As the Interim Executive Director of the Berkeley Public Schools Fund, I am honored to serve our mission with my background in education and nonprofit leadership. I’m a Bay Area native, having spent my childhood in the South Bay, my early adulthood in the North Bay and my parenting years in the East Bay.
My first job out of 
school was as a substitute teacher in San Francisco Unified’s messy patchwork of urban schools. Zigzagging the city each day, I experienced very viscerally the stark differences in resources between schools in the same district. This solidifed in me a life-long commitment to educational equity.
I spent the next few years discovering learning from the non-traditional classrooms of environmental science education. I spent a decade at the Headlands Institute (now NatureBridge Golden Gate), much of that time as the Director of Education. It was during this chapter that my colleagues and I started to grapple with what it really looks like for a school to serve all students well.
In time, I felt drawn to be in deeper relationship with my students and their families. After earning a teaching credential, I re-entered district life. I spent the better part of a decade coaching and teaching in the public and charter schools of East Oakland. I was proud to be part of the state-renowned Oakland Science Team that kept the focus on learning for students furthest from opportunity, while laying the foundations for over 55 elementary schools to transition to the Next Generation Science Standards.
In 2019, I returned to the social sector and found a new home at the Berkeley Public Schools Fund. Over the past 5+ years, I have grown and deepened our organizational impact in a variety of ways:
- As the Schools Fund’s first-ever Director of Programs, I leveraged learnings from a community-wide listening tour to revamp the district’s Berkeley Schools Volunteers program. This included designing a secondary volunteer pathway that would ignite in March of 2020 to become the foundation for the Schools Fund epic community-wide pandemic response.
- As the Schools Fund’s first Deputy Director, I launched the Schools Fund’s Teaching & Learning Advisors, our education advisory council, that helps us stay responsive to the needs and opportunities in BUSD schools.
- And with the sharpening of our organizational mission in 2021, I partnered with staff, board and advisors to redesign our Grantmaking to align with our equity goals.
Positioned at the crossroads of all things education in the Berkeley community, I’m proud of the role the Berkeley Public Schools Fund has played for decades in seed-funding innovation, promoting community and volunteer engagement, and building new roads of access in our public schools. None of this would be possible without the long-standing partnerships we enjoy in and across the district, with City and University colleagues, and with local businesses and community nonprofits.
And because there is still so much to learn, I’m currently enrolled in a doctoral program in education at Northeastern University. When I’m not working or studying, I walk, garden, and do my best to parent two teenagers in Berkeley.
At the end of the day, all of our work is done in partnership. Thank you to the Berkeley community for the myriad ways you show up for our students, our families and our community!