Mariselle Moscoso

Mariselle (“Mar-cel”) is a Policy and Research Analyst II for the Equity and Community Investments (ECI) team where they work to uplift BIPOC-led nonprofits, activists, and community members through learning about their local governments and budgets. Mariselle’s work leads them to empower groups to demand that locally generated funds be put to work for them (e.g., more youth and adult development programs to advance education and work) instead of against them (e.g., more punitive policing and pathways to the carceral system). Mariselle is passionate about deepening their knowledge of budgets, creative strategies to support campaigns, and conveying complex data through digestible data visualizations. Their research has led them to unpacking the income and spending for recreation & parks department in Fresno, to engaging environmental justice leaders in the Inland Empire in a four-part climate & racial justice curriculum on budget advocacy to inform their cleaner air campaign. Mariselle and ECI are also involved with the Catalyst California co-led “Budget Power Project” along with the California Budget and Policy Center and Million Voters Project. The aim of BPP is to expand capacity building and partnership across the state’s nonprofits and act as a hub of state and local budget knowledge sharing through monthly meetings and technical assistance.

Mariselle graduated from Claremont Graduate University with a Master's in Public Health (emphasis on biostatistics and epidemiology) which led to their role as Manager for Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic they led an innovative community contact tracing team whose purpose was to track the spread of the virus and inform the County’s daily numbers database as well as initiate delivery of wraparound services via local partners; service areas ranged from the heart of Downtown LA to the rural desert of the Antelope Valley. During this pivotal experience, they learned of the harsh realities that BIPOC communities faced—as frontline workers staffing the retail, factory, and healthcare industries, as well as those residing in underserved and divested neighborhoods like South LA—and how they struggled to adhere to COVID-19 prevention and quarantine guidance due to conditions outside their control whether it be workplace safety failures and/or systemic racism. This inimitable experience led them to seek a role that enabled them to play a more significant role in the policy side of dismantling systemic racism ultimately leading them to working with Catalyst California.

Mariselle is a queer, Filipinx resident of Northeast Los Angeles having been born and raised in the working-class, Latinx neighborhood of El Sereno. They currently reside in NELA’s Highland Park neighborhood with their partner Natalia and their adopted chihuahua-mix Autumn where they enjoy walks and the daily familiarity of greeting long-standing neighbors, the hustling "gente" vendors, and small businesses that define the area. Their hobbies include watching the WNBA and women’s sports, listening to BIPOC fiction and memoir audiobooks, and sampling a rotating selection of decaf coffees through local or internet discoveries.