2024-2025 Board of Advisors
Stephen Aron
Stephen Aron is the retired President and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West. A specialist in the history of frontiers, borderlands, and the American West, he was on the faculty at UCLA since 1996. For many years, he held a concurrent appointment at the Autry Museum, first as the founding executive director and then chair of the Institute for the Study of the American West. In his dual roles as a professor and museum professional, he sought to bridge the divide between “academic” and “public” history.
Janet Clayton
Janet Clayton was the senior vice president of corporate communications for Southern California Edison and its parent company Edison International, where she was a member of the managing committee. Janet Clayton is now the senior strategist at VectisDC, a public relations and public affairs agency headquartered in El Segundo. Prior to Edison, Clayton had a distinguished career at the Los Angeles Times as a reporter, California Editor and Editor of the Editorial Pages, where she was the editor of two Pulitzer Prize-winning series on the chronically homeless and the dysfunction of California government.
Anthea Hartig
Anthea M. Hartig is the Elizabeth MacMillan Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the first woman to hold the position since the museum opened in 1964. Hartig oversees 231 employees, a budget of over $54.5 million and a collection that includes 1.8 million objects and more than three shelf-miles of archives. She officially began her tenure Feb. 18, 2019. Hartig succeeded John Gray, who served as the museum’s director from 2012 to 2018.
Justin Jampol
Justin Jampol is the founder and current executive director of The Wende Museum of the Cold War. Justin graduated from UCLA in 2000 with a B.A. in history. He earned his PhD at Oxford University. His work focuses on the connection between contemporary art and Cold War iconography. He is also the host and consulting producer of the series Lost Secrets.
Alisa Belinkoff Katz
Alisa Belinkoff Katz served for nearly 30 years as Chief Deputy to Los Angeles City Councilmember and County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. Since retiring from county service in 2014, Alisa has served as Associate Director of the “Los Angeles Initiative” at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She is a Fellow of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy where she served as lead author of a history of rent control in Los Angeles.
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris is the Interim Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, a former Associate Dean, a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and a core faculty member of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative. Professor Loukaitou-Sideris’ research focuses on the public environment of the city, its physical representation, aesthetics, social meaning and impact on the urban resident. Her work seeks to integrate social and physical issues in urban planning and architecture. An underlying theme of her work is its “user focus”; that is, she seeks to analyze and understand the built environment from the perspective of those who live and work there.
Meyer Luskin
Meyer Luskin has been the President and Chief Executive Officer of Scope Industries since 1961. Mr. Luskin serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Scope Products Inc. The company makes high-calorie animal feed from bakery waste. He is responsible primarily for the formation of overall corporate policy and operations of Scope Industries’ main business groups. Mr. Luskin is founder of several companies and has been on the board of directors of various entities, including companies on the New York Stock exchange, American Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ He is a director and formerly Chair of the Board of Advisors of the UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital, a director and formerly Chair of the Board of Directors of the Orthopaedic Institute for Children, a board director of the Jazz Bakery, the Alliance for College Ready Public Schools, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the Luskin Center for Innovation, and the UCLA Foundation. He is also currently a member of the board of directors of OSI, Inc., a NASDAQ company in the security and health care industries. He also serves on their executive, audit, and compensation committees.
Janina Montero
Janina Montero is the UCLA Emerita Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs. During her 13 year tenure, she has overseen more than 20 departments and programs that aim to improve students’ quality of life on and off campus. (e.g., Enrollment Management, the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center, the UCLA Career Center).
Rosalind Remer
Rosalind Remer holds a PhD in History from UCLA, and is a Senior Vice Provost, University Collections and Exhibitions & Executive Director, Lenfest Center for Cultural Partnerships at Drexel University. She is also an affiliated faculty member in Drexel’s Department of History. She was formerly a professor of history at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and directed the planning efforts for the National Constitution Center. Remer’s focus includes public history, museum planning, and administration.
The Honorable Zev Yaroslavsky
The Honorable Zev Yaroslavsky is the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a professor in the Department of History. As a longtime representative on the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, he has been involved in issues of transportation, environment, health care, and cultural arts.
2023-2024 Board of Advisors
Alisa Belinkoff Katz
Alisa Belinkoff Katz served for nearly 30 years as Chief Deputy to Los Angeles City Councilmember and County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. Since retiring from county service in 2014, Alisa has served as Associate Director of the “Los Angeles Initiative” at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She is a Fellow of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy where she served as lead author of a history of rent control in Los Angeles.
Renee Luskin
Renee Luskin earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1953 at UCLA. The Luskins have transformed their success with an extraordinary generosity of spirit and resources to help UCLA impact countless lives. She is an alumna, benefactor and lifelong friend of UCLA.
David N. Myers
David N. Myers is a Professor and the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA. He has written extensively in the fields of modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history, with a particular interest in the history of Jewish historiography. He has previously served as Robert N. Burr Chair of the History Department and as director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies.
Anthea Hartig
Anthea M. Hartig is the Elizabeth MacMillan Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the first woman to hold the position since the museum opened in 1964. Hartig oversees 231 employees, a budget of over $54.5 million and a collection that includes 1.8 million objects and more than three shelf-miles of archives. She officially began her tenure Feb. 18, 2019. Hartig succeeded John Gray, who served as the museum’s director from 2012 to 2018.
Stephen Aron
Stephen Aron is the retired President and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West. A specialist in the history of frontiers, borderlands, and the American West, he was on the faculty at UCLA since 1996. For many years, he held a concurrent appointment at the Autry Museum, first as the founding executive director and then chair of the Institute for the Study of the American West. In his dual roles as a professor and museum professional, he sought to bridge the divide between “academic” and “public” history.
Janet Clayton
Janet Clayton was the senior vice president of corporate communications for Southern California Edison and its parent company Edison International, where she was a member of the managing committee. Janet Clayton is now the senior strategist at VectisDC, a public relations and public affairs agency headquartered in El Segundo. Prior to Edison, Clayton had a distinguished career at the Los Angeles Times as a reporter, California Editor and Editor of the Editorial Pages, where she was the editor of two Pulitzer Prize-winning series on the chronically homeless and the dysfunction of California government.
Meyer Luskin
Meyer Luskin has been the President and Chief Executive Officer of Scope Industries since 1961. Mr. Luskin serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Scope Products Inc. The company makes high-calorie animal feed from bakery waste. He is responsible primarily for the formation of overall corporate policy and operations of Scope Industries’ main business groups. Mr. Luskin is founder of several companies and has been on the board of directors of various entities, including companies on the New York Stock exchange, American Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ He is a director and formerly Chair of the Board of Advisors of the UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital, a director and formerly Chair of the Board of Directors of the Orthopaedic Institute for Children, a board director of the Jazz Bakery, the Alliance for College Ready Public Schools, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the Luskin Center for Innovation, and the UCLA Foundation. He is also currently a member of the board of directors of OSI, Inc., a NASDAQ company in the security and health care industries. He also serves on their executive, audit, and compensation committees.
Rosalind Remer
Rosalind Remer holds a PhD in History from UCLA, and is a Senior Vice Provost, University Collections and Exhibitions & Executive Director, Lenfest Center for Cultural Partnerships at Drexel University. She is also an affiliated faculty member in Drexel’s Department of History. She was formerly a professor of history at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and directed the planning efforts for the National Constitution Center. Remer’s focus includes public history, museum planning, and administration.
The Honorable Zev Yaroslavsky
The Honorable Zev Yaroslavsky is the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a professor in the Department of History. As a longtime representative on the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, he has been involved in issues of transportation, environment, health care, and cultural arts.
Janina Montero
Janina Montero is the UCLA Emerita Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs. During her 13 year tenure, she has overseen more than 20 departments and programs that aim to improve students’ quality of life on and off campus. (e.g., Enrollment Management, the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center, the UCLA Career Center).
Gary M. Segura
Gary M. Segura is the former Dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA. His work focuses on issues of political representation and social cleavages, the domestic politics of wartime public opinion, and the politics of America’s growing Latino minority. In 2010, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Previous Board of Advisors
Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III
Lonnie G. Bunch III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian. He assumed his position June 16, 2019. As Secretary, he oversees 19 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, numerous research centers, and several education units and centers.
Previously, Bunch was the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. When he started as director in July 2005, he had one staff member, no collections, no funding and no site for a museum. Driven by optimism, determination and a commitment to build “a place that would make America better,” Bunch transformed a vision into a bold reality. The museum has welcomed more than 6 million visitors since it opened in September 2016 and compiled a collection of 40,000 objects that are housed in the first “green building” on the National Mall.
The Honorable Michael Dukakis
The Honorable Michael Dukakis was the Democratic Party Nominee for U.S. President in 1988 and served several terms as Governor of Massachusetts.He is currently a Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University and a visiting professor at the School of Public Affairs at UCLA. His research has focused on national health care policy reform and the lessons that national policy makers can learn from state reform efforts.
Carole Goldberg
Carole Goldberg is Distinguished Research Professor and the Jonathan D. Varat Distinguished Professor of Law Emerita at UCLA School of Law. She has taught Civil Procedure, Federal Indian Law, Tribal Legal Systems, the Tribal Legal Development Clinic, and the Tribal Appellate Court Clinic. The two clinics have rendered legal services to Indian tribes and Indian judicial systems. In 2006, she served as the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and in 2007 she was appointed a Justice of the Hualapai Court of Appeals. In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed her to the Indian Law and Order Commission, which investigated issues of safety and justice in tribal communities, and in 2013 issued a Final Report recommending ways to improve Indian country criminal justice. Also in 2013, the Indian Law Section of the Federal Bar Association conferred upon her its prestigious Lawrence F. Baca Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Honorable Jane Harman
The Honorable Jane Harman is the first woman director of the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. She represented California’s 36th district for several terms in the United States Congress. Her expertise includes human rights, security, terrorism, intelligence, and U.S domestic and foreign policy.
Brenda Stevenson
Brenda Elaine Stevenson is the inaugural Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women’s History at St. John’s College, Oxford University, as well as the Nickoll Family Endowed Chair in the Department of History and a Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In her role as the Clinton Chair at St. John’s, as well as her work at UCLA, Stevenson actively works to demonstrate that the study of women and their histories, particularly those which addresses women of color, is both valuable and legitimate. She continues to push the university system further towards this goal by encouraging the development of future scholars and cutting-edge scholarship on women’s histories within the historical discipline’s mainstream, while also fostering the creation of new students and schools of thought committed to advancing research on women and gender, specifically.
Raphe Sonenshein
Raphe Sonenshein is the Executive Director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. Previously, he was Chair of the Division of Politics, Administration, and Justice at CSU Fullerton where he taught political science for 29 years. Sonenshein served as Executive Director of the City of Los Angeles (Appointed) Charter Reform Commission and has since advised charter reforms in Glendale, Burbank, Culver City, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, and Tucson, and as Executive Director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Review Commission.