Dr. D’Artagnan Scorza is Chief of Staff to Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell, where he helps lead strategy, operations, policy coordination, and constituent-centered public service for the Second Supervisorial District. He is a public sector executive, educator, and scholar whose career has focused on translating community priorities into public policy and building the institutional capacity needed to advance equity, accountability, and opportunity across complex systems.
Before joining Supervisor Mitchell’s office, Dr. Scorza served as Executive Director of Racial Equity in the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office, where he led the County’s Anti-Racism, Diversity, and Inclusion Initiative and supported implementation of the Board of Supervisors’ anti-racism policy agenda across more than 40 County departments and agencies. In that role, he helped lead the development of the Countywide Racial Equity Strategic Plan, supported equity audits and cross-department implementation efforts, and helped build public-facing tools and accountability infrastructure, including Equity Explorer and reporting systems tied to American Rescue Plan investments. His County work also included supporting complex initiatives involving governance, community partnership, and institutional accountability, including work connected to the historic return of Bruce’s Beach.
Prior to County service, Dr. Scorza founded and led the Social Justice Learning Institute, growing it into a multi-state nonprofit focused on educational opportunity, public health, housing, and economic mobility in communities facing historic disinvestment. Under his leadership, the organization expanded across more than thirty-five program sites in California and Texas, served thousands of young people, and developed nationally recognized community-based initiatives grounded in youth development, participatory research, and social justice.
Dr. Scorza’s leadership experience also includes service as an elected member of the Inglewood Unified School District Board of Education and as a member of the University of California Board of Regents. In those roles, he helped secure more than $350 million in school construction investments, supported student-centered academic initiatives, worked to restore approximately $160 million in student services funding, and advocated for the establishment of veteran service centers across UC campuses. He has also served in civic leadership roles with the UCLA Alumni Association Board of Directors and the UCLA Foundation Board, helping strengthen pathways for alumni engagement, mentorship, and philanthropy.
A lecturer in Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Dr. Scorza teaches community organizing, civic leadership, public health, and race, culture, and ethnicity. His scholarship and public engagement focus on civic agency, youth development, participatory action research, and structural inequality, and his work bridges academic research with real-world policy and institutional change.
Dr. Scorza’s commitment to equity is grounded in both lived experience and public leadership. Growing up in South Los Angeles and Inglewood, studying in South Africa as an undergraduate, and serving in the United States Navy during wartime operations in Iraq all helped shape his understanding of responsibility, resilience, and the role public institutions must play in expanding opportunity and repairing harm.
Dr. Scorza earned his Ph.D. from UCLA, was an Education Pioneers Fellow and a Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) Fellow and is an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow. He is the author of Habits for Healthy People, and his academic work includes co-authoring studies on educational justice, participatory action research, and the role of youth in social change movements.
