Demetria M. Murphy

Senior Associate

Demetria@EstolanoAdvisors.com

Demetria M. Murphy is an equity architect, researcher, organizational strategist, and facilitator who seeks to leverage the reparative potential of public lands, funding, and infrastructure to build power with those divested and disenfranchised, centering an ethic of care.

Demetria M. Murphy brings over a decade of experience as an equity architect, researcher, organizational strategist, facilitator, and coach who seeks to build power with those divested and disenfranchised and leverage the reparative potential of public lands, funding, and infrastructure, centering an ethic of care. In her work with the City of Pasadena, Demetria led the team’s production of the Restorative Justice Framework that will guide a new Master Plan/Specific Plan to reconnect communities surrounding a portion of land formerly in the SR-710 “ditch,” addressing the legacy impacts of car-centric planning, racist ideologies and its displacement of thousands of residents and their descendants and envisioning new possibilities for this site. Demetria led EA’s evaluation of the City of LA’s first participatory budgeting program where it distributed $8.5 million to nine historically divested neighborhoods in the City of L.A called REPAIR Zones. As part of a larger Budget Equity Project exploring how equitably local governments used American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) recovery funds, Estolano Advisors worked with the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy (IRPPE) to develop 10 policy briefs that explore various ARPA uses to advance equity. Demetria researched and authored the brief on Medical Debt Elimination.

Prior to EA, Demetria co-authored Essential Stories: Black Worker COVID-19 Economic Health Impact Survey, a report from the UCLA Labor Center and the first large-scale study of Black workers in Southern California. The report was in tandem with a Black worker movement-building advocacy campaign led by a regional coalition of Black-led organizations including the Los Angeles Black Worker Center and the Center for Advancement of Racial Equity (CARE) at the UCLA Labor Center. Demetria served as Capital Projects Fellow for the City of Los Angeles’s District 8 Office. Formerly a leader in the education ecosystem, Demetria served as a policy advisor to a member of the Nevada State Board of Education and co-authored a long-term vision for an education non-profit codifying over 300 students, families, and community stakeholders’ aspirations for an equitable education in Las Vegas. 

Demetria obtained a Master of Urban Planning with a concentration in Community Economic Development from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs where she also was a recipient of the Michael S. Dukakis Internship in Public Policy Award, the Mimi Perloff Fellowship Award, and the Martin Wachs Fellowship Award. Demetria holds a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. Demetria is a member of Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE) and the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Planning Association.