Manuel Pastor, a member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Research Advisory Board, is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He currently directs the Equity Research Institute at USC. Pastor’s research has generally focused on issues of the economic, environmental, and social conditions facing low-income urban communities and the social movements seeking to change those realities. Pastor holds an economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is the inaugural holder of the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC.