Emily Uyeda Kantrim has over a decade of experience directing ambitious nonprofit and government initiatives. As a co-founder and the first employee of Safe Parking LA in 2017, Emily designed and developed the programming that later became the best practices and benchmarks of all publicly funded safe parking programs in Los Angeles County.
In 2020, Emily left Safe Parking LA to direct the COVID Response Team for Los Angeles County and spearheaded efforts to provide pandemic services and basic survival support for the estimated 66,000 community members experiencing homelessness. As the COVID Response Director, Emily mobilized a 350-person field-based multidisciplinary team providing education, guidance, testing, and vaccinations to people living in shelters, encampments, and remote locations. This LA County initiative is considered the largest mobile COVID response in the United States, spreading across 4,800 square miles and providing 1.3 million in-field tests and 44,497 vaccinations.
Emily is sought after as a subject matter expert for national, state, and local governments, think tanks, and philanthropy groups. Emily has frequently served as an interview subject in local and national media with appearances on NPR National, LA Times, CNN, Daily News, Daily Mail, and Los Angeles Magazine. In addition, Emily’s collaborative research and writing has appeared in publications from American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Archaopress, UC Regents, and the Rand Corporation.
A fourth generation Angeleno, Emily previously served as board chair of a volunteer-led homeless coalition in midtown LA, as co-founder and volunteer Executive Director for Hollywood Harvest, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Mid City West Community Council.
“At the confluence of the eviction tsunami, the multiple industry labor strikes, and the end of student loan forbearance, Safe Parking LA serves as an educator, advocate, and front door for people falling into homelessness for the first time. What we knew about housing insecurity before the pandemic has only been continually borne out in the subsequent data, strengthening our resolve to bring resources and options that shorten someone’s experience in homelessness by ending isolation, attending to the autonomy of our participants, and continuing to build out the robust temporary support that can identify pathways to stability in housing.”
