Appointment creates another School tie to the nonprofit think tank
Urban planning and public policy Assistant Professor Michael Méndez was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), the nonprofit think tank’s President and CEO Tani Cantil-Sakauye announced.
“I am honored to be a new board member of the nonpartisan and highly influential PPIC,” Méndez says. “I look forward to helping guide policy research to equitably advance California.”
The appointment establishes a new connection between the PPIC and the UCI School of Social Ecology. Mark Baldassare was a professor in the school’s Department of Urban Planning & Public Policy before becoming the PPIC’s director of research in 1996. He went on to serve as president and CEO for 15 years and remains director of the PPIC Statewide Survey, which he founded in 1998.
Having joined the UCI faculty in July 2019, Méndez researches the implications of climate change policy on environmental justice communities at scales ranging from the local to the global. He is among the most-quoted professors on campus by the state and national media, and his book Climate Change from the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement (Yale University Press, 2000) was honored with the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award by the International Studies Association and the Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Book Award by the Association for Humanist Sociology.
In 2021, Méndez became the first Latinx scholar to receive the National Academies of Sciences’ Henry and Bryna David Endowment Award for his wildfire and migrant research, and a year later he was awarded a prestigious Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. He is a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and recently served as the inaugural James and Mary Pinchot Faculty Fellow in Sustainability Studies and associate research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment.
Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Méndez to the California Regional Water Quality Control Board (Region 4), and the scholar also currently serves on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Advisory Council, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Environmental Change and Society and the social justice nonprofit Alliance for a Better Community’s Board of Directors.
His fellow new appointees to the PPIC include California Strategies founding partner Rusty Areias, Traversi & Company business advisory group founder David Traversi, Southern California Edison Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Public Policy Caroline Choi and former Newsom/Arnold Schwarzenegger/Jerry Brown gubernatorial cabinet member Ana J. Matosantos.
“I am delighted to announce that PPIC has welcomed five highly accomplished, dynamic California leaders to its board,” says former California Supreme Court chief justice Cantil-Sakauye in a statement. “Each has made exceptional contributions to our state. Together, they bring a wealth of leadership experience, a strong record of public service, and a deep understanding of our unique state. They will be invaluable assets to PPIC as we work to shape a better future for California.”