Antonia Izuogu is a North Carolina native looking to serve the Los Angeles community while pursuing a degree in Master of Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Spelman College in Health Sciences with a Public Health concentration.
During her undergraduate education, Antonia was a Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation Scholar and completed around 1,750 community service hours. Spelman College is in the West End community of Atlanta, Georgia, an area riddled with poverty and disadvantage but filled with the power of love and civil rights history. Antonia pinpoints her community service as her first exposure to the impact city planning has on disadvantaged communities, which founded her planning path. During her college matriculation, Antonia went on to work with many social justice and urban planning-adjacent organizations.
During Antonia’s senior year, she hosted the virtual Summit on Homelessness and Poverty: Disruption on October 2-4, 2020. The three-day event gathered over two hundred registrants of high school students, college students, residents, and local non-profit leaders, across the country who are working to disrupt the system of poverty. The summit engaged an intersectional lens to highlight the impacts of homelessness and poverty among people of color.
While at UCLA, Antonia manages three part-time jobs that build on her interest in equity for people of color. She works for the Center for Advancement for Racial Equity (CARE) at Work in the UCLA Labor Center and as a Bunche Fellow in the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC). She is also a Randall Lewis Health and Policy Fellow at the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). At Care at Work, she recently completed the Essential Stories: Black Worker COVID-19 Economic Health Impact Survey project that amplified black workers’ cry for just employment and treatment and actual stories of Southern Californian black essential workers.
Antonia works with CSRC Director, Veronica Terriquez, to form the California Freedom Summer program, influenced by the 1964 Freedom Summer, to educate and train youth advocates on voting justice. She also researches environmental justice laws to improve disadvantaged communities facing poor environmental conditions and social disparities for equitable opportunities at SCAG. Socially, Antonia is also a Co-Chair of the Planners of Color for Social Equity. In that role, she supports the student-led organization in creating a safe space for other students of color and supporting them on their career paths.
Antonia believes her past experiences have shaped her into the woman and leader she is today and who she continues to evolve into. She looks forward to using her passion for social justice and fresh eyes to Los Angeles to empower homeless individuals and work relating to them in the Mayor’s Office of City Homelessness Initiatives.