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.
Elise Allari | PLUS Research Fellow
Elise Allari is a first-year Master of Public Policy student at UC Berkeley, and the Y-PLAN WCCUSD CTE co-coordinator for 2025-26. Her past experience has involved volunteering for the Californians Advancing Civic Education non-profit, focusing on how to create a more robust and applicable civic education curriculum and working directly with young students. At What Works Cities, she supported cities in North, South, and Central America to develop stronger data practices to inform policy decisions, allocate funding, and improve services for residents. Her passion and wide-ranging knowledge of public administration allows her to coordinate across key stakeholders throughout departments. She hopes to support WCCUSD as a co-coordinator to develop a sustainable and equitable approach to civic education
Ekene Azuka | PLUS Research Fellow
Ekene Azuka is a third-year School Psychology Ph.D. student within the School of Education at UC Berkeley, and the WCCUSD PLUS Fellow and Y-PLAN Community School Co-Coordinator for 2025-26. Her research focuses on; implementation science, a body of scholarship dedicated to enhancing the implementation of structural interventions, trauma informed practices in K-12 schools, advocacy and public policy initiatives, and academic achievement in children who have experienced trauma. Her past experience has involved managing initiatives in schools through being a school Special Projects Coordinator, engaging with state policymakers and community advocates at the California State Capitol, and supporting BIPOC scholars as the Diversity Affairs Chair for the School Psychology Student Association’s Branch of the APA. She hopes to bridge her research, leadership, and policy interests while supporting WCCUSD efforts.
Jackie Clavin | PLUS Research Fellow
Jacqueline (Jackie) Clavin is a development professional and a first-year student in the Master of Development Practice program at UC Berkeley, and the Los Angeles PLUS Fellow for 2025-26. She has over a decade of experience working in social development in Cebu, Philippines, a region recognized as one of the most vulnerable to disasters in the world. Under the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc., she facilitated youth participation in disaster planning and preparedness, enabling young people to bring their critical perspectives on how disasters impacted their communities. She looks forward to understanding how disaster readiness, education, and youth engagement intersect so that the next generation is actively involved in planning for a climate-ready future.
Tianyue Lang | PLUS Research Fellow
Tianyue (Yue) Lang is a second-year graduate student in the Master of City Planning program, with prospective dual concentrations in Housing, Community, and Economic Development (HCED) and Environmental Planning and Healthy Cities (EPHC) and is continuing her studies of transportation and homelessness equity as the Contra Costa County PLUS Fellow for Fall 2025. Through her volunteer teaching experience in ELD classrooms in the US and art classrooms in rural China during her undergraduate studies, she witnessed how educational inequities are deeply intertwined with disparities in housing, transportation, funding, and policy support across regions. Her work in community organizing in Philadelphia Chinatown further shows that strong collaboration between educational institutions and city officials is essential for creating a healthy school ecosystem. This insight drove her commitment to supporting and connecting schools and cities as agents of change to address these inequities.
Eden Skinner | PLUS Fellows Coordinator
Eden Skinner is a third-year undergraduate student in UC Berkeley’s Architecture program, and is the coordinator for PLUS Fellows 2025-’26, assisting with administrative tasks related to the robust research program. She began her work with CC+S in Spring ‘25, working as a student assistant and collaborating on a multitude of design-based projects.
Ruby Kosewicz-Strickland | Research Associate
Ruby Kosewicz-Strickland is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Master of City Planning Program and current Research Associate with the Center. She began her work with CC+S as an Administrative Coordinator as an undergraduate student and has since worked as a PLUS Fellow, Research Coordinator, and Y-PLAN Coordinator. Ruby also participated in Y-PLAN as a college mentor working closely with Oakland High School students, the City of Oakland, and the California Homeless Youth Project.
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