Tia Shimada

Tia Shimada has 15 years of public policy experience, including nine years as the director of programs for a statewide nonprofit advocating equitable access to food, resources, and opportunity for all Californians.

In that role, Shimada worked with UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) staff on several important projects, including a fact sheet about how proposed changes to the “public charge” rule would impact California's immigrant community, and most recently, using data from UCLA CHPR's California Health Interview Survey on food insecurity among immigrants to advocate for expanded benefits for all immigrants, regardless of their status. Using UCLA CHPR data, Nourish California and the California Immigrant Policy Center teamed up with legislators to form a diverse, powerful coalition that would pass the Food4All bill, making California the first state in the nation to fund nutrition assistance for income-eligible individuals regardless of their immigration status.

Shimada’s career and accomplishments have been aligned with CHPR’s values. Drawing on her background in biology and public health, she crafts sustainable, evidence-based solutions that push systems toward equity and inclusion.She has co-led the long-sought, hard-fought effort to establish California as one of the first states that guaranteed charter school students have equitable access to school meals.