Melody Ng is a PhD student in the Urban Planning program at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She is interested in community-engaged research, the relationship between land tenure and community food access, land tenure as an environmental justice issue, and how legal and socio-cultural systems shape food systems and broader environmental outcomes.

Prior to UCLA, Melody held various roles in nonprofit and research organizations focused on issues varying from restorative justice to environmental sustainability. Over the last several years, her work has focused on environmental justice in community food systems ranging from the protection of California Native American traditional gathering rights on public and private lands to increasing access to healthy land for urban agriculture in Los Angeles. She has supported efforts to advance more equitable food systems — including as a member of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council’s Urban Agriculture Working Group and in collaboration with other food sovereignty advocates to establish and fund the California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force, a BIPOC-led body that will help develop policy and program recommendations to support more equitable access to land for food production and traditional tribal agricultural uses in the state. She received both a Bachelors in Legal Studies and English, and a Master of Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.