Instructors and Staff

The largest residential project Ravi Pariah has ever worked on is 28,500 square feet. It has nine bedrooms and 30 bathrooms and is a jewel within the prestigious Beverly Park neighborhood. The project was massive and took an enormous amount of ...

In some ways, Julia Wolinsky has always felt she was better able to express herself through drawings than words. She had this realization at a young age, and it informed her love of art and her choices of education and career. Art was a way to make ...

When students join the inaugural UCLA Extension Design Arts Premium Studio taught by Lisa SVAN, they will be receiving the opportunity to pick the brain of a lauded expert in her field who has traveled the world working on the architectural concept of ...

Michelle Fisher grew up in a Virginia household that was immersed in the news. Her mother was a radio host and her father was a T.V. broadcaster. She would follow them to their jobs and watch them work on Take Our Daughters to Work Day. They taught ...

As a young student, Sandra Flores witnessed teachers struggling to connect with, understand and uplift all their students. She saw firsthand how language, culture and differences in students' backgrounds could influence the way they were treated in ...

Roosevelt "Rose" Brown has made following his imagination into a successful career. A product design veteran of multiple industries including toys, sneakers and consumer electronics, the new UCLA Extension instructor wants to show others how to funnel ...

Cinema helped Elie El Choufany survive during his tough childhood. As an adult, cinema has helped him thrive - both as a screenwriting instructor for UCLA Extension and now as a newly announced 2026 Academy Nicholl Fellowship winner. "All my life, ...

Luis de Moraes takes pride in the fact that his architecture students find work quickly after completing his classes. Through decades of professional experience and a strong industry network, he has built a reputation for preparing highly qualified ...

Brian Sonia-Wallace believes poetry and the creative arts should be an interwoven part of society - that public displays of wordplay should be commonplace. To follow through on that ethos, he has spent the last 15 years lugging around a Remington ...

Horticulture, to UCLA Extension instructor Jill Morganelli, was "kind of a hobby that ran amok." "But I just wanted to learn more and more about it," she said. Morganelli's original professional pursuit was running a transcription company for doctors, ...

When a young Shaunté Walton stumbled into the world of infection prevention, she never knew it would lead her to working at UCLA Extension and UCLA Health. But as soon as she immersed herself in this hidden career path, she knew she wanted to make ...

Esther Hugo's career speaks for itself. As a journalism teacher, college counselor and then a teacher of college counselors while serving on multiple college counseling boards, Hugo's talent in her industry shines. At UCLA Extension, the courses she ...

Andrew Kurtz wants people who are struggling with mental health and substance use issues to know it is OK to ask for help. Having worked at UCLA Extension for almost a decade, Kurtz is training the next generation of helpers. "I have always had an ...

Growing up in picturesque Chile, Gabriel Pacheco found himself drawn to the beauty of the natural landscape around him. While his journey has included detours far afield from his current career, Pacheco eventually found his way back to nature at UCLA ...

Dina LaPolt lives her life with an ethos of doing the right thing and doing right by the people who need her help the most. Her activist streak sprang to life in high school, when the administration unfairly fired a popular guidance counselor, keeping ...

When she was young, Ebony Talley joked she always had her hands full with either books or worms. She was fascinated with how the world worked at the tiniest levels. "I knew very early on that I was a big science nerd," she said. "No one was surprised ...

K Tak knows that there is a certain baggage that comes with tattoo art. It is often confined to the corners of society, covered up when in company, and somewhat opaque to the average person. "But tattoo art has 5,300 years of history," she added. "And ...

Clifford Brooks wears many hats — poet, editor in chief, podcaster, head of a writers collective and UCLA Extension instructor. Through those endeavors he has created a community for himself as a writer, fostering projects across professions and ...

Keith Jefferies has witnessed a lot of change during his 46-year career in computer science at UCLA Extension. From programming in the age before the internet, teaching online classes through chat forums, to learning how to teach software development ...

Sean Van Aacken has always been driven to help others succeed. Since his early days at McDonald's, to his current role as a leading expert at UCLA Extension on education strategy, Van Aacken has placed an emphasis on building relationships and ...

Jeff DeLarme watched his father sometimes work 80 hours a week as a Xerox repairman to make a better life for his family. The way his parents thought about money had a lasting impact on a young DeLarme, who grew up wanting to help other families make ...

When fire took her townhome, UCLA Extension instructor Nancy Spiller turned to the one respite she has leaned on throughout her life - putting pen to paper. Spiller is a big believer in the therapeutic nature of creativity in the wake of trauma and ...

NOTE: Scott Edwards will be moderating a special event at the Bruin Collaborative in UCLA Downtown on Thursday, Nov. 20. From Buzz to Binge: How Creative Teams Build Assets that Drive Demand will gather executives from Fox Sports, Tubi Media Group, ...

Tracey McCormack runs into her former students almost daily. With more than 30 years of teaching experience at UCLA Extension, the alumni from her classes are everywhere and in prominent positions across the television and entertainment landscape - ...

A Q&A with UCLA Extension instructor Adrian Mohuczy-Dominiak outlining basic precautions and best practices