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Objectives | Staff
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Founder & Director of the NAID Center, UCLA
Dr. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda is the Founder and Director of the North American Integration and Development (NAID) Center at UCLA. Born in Mexico and raised in Chicago, he received a B. A. (Economics), M. A. (Anthropology), and Ph.D. (Political Science) at the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous articles and books on the political economy of regional integration in various parts of the world, including trade, investment and migration relations between the U. S., Mexico, Latin America and the Pacific Rim. Together with former Congress member Esteban Torres of California and others, he also was the originator of the proposal for the North American Development (NAD) Bank, which was created by the U. S. and Mexican governments in 1994. Hinojosa is also an Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies where he teaches courses focused on his research. From 1991 to 2003, he also held a faculty appointment in the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Urban Planning in the International and Regional Development (RID) concentration.. Hinojosa has served as a board member for several community organizations including the Los Angeles Community Development Bank and was appointed by former Governor Gray Davis to the Economic Strategies Panel of the State of California. In 2002, Hinojosa also co-founded and is the Chairman and President of NoBorders/sin fronteras, a publically traded corporation dedicated to providing low-cost financial services to transnational immigrants and other low-income people.
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Economist and Associate Director of the NAID Center, UCLA
Mr. Runsten (B.A. Stanford, Ph. D. Candidate UC Berkeley) administers the NAID Center where he also works as a senior research associate. He conducts research on rural development and migration in Mexico, California, and Central America; and has conducted research on agriculture in all three NAFTA countries, focusing on fruit and vegetable production and the potential for small-scale producers to participate in high-value markets. Runsten has also served as a consultant for a wide array of organizations in the United States and Latin America. He is currently working with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) and was Director of Research at the California Institute for Rural Studies for six years, where he created the Farm Labor and Rural Poverty Program. With the latter organization, Runsten conducted research in association with a variety of community organizations, labor unions, and farm worker service providers, and participated in several published studies of the Mixtec community in California. He has also conducted and supervised research on migration and labor issues in metropolitan cities and regions in California. These include among others, a Ford Foundation and RM Johnson Foundation funded project focused on addressing affordable financial services for migrants in Southern California and a project for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, for who he conducted a large survey of the impacts of living wages in Los Angeles, and contributed to the development of an Equity Impact Analysis tool for local development projects.
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Sociocultural Anthropologist & Independent Researcher
Dr. Paule Cruz Takash holds a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley (1990). For four years, Takash has supervised and participated in the NAID Center’s qualitative ethnographic research on transnational immigrants in California including a project addressing migrants’ need for affordable financial services funded by the Ford and RJ Miles Foundations; and a project on Oaxacan transnational communities living and working in Southern California funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB). Takash is also a Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA Department for Chicana and Chicano Studies. Her areas of specialization include Mexican transnational immigration (U.S.- Mexico); the post-1965 immigrant settlement and ethnoracial transformation of California and other regions in the United States, and contemporary U.S. “race” relations in the context of globalization. Currently, the President of the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists (ALLA), Takash has also received public recognition for her work on these issues from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who appointed her to the LA City Human Relations Commission in May 2006. Takash serves as a board member of several community organizations including the William C. Velásquez Research Institute (1995-present) and Casa Libre, a non-profit community based organization that houses and cares for immigrant youths 12-18 years of age.
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Ph.D. Candiate in Urban Planning and Graduate Research Associate
Mr. Felipe Lopez is completing a Ph.D. in Urban Planning at UCLA (B.A. UCLA, MA Latin American Studies, UCLA). A native of Oaxaca, Mexico, Lopez is a co-author of the world’s first Zapotec/English/Spanish Dictionary. He also helped design and teaches a language course on Zapotec (Del Valle) at the University of California, San Diego. As a graduate research associate at the NAID Center, Lopez has participated for several years in various NAID projects focused on economic development projects in Mexico and projects on transnational Oaxacan migrants living and working in the United States. Previously, he provided research assistance at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, the Latin American Center, Lewis Center for Regional Development, and Center for Urban Poverty. Lopez has also served as a consultant to numbers of organizations including the Organización Regional de Oaxáca and United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization and serves on the board of directors for Federación Oaxaqueña de Comunidades y Organizaciónes Indigenas en California.
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Contractor
Dr. Nabil Kamel is a contractor to the NAID Center on a project funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) to develop and implement an off-line database of Foreign Born immigrants from Latin America in the United States that includes records for congressional districts and zip codes in the selected top counties; and to generate maps of the top counties by zip code for each of the first 10 Caribbean and Central and South American Countries (by number of immigrants). Kamel received his Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles and in 2005 was appointed as Assistant Professor with the School of Planning at ASU.. Prior to this appointment, he participated in and led several major projects at the UCLA NAID Center, the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, and the UCLA Anderson Forecast. As a Graduate Research Associate at the NAID Center and under the direction of Dr. Hinojosa, Kamel generated, analyzed, and maintained several databases related to socio-economic trends for California, North America, and the world. He utilized GIS to develop spatial analysis of such trends and undertook a series of projects analyzing trade impacts on employment and industrial competitiveness; comparing NAFTA and EU institutions and their respective roles in regional economic development; and evaluating California's position in the world economy.
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Contractor
Dr. Fernando De Paolis is a contractor to the NAID Center on a project funded by the North American Commission on North American Cooperation and focused on labor market competitiveness of North America including demographic/human capital dynamics; industrial restructuring (particular trade and supply chain integration across countries); labor market competitiveness (migration/remittance interdependence); and the global environment for North America. De Paolis received his doctorate in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000. Currently an Assistant Professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, his specialties include economic development; trade policy analysis; and NAFTA.
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Contractor
Dr. Robert McCleery is a contractor to the NAID Center on a project funded by the North American Commission on North American Cooperation and focused on labor market competitiveness of North America including demographic/human capital dynamics; industrial restructuring (particular trade and supply chain integration across countries); labor market competitiveness (migration/remittance interdependence); and the global environment for North America. He received a doctorate in Economics from Stanford University and currently holds a faculty position in Economics, at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
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Objectives | Staff
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