UROC Staff

Jasir Johnson
Principal Office and Administrative Specialist  
612-626-8762 |  [email protected]
Jasir Johnson is a principal office and administrative specialist at UROC. He provides clerical support to the UROC leadership team, works closely with UROC's office manager, and helps staff UROC's front desk. 
 
Claudette Lyng
Administrative Specialist  
612-626-8762 | [email protected]
Claudette Lyng serves as the administrative point of contact between UROC's leadership team and internal and external clients. She is responsible for handling the leadership team's administrative requests and queries. She has extensive experience in the medical and corporate arenas.

Lea Scott
Office Coordinator  
612-626-8762 | [email protected]
As UROC's office coordinator, Lea Scott provides oversight to UROC's front desk management and building scheduling operations. In addition to working closely with UROC's administrative services manager and leadership team, she plays a key role in UROC’s events and initiatives. Lea holds an interdisciplinary degree in Eco-Womanist Studies from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Adriano Udani
Director of Community-Engaged Research 
612-626-8762 | [email protected]
Adriano Udani leads UROC’s mission-driven work related to facilitating ethically responsible and reciprocal research partnerships between the University and urban communities to advance health and wellness, education and lifelong learning, and community and economic development. His scholarship involves participatory methods that situate people in positions of strength as idea generators, critical thinkers, and problem-solvers of social problems that are experienced firsthand. Adriano’s research agenda engages immigrants through an idea called political accompaniment, which involves academic researchers, advocates, and social service providers working together to center the grounded knowledge of immigrants in efforts to pursue system-level changes. He received his doctorate in political science at the University of Minnesota and master's degree from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He currently serves as a co-director of the American Political Science Association’s Institute for Civically Engaged Research.

Makeda Zulu
Senior Director for Community Partnerships
612-626-9829 | [email protected]
Makeda Zulu is a connector and strategic partner working to address complex issues while transforming the way communities within and outside the University work together.  She has contributed to the handbook Preparing to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships, and has been able to illuminate the work of UROC, its partners, and leaders who each center community to guide the work.  She lives her vision that self-determination linked with unified collective work and responsibility makes sustainable change. She holds a bachelor's degree in business management from Grambling State University and a master's degree from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.