. She began working for Esteē Lauder in 1993, as a Promotional Specialist, followed by becoming the Field Education & Development Assistant for the West Coast. Ms. Esparza has a bachelor’s degree in English from Loyola Marymount University and was a recipient of the Lewis Kingsley Scholarship.

lesparza@lmu.edu



Victoria Walsh, B.A.
Assistant Director of Media Relations
vwalsh@lmu.edu
310-338-5133



Anysia Beck, B.A.
Administrative Assistant/Communications Coordinator

Anysia Beck, B.A., Administrative Assistant/Communications Coordinato. Ms. Beck received her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in New York City. She has worked in various organizations in administrative and communications capacities, including Westside Children’s Center in Culver City, CA and The Kellen Archives Center in New York City. Ms. Beck’s experience and skills serve her well in supporting The Leavey Center’s research, educational and communications projects, managing office work flow, The Leavey Center’s website and student workers.

abeck@lmu.edu
310-338-4565