Jorja Leap, adjunct assistant professor of social welfare at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, is serving as a policy advisor on gangs and youth violence to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Leap, an expert consultant on gangs and youth violence to the National Institute of Justice in Washington, D.C., is currently completing an evaluation of the Community in Schools gang intervention project in conjunction with L.A. Bridges, a gang prevention and intervention program that is part of the Los Angeles City Community Development Department. In addition, Leap is currently the co-principal director on a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to evaluate a Safe Schools and Healthy Students anti-gang program in the ABC Unified School District in southeast Los Angeles County. She is currently beginning an evaluation of Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program in East Los Angeles.

Leap has been a member of the faculty of the UCLA Department of Social Welfare since 1992, where she teaches social welfare, policy and practice, focusing on gang violence and juvenile justice. Leap also teaches in the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Her course focuses on conflict mediation and dispute resolution.

In addition to her university endeavors, Leap has served as a lecturer and consultant in both the private and public sectors, including ongoing work with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Interagency Gang Task Force. As a recognized expert in crisis intervention and trauma response, she has worked nationally and internationally in violent and postwar settings, focusing on issues of change, conflict, attachment and loss.

Leap, a native of Los Angeles, completed her bachelor's degree in sociology, her master's in social welfare (M.S.W.) and her Ph.D. in psychological anthropology, all at UCLA.

The UCLA School of Public Affairs was founded in 1994 to educate the next generation of practitioners and academic researchers in the "problem-solving professions" - public policy, social welfare and urban planning. The school is one of the largest and most dynamic of its kind in the nation.

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