Katrina Deloso is a dual degree student pursuing a Master of Urban and Regional Planning and a Master of Public Health, seeking to build the social and physical infrastructure that cities need to be healthy. She is committed to advancing policy that addresses historical and present-day racial segregation and increases access to health-promoting resources, from reliable and affordable public transit to living-wage jobs.

Prior to attending UCLA, Katrina worked in education and public health in a range of settings, including school classrooms, hospitals, research institutions, school district administration, and nonprofits. As an AmeriCorps*VISTA member in school district administration in rural Colorado, she worked on nutrition and local agriculture programming for a student body of predominantly migrant and refugee children of agricultural workers. She led efforts to create culturally-sensitive lesson plans and marketing efforts, while supporting the district’s central goal of providing all students with free, nutritious meals throughout the school-year and summer. Katrina then returned to California to join Prevention Institute (PI), a non-profit based in Los Angeles and Oakland focused on shifting policies and organizational practices towards health equity. In particular, she managed PI’s state policy advocacy efforts, collaborating with partners across the state on bills advancing healthy built and social environments. Through this advocacy work, she realized both the complexity of housing and transportation issues and their transformative potential for community health. This led her to pursue concurrent degrees in urban planning and public health.

At UCLA, Katrina co-chairs Planners of Color for Social Equity, which recruits and supports students of color in the Urban Planning department. She also participates in the leadership boards for UCLA’s chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar and the Urban Planning Women of Color Collective. Finally, Katrina works on communications for the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies as an assistant editor for Transfers Magazine.

Katrina is excited and humbled to be joining the Mayor’s Office of City Homelessness Initiatives as a 2021-2022 Bohnett Fellow. Unhoused residents of Los Angeles have long known California’s housing crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only made it more visible. Katrina feels honored to work on this issue of such urgency and deep intimacy to people’s lives.

Katrina holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago.