Leadership & Staff
Kurt Organista
Director, Institute for the Study for Societal Issues
Kurt C. Organista, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies Latino psychosocial and health problems. He teaches courses on race, ethnic relations & social welfare, as well as social work practice with Latino populations. He conducts research on HIV prevention with Latino migrant laborers and is editor of the book HIV Prevention with Latinos: Theory, research and practice, published in 2012 by Oxford University Press, and author of Solving Latino Psychosocial and Health Problems: Theory, Research, & Practice (2nd ed.), published by Oxford University Press in 2023. He serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Community Psychology, the Hispanic Journal of the Behavioral Sciences, and the Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Social Work. From 2004-2008 Organista was appointed to the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health, and from 2010 to 2015 he was Principal Investigator of a federal R01 grant from the NIAAA to develop and test a structural environmental model of alcohol-related HIV risk in Latino migrant day laborers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Organista served as trustee of the Latino Community Foundation (2015 to 2022) and as trustee and Vice Chair of the San Francisco Community Foundation (2008 to 2018). In 2018, he received the Leon Henkin Citation for Excellence in Mentoring Underrepresented Students, and in 2020 he was named the American Cultures Teacher of the Year. In 2020, Organista was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and in 2021 he was awarded the Harry and Riva Specht Endowed Chair in Publicly Supported Social Services.
Professor Organista is Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. A long-time faculty affiliate of the Institute, he previously served as chair of the Center for Latino Policy Research (now known as the Latinx Research Center) from 2001 to 2003 and as Interim Chair of ISSI's Latinx Research Center during 2024-25.
Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern
Associate Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) at the University of California, Berkeley and a human geographer and food systems scholar. Her research and teaching explore the intersections among social movements, labor, migration, and food systems, with particular attention to cross-border knowledge and social justice. Minkoff-Zern’s newest book, Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain (UC Press, 2025), looks at labor across food sectors and the intersections between food-system social movements and worker organizing in the United States. Other recent projects include investigating the potential for Food Policy Councils to engage in regional labor advocacy and the impact of US immigration policy on food workers and employers, including the H-2A visa program for temporary agricultural workers. Her first book, The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability (MIT Press, 2019) analyzes the experiences of Latinx farmers who have transitioned from farm labor to farm ownership across the United States.
In 2024, Minkoff-Zern was named a fellow of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). In 2026, she and her co-author received the Best Book in Food Studies award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society for Will Work for Food. Minkoff-Zern earned her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and her B.A. in Sustainable Agriculture and Development from Cornell University. More about her research and writing can be found at drminkoffzern.com.
Deborah Freedman Lustig
Co-Director, Graduate Fellows Program
Deborah Freedman Lustig is a cultural anthropologist whose research has focused on gender and education in the United States and Kenya, where she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 2004-5. Lustig earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan. Her articles about teenage mothers have been published in the journals Anthropology and Education Quarterly and Childhood and in the edited volume Childhood, Youth, and Social Work in Transformation: Implications for Policy and Practice (Columbia University Press, 2009). Her research on risk and violence among young adults coming of age in Oakland, California was published in Children and Youth Services Review and in the edited volume Education and the Risk Society: Theories, Discourse, and Risk Identities in Education Contexts (Sense Publishers 2012) and is available here(link is external). Since 2006, she has been one of the Co-Directors of the Graduate Fellows Program
Maxwell Vanderwarker
Administrative Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
Maxwell Vanderwarker is ISSI’s Administrative Director. He received his BA in English from UC Berkeley, where he was involved in LGBT+ leadership with Oscar Wilde House. After graduation, he transitioned into Human Resources and finance and worked with a variety of small tech startups in the Bay Area, at the UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources, and as the Operations Officer at the UCSF HEAL Initiative. Maxwell is currently pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts in creative writing at San Francisco State University, with a focus on writing transgressive, boundary breaking LGBT+ literature.
Katie Owensby
Program Coordinator, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
Katie Owensby is a program coordinator for ISSI. She came to ISSI after serving as an Undergraduate Academic Advisor for the Society & Environment major in the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley. Prior to working in CNR, Katie worked for Cal Alumni Association as their Marketing Data and Reporting Manager. Katie earned her BA in Psychology from University of Redlands and her MA in Counseling Psychology from University of San Francisco. She has two children, a daughter in high school, and a son who is a first year in college on the east coast. She and her family recently relocated from the Bay Area to Washington State. Katie enjoys hiking with her beloved Golden Retriever, Hana, reading, and spending time playing games and watching movies with her family. She has a deep love for UC Berkeley and cannot imagine working anywhere else.
Luciné Jamkochian
Communications Coordinator, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
Luciné Jamkochian is the Communications Coordinator at ISSI. She earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley and began her career in communications at the Cal Alumni Association. She has experience in both the agency and nonprofit sectors, including at a public relations firm focused on environmental issues and at San Francisco CASA. She loves books, coffee, and exploring the Bay.