Helen Leung

Executive Director

Helen is a product of working-class Chinese immigrants, born in Los Angeles and raised in Frogtown (unceded Tongva territory). Since joining LA Más in 2013, Helen has focused on community-led strategies that minimize displacement pressures that come with gentrification. She ensures the work of LA Más is rooted in systems change, abundantly resourced, and resident powered.

Helen has extensive policy and community-based experience having worked for the City of Los Angeles, Living Cities, the Office of Sustainable Housing & Communities at the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, and the Office of Political Affairs at the White House under President Obama’s administration. Helen also served on the Los Angeles City Planning Commission under two mayoral administrations and advocated for great racial justice in many citywide policies.

Helen serves on the board of Social Justice Partners LA and is a proud alum of LISC’s Rubinger Fellowship and the Center for Community Investment’s Fulcrum Fellowship. She holds a master’s degree in public policy and urban planning from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Communications from the University of Pennsylvania.

Photo by Matthew Scott

Melissa Uribe

Director of Community Tending

Melissa (she/they pronouns) is born and raised in Highland Park, Northeast LA (Unceded Tongva Territory) with family from Jalisco, Mexico. They have experience in community organizing, leadership development, popular education, and CA native land restoration/stewardship. Witnessing the pressures of displacement and gentrification in Northeast LA, they became involved in grassroots organizing toward housing justice, tenant protections, community healing through story telling/art, and much more. Understanding that we are part of a larger ecosystem, they also uplift the need to protect green spaces from development for native flora and fauna to thrive.

Melissa has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Chican@ Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. At UCSB they were able to learn about social movements in Latin America with an emphasis on the EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de la Liberation Nacional). Melissa’s organizing is rooted in indigenous perspectives and the protection of land and communities against oppressive systems.

Melissa is also an artist in a local music group that honors the land, dreams of freedom, and taps into ancestral memory. They believe that art is an integral part to healing and advancing collective liberation.

Miguel Ramos

Director of Community Economies

Miguel was born and raised in Highland Park (Unceded Tongva Territory), with family roots in Mexico. Their life's work is to cultivate relationships with marginalized communities to educate, empower and co-create equitable systems that are people-driven and in relationship with the land.  

Miguel has a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from California State Polytechnic University Pomona. They also hold a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology with a focus on Equity and Diversity from California State University Los Angeles. In addition, Miguel has over 11 years of experience developing and implementing community-based programs, planning and policies that support healthy and equitable development. Miguel has also fostered collaborations with diverse stakeholders, worked in coalition with government and nonprofit organizations, and secured funding for equitable infrastructure. Through all these efforts he has contributed to the development of safe, healthy and sustainable environments in marginalized communities throughout Los Angeles County.

In his spare time Miguel creates art, works on his garden, loves being outdoors, and enjoys bridging communities to heal and thrive with the land.

Ronnie Han

Director of Operations

Ronnie is a Los Angeles native, born and raised in a first-generation Korean family. His immigrant parents and mentors inspire him to look into ways that non-profits, for-profits, and government agencies can work together to fix the social inequities that exist in immigrant communities. He strongly believes that design and urban planning can serve as powerful catalysts for change. 

Ronnie holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of California, Irvine. His experience improving schools and supporting communities in Kenya, through the non-profit organization Dreams for Schools, highlighted the role communities should play in design decisions. He has also worked in finance and operations roles at Orange County tech firms Mavenlink, a project management software company, and Broadcom, a semiconductor company.

Photo by Victoria Wall Harris

Alyssa López

Alyssa Lopez is a lifelong Northeast LA resident and, over the past decade, has worked in urban planning, design, and microlending throughout Los Angeles. Alyssa has experience in program design and leading teams in the nonprofit sphere on land use, popular education, small business lending, and mutual aid initiatives. Her work focuses on developing equitable programs in Los Angeles designed for underserved communities to make civic participation more accessible and build power within gentrifying neighborhoods.

Alyssa is the Senior Underwriting Associate at Inclusive Action for the City, where she is a small business advocate and works towards creating a more inclusive economy. In this role she manages the underwriting team and designs and implements access to capital programs for small businesses throughout Los Angeles County. Alyssa holds a B.A. in Urban Planning, Spanish Literature, and Latinx Studies from Bryn Mawr College.

Ashley Atkinson

Ashley is a public administration and planning professional with 16 years of experience in Los Angeles government agencies, whose work strives toward well-run cities that offer opportunity and a sense of place. She currently serves as Director of Asset Management for the Los Angeles Housing Department. Her professional specialties include housing & land use policy; program & project management; leadership & communication; and solving complex problems.

Ashley recently served as president of the American Planning Association’s California Chapter, and previously served two terms as director of its Los Angeles section. She also held positions in the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council and The Eagle Rock Association, during which she focused on mobility and homelessness solutions.

Ashley has lived in and around Northeast LA since 2004, when she arrived in Los Angeles to pursue a Master's Degree at USC. She currently lives in Highland Park with her husband and four rescue pets.

Audrey Peterson

By way of Milwaukee and New Orleans, Audrey has rooted herself in East Hollywood for the last decade, working on finding better solutions to housing. For the last four years, she has served as the Director of Real Estate Development at Holos Communities, during which, the development team grew twofold and more than 550 affordable and permanent supportive housing units were developed. Her projects have varied between both 4% and 9% low-income housing tax credit structures, non-LIHTC structures, and have included funding from federal, state, county, city, philanthropic, and traditional loan sources and resulted in over $265 million of financing.

She was a member of the Los Angeles Regional Open Space and Affordable Housing (LA ROSAH) collaborative and a founding member of Infrastructure Justice Los Angeles (IJLA). Audrey is also deeply interested in the intersectionality of land uses across LA’s urban fabric.

Betty Avila

Betty Avila’s (she/her) work has centered on the intersection of the arts and social justice, with a focus on community building, public space, and youth development. She grew up in the Northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Cypress Park and has held positions with the Getty Research Institute, The Music Center, and the Levitt Pavilion. Betty helmed Self Help Graphics & Art, an organization with a 50-year nationally-recognized artistic legacy of empowering the Chicana/o and Latinx communities of Los Angeles through the arts from 2015 - 2023. She is the Program Officer at the Perenchio Foundation where she continues to support the thriving cultural sector of Los Angeles County. Betty sits on the boards of the Little Tokyo Service Center and LA Más. She has been a guest speaker for the Ford Foundation, The Getty Foundation, Southern California Grantmakers, California Association of Museums, Western Art Alliance and more. Betty received her B.A. in Literature at Pitzer College, has an M.A. in Arts Management from Claremont Graduate University, and was a 2008 Fulbright Fellow to South Korea.

Gabriela Vazquez

Gabriela Vazquez (she/her) is an Angeleno and organizer born and raised in the neighborhood of Highland Park. Gabriela’s passion for organizing and social justice stems from her parents, immigrants who met in the United States while working as union organizers. She is the Deputy Director at La Defensa, an LA-based advocacy organization dedicated to shifting Los Angeles County’s reliance on criminalization and incarceration towards systems of care that center human dignity. Gabriela helped pass Measure J in 2020, a ballot initiative that earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars toward alternatives to incarceration and community-based services instead of law enforcement. In 2022, she led a criminal justice reform PAC to help elect the first ever public defender to the LA Superior Court, and in 2024 she helped elect another two public defenders to the judicial bench. She currently serves on the LA Steering Committee of the California Working Families Party. 

Jennifer Rodriguez

Jennifer was born and raised in northeast LA and hopes to continue to be able to reside in the area. Jennifer graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 2013, completed her Peace Corps service in 2015, worked in the nonprofit sector until 2018 and is currently at LA County Public Works. Jennifer aims to be a well rounded world citizen by staying aware of local and world issues and participating in local actions. Balancing mental and physical health is also one of her priorities. Jennifer's passions include environmental justice, accessible modes of transit, and animal welfare. You may see Jennifer riding her bicycle along the LA River to the Bike Oven, enjoying a stroll with her dog in the neighborhood, or reading a book under some shade. Jennifer started volunteering with LA Más in 2020 and is excited to continue her involvement and expand her knowledge by joining the LA Más Board.

Natalie Donlin-Zappella

Natalie Donlin-Zappella has worked at the intersections of community development, health, and housing in the nonprofit sector for nearly 20 years in roles as an organizer, planner, educator, and facilitator. She currently serves as the Director of Partnerships and Climate at the Global Policy Leadership Academy, leading initiatives to advance effective systems change to today’s most pressing challenges—housing affordability, equity, and climate. Bringing deep experience in working across sectors with nonprofits, public agencies, and community development sectors, Natalie currently directs and guides initiatives focused on collaborative governance and resilient housing to advance equitable outcomes in housing, infrastructure, and environmental justice. In prior work as a Principal at LeSar Development Consultants, Natalie led the Policy and Legislative Research and Applications Team and client projects related to housing policy, sustainability and equitable community development, and community-driven affordable housing preservation. Before joining LeSar, Natalie worked for Enterprise Community Partners in Southern California for over 5 years, supporting anti-displacement, neighborhood and regional development, resilience, and sustainability initiatives. She received her dual master’s degree from University of Michigan Ann Arbor in urban planning and social work. In Michigan, Natalie held positions with the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, and the Program on Intergroup Relations at University of Michigan. Natalie has formal training in social justice education and intergroup dialogues, and has extensive experience in designing and facilitating coalitions, workgroups, stand-alone workshops, and participatory research practices to identify shared priorities and solutions. In 2019, Natalie was recognized as an Impact-Maker to Watch, nominated by the Chief Resilience Officer of the Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Oscar Monge

Oscar was born and raised in Northeast LA and currently serves as T.R.U.S.T. South LA’s Associate Director. T.R.U.S.T. South LA is a member-led Black and Brown Community Land Trust (CLT) in South LA missioned to remove land and housing from the speculative market to create permanent affordable housing and community control. He leads the CLT’s community ownership and affordable housing projects and supports fundraising efforts, and climate justice advocacy.

Oscar brings 10+ years of experience working with non-profit and public sector organizations. In recent years, Oscar’s leadership and coalition work has resulted in over $500 million towards advancing anti-displacement and tenant ownership in Los Angeles and statewide. He is also committed to the CLT movement statewide and serves as the Board President of the California Community Land Trust Network. He earned his B.A. from Dickinson College and Master in Urban Planning from USC.