About CC+S
Deborah McKoy
Executive Director, PhD and MPA
Deborah L. McKoy (she/her) is the Executive Director and Founder of the UC Berkeley Center for Cities + Schools at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development and a Research Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Her research and teaching focus on the intersection of educational reform, urban & metropolitan planning, community development, and public policy.
Jeff Vincent
Director of Public Infrastructure Initiatives
Jeff Vincent co-founded CC+S with Deborah McKoy and is currently the Center’s Director of Public Infrastructure Initiatives. In this role, he leads numerous research projects and facilitates many of the center’s research and policy partnerships in California and across the country.
Shirl Buss
Y-PLAN Creative Director
Shirl Buss is a designer, educator and urban planner. For more than 25 years, Shirl has worked with children and adults on architectural, interpretive design and community development projects, with a specialty in consensus-based participation in the design process.
Sara Hinkley
California Program Manager
Sara Hinkley is the California Program Manager at CC+S. She leads the center’s work on education workforce housing and conducts research and policy analysis on equitable school facilities in California.
Deborah McKoy | Executive Director, PhD and MPA
Deborah L. McKoy is the Executive Director and Founder of the UC Berkeley Center for Cities + Schools at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development and a lecturer in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Her research and teaching focus on the intersection of educational reform, urban & metropolitan planning, community development, and public policy.
Jeff Vincent | Director of Public Infrastructure Initiatives
Jeff Vincent co-founded CC+S with Deborah McKoy and is currently the Center’s Director of Public Infrastructure Initiatives. In this role, he leads numerous research projects and facilitates many of the center’s research and policy partnerships in California and across the country.
Shirl Buss | Y-PLAN Creative Director
Shirl Buss is a designer, educator and urban planner. For more than 25 years, Shirl has worked with children and adults on architectural, interpretive design and community development projects, with a specialty in consensus-based participation in the design process.
Sara Hinkley | California Program Manager
Sara Hinkley is the California Program Manager at CC+S. She leads the center’s work on education workforce housing and conducts research and policy analysis on equitable school facilities in California.
Debbie Shen | PLUS Research Fellow
Debbie Shen (she/her) is drawn to local-level and community-centered policy interventions that re-imagine the safety and well-being of children, youth, and families. She has spent most of her career overseeing or supporting nonprofit financial, human resources, and risk management operations, including at Asset Funders Network, Safe & Sound, and Sunset Youth Services. In a past life in Washington DC, she was a program coordinator with Community Tax Aid and an auditor with KPMG’s nonprofit and governmental practices. Texan by birth, she now lives in the Bay Area with her partner, where they happily (and exhaustingly!) chase after their babies – a cheeky dimpled human and a cheese-motivated pup. Debbie is also currently a second-year MPP candidate.
Jeremy Simon | PLUS Research Fellow
Jeremy is from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He graduated from Oberlin college in 2017, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Environmental Studies and Politics. After graduating from Oberlin, Jeremy started working in the field of experiential education, working for teenage and college study abroad programs throughout Asia and Eastern Europe. More recently, Jeremy started working for Community Education Partnerships, supporting students facing housing instability throughout the East Bay. Finding critical issues intertwined within many layers of the educational system, this role heightened his interest in domestic education development and the power of the non-profit sector. Through his time at Berkeley, Jeremy aims to gain the practical skills and comprehensive approach needed to create meaningful change in the education sector. In his free time, Jeremy enjoys going on long bike rides, playing pool, and baking new desserts. Currently, Jeremy is also a second-year MDP student at Berkeley.
Ingrid Ang | PLUS Research Fellow
Ingrid Ang is a second- year MPP candidate focusing her studies on K-12 education and immigration policy. Before working full-time in education, she interned with the International Rescue Committee in Dallas, where she supported community gardening, economic empowerment, and food justice programming for refugee youth. Then, she worked as a math teacher for emergent-bilingual students at Oakland High School. In her three years at O-High, she advocated for enrichment classes for students with interrupted formal educations, co-led a newcomer web development program, and supported the creation of the school’s first academic pathway for immigrant students. After, she spent three years working at a non-profit organization whose mission is to increase access to careers in technology across the Bay Area, Chicago, and New York City. As a program manager, she managed in-school and after-school coding programs across SFUSD and OUSD. Most recently, as a senior program data and evaluation manager, she designed and led the organization’s first data strategy. Outside school, you can find her running around the East Bay or at the park with her two shepherd dogs, Stewie and Duckie!
Ruby Kosewicz-Strickland | Research Coordinator
Ruby Kosewicz-Strickland is a first-year Master’s student at UC Berkeley in the Department of City and Regional Planning, with dual-concentrations in Housing, Community, and Economic Development and Environmental Planning and Healthy Cities. She began her work with CC+S as an Administrative Coordinator as an undergraduate and is continuing on as a PLUS Convening and Project Coordination Fellow. Her academic and professional interests lie at the intersection between housing policy and educational access. Ruby is also a Graduate Student Instructor and the Recruitment Coordinator for the Berkeley Student Cooperative.
Franchesca Angelica Rodriguez | Y-PLAN Coordinator
Franchesca is a second year gradutae student studying for her Masters in City and Regional Planning with a concentration in Transportation Planning and Policy. Franchesca has participated as a Y-PLAN college mentor working closely with Oakland Unified High School students, The City of Oakland, and the Non-profit Planting Justice to encourage students as young planners to reimagine innovative green infrastructure projects across Oakland. Franchesca is currently the Y-Plan coordinator partnered with Sacramento City Unified School District and Oakland Unified School District. Prior to attending UC Berkeley, Franchesca worked as a case manager for Gang Reduction and Probation in Los Angeles working closely with formerly incarcerated youth and young adults within the system. It was through this work she became aware of the disparate impacts on recidivism rates that poor transportation planning has had and continues to have on the formerly incarcerated population. Franchesca is dedicated continuing her work uplifting BIPOC youth and young adults in city planning processes that focus on creating safe, accessible, equitable, and culturally sensitive environments.
Catherine Chiu | Administrative Coordinator
Catherine Chiu is currently a second-year undergraduate studying architecture at UC Berkeley, pursuing a double minor in City Planning and Sustainable Design. She is very excited to work as an administrative student assistant at Center for Cities + Schools this year.
Jonathan Lim-Breitbart | Technical Coordinator
Jonathan Lim-Breitbart is a designer and web developer, specializing in technologies for teaching and learning. His work has spanned a number of topics, including user interface and interaction design, front-end software development, educational research, technical and instructional support, interactive science content creation, and website design and production. He holds a Master of Information Management and Systems from UC Berkeley’s School of Information (2009) and a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Brown University (2003).
Contact: breity@berkeley.edu
Matt Gutierrez | Research Associate
Matt began his work at the Center for Cities + Schools as a Y-PLAN College Mentor in Prof. Deborah McKoy’s studio course. Drawing upon his experience as a teacher, Matt became the Y-PLAN Program Manager and coordinated K-12 educators, civic clients, and higher-ed partners as they planned and implemented Y-PLAN projects. He also oversaw the development of the Y-PLAN Digital Toolkit, which offers a suite of free, civic youth engagement resources. Matt now works on climate resilience initiatives in New York City but continues to support CC+S as a Research Associate.
Matt received a bachelors degree from Bowdoin College and a masters from UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning.
Contact: matthew_gutierrez@berkeley.edu
Amanda Barnett | Y-PLAN Senior Manager
Contact: amanda.barnett@berkeley.edu
Britney Tran | Administrative Coordinator
Britney Tran is currently a fourth year undergraduate at UC Berkeley studying Sustainable Environmental Design with a focus in City Planning and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Formerly a Y-PLAN Mentor, she enjoys teaching young planners about environmental resiliency and sustainability. As a design mentor for Student Makers, she works with middle schoolers and high schoolers from all disciplines and provides them with hands-on workshops, funding for projects, and a community where they can share their projects and collaborate with others. Britney has also formerly worked at Museum of Tomorrow, a Berkeley SkyDeck startup that educates students on the impacts of climate change and creates immersive exhibits to formulate behavioral changes.
Contact: britneyttran@berkeley.edu
Tira Okamoto | Communications Coordinator
Tira Okamoto serves as the Communications Coordinator for the UC Berkeley Center for Cities + Schools. Having first worked as a Y-PLAN client back in 2017 and then as a team member in 2018-2019, she is a long time supporter of the CC+S community of practice. Tira is presently an environmental planning master’s student at Simon Fraser University near Vancouver, BC and holds a BA from UCLA. In her work, she strives to help communities adapt to our changing landscapes.
Contact: tira.okamoto@gmail.com