MARIA BLANCO / ANNA MANUEL
University of California Immigrant Legal Services Center, Davis, CA 2018-2019
María Blanco is Executive Director of the University of California Immigrant Legal Services Center (ILSC). An experienced litigator and powerful advocate for civil rights, María is an expert in immigration law and policy, employment discrimination, voting rights and redistricting. She has served in leadership roles with the California Community Foundation, the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, and was a member of President Barak Obama’s transition team. In 2014 she became the first Executive Director of ILSC, which, since its founding, has served as a model institution for other newly-created centers at California community colleges, colleges, and universities, and has garnered a national reputation for its expertise in providing quality legal services to students and their families. Given the increasing demand for ILSC’s services and the intensity of the threats undocumented students are facing under our current political administration, María was thrilled to partner with BKF to find a Fellow who could make a contribution to the work of immigrant rights at this important time.
For this Fellowship, we sought a Fellow who, like María, was not only a skilled attorney, but also a civil rights advocate interested in public policy, strategic communications, and institution-building. We found a perfect fit with Anna Manuel, whose commitment to immigration law is matched by her dedication to ensuring educational equity. Anna is a recent graduate of University of San Francisco School of Law, where she was a research assistant to famed immigration attorney Bill Ong Hing, from whom she learned to value the quality of humility in service of learning from one’s clients and their communities. Anna is interested in all aspects of the immigrant experience and has done humanitarian missions to provide aid to migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert; conducted know-your-rights trainings in the Central Valley; provided testimony to the United Nations Human Rights Council against the use of private immigration detention centers for children; and is currently serving as the volunteer Co-Director of Policy for the San Francisco-based Dreamer Fund, an organization that provides undocumented law students with tuition assistance. Following law school, Anna worked for the Mira Law Group as a “low-bono” attorney, handling complex immigration cases. As she joined this program, Anna was “beyond excited” to have a Mentor like María, whose depth of legal knowledge and decades of experience in the field make this fellowship opportunity especially important for her own development as an immigrant rights leader. Since completion of this fellowship, this pair’s enthusiasm remains high and they are now continuing to work together with Anna serving in a newly-created role of role at ILSC—the Staff Attorney and Strategic Initiatives Coordinator position—which was modeled on the work that María and Anna developed for the fellowship.
JAMES BELL / CRISTAL HARRIS
The W. Haywood Burns Institute, Oakland, CA
2018-2019
James Bell is the Founder and President of the W. Haywood Burns Institute (BI) and a leader in the field of youth justice reform. Having had worked as an attorney representing incarcerated youth in the Bay Area for over 20 years, Mr. Bell founded the BI in 2003 in Oakland, CA in order to address the systemic racism impacting his former clients. Since then, he has dedicated his career to reducing disproportionate impact on children of color, training and addressing thousands of human services professionals and community members on a vision of well-being as the preferred and most effective way to achieve community safety. In addition to appearing as an expert on numerous television shows radio broadcasts, and print publications, James has authored sections of published anthologies on school discipline, youth justice history, and public health. He also has extensive experience in the international justice arena, having worked to improve youth systems in South Africa, Cambodia, Kenya, Brazil, New Zealand and China. Taking the lessons learned from this work, James is entering into a new period of creative activity, an “R&D for social justice,” as he calls it that will be centered around the question: “How can we do justice totally differently?” To help with the expansion of this bold and imaginative work to radically re-envision what is possible for youth of color and the systems that serve them, James chose Cristal Harris as his BKF Fellow. Cristal is a recent graduate of USF School of Law who believes that “we should all hold the power to our own justice.” Born in East Oakland where she grew up in foster care, Cristal was politicized by the traumatic experiences she had with the police as a child. She later experienced homelessness and learned first hand the many challenges that come with negotiating services for herself while also attending high school. Despite this, her passion for education and learning never waned and she attended community college, then UCLA (where she majored in African American Studies,) and ultimately, USF. During law school, Cristal co-founded its first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to ensure that all admitted students receive appropriate support to succeed; published Dark Innocence: Equipping California Police Officers with Mindfulness Practices to Aid in Squelching Implicit Bias in the law journal; and worked for the Public Defender’s office and the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Law Clinic. A truly charismatic person, Cristal’s commitment to social justice energizes those around her—she has dedicated herself to speaking out about the issues affecting low income African Americans, especially foster youth, and is an advocate for and a member of the LGBTQ community. Cristal was thrilled by this opportunity to receive mentorship from such a creative and effective leader like James while continuing on her path of seeking equitable and restorative solutions for our most vulnerable young people and since completing her fellowship, is excited to continuing working with James on his book project as well as taking a leadership role in managing the expansion of the BI’s well-being sites in Los Angeles.
KATE KENDELL / DARREN ARQUERO
National Center for Lesbian Rights, San Francisco, CA
2018-2019
For 22 years, Kate Kendell served as the the Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), a national legal organization committed to advancing the civil and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. An inspiring leader who brings a remarkable level of energy and expertise to the fight for social justice, Kate is a nationally recognized spokesperson for LGBTQ rights and has an active voice in major media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Advocate, NPR, CNN, and many others. As part of the effort at NCLR to combat the unrelenting attack against civil rights being waged by the current political administration, Kate selected Darren Arquero as her Fellow. Darren is an emerging leader who is dedicated to the fight for LGBTQ rights and has a special interest in finding ways to bring faith communities into this movement. Like Kate, Darren is grounded in an intersectional approach to movement-building and shares her vision of “no rest until justice is won—for all.” Darren brought to NCLR a broad range of communications experience, having worked with the Arcus Foundation, the GLBT Historical Society, Race Forward and UC Berkeley’s Haas Center for a Fair and Inclusive Society. To participate in this fellowship, Darren took a leave from his PhD program in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley where he has been working on an ethnography of Gay Catholic Filipinos. With Kate and her team, Darren created powerful communications strategies for key NCLR legal campaigns, including their challenge of the Transgender Military Ban and the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, which sought to fight legally sanctioned anti-LGBTQ discrimination under the guise of religious freedom, and their Born Perfect campaign which is leading the effort to pass state-by-state legislation outlawing the use of conversion therapy on minors. Since completing the fellowship, Darren has managed communications for the Stanford School of Medicine’s Pride Study, the first longitudinal health study of LGBTQ people, where his efforts helped to quadruple enrollment in the program. He is now with policy think tank Movement Advancement Project where he’s leading communications for social impact campaigns for civil rights and for special reports on LGBTQ life in rural America. In 2019, Kate left NCLR and is now serving as Campaign Manager for the newly created Take Back the Court, an organization committed to structural reform of the U.S. Supreme Court, and as Interim Legal Director and Senior Advisor at the Southern Poverty Law Center
BRENDA WAY / ARIEL LUCKEY
ODC, San Francisco, CA
2016-2017
Brenda is the Founder and Artistic Director of ODC dance company and creator of the ODC Theater and ODC Dance Commons, community performance and training venues in San Francisco’s Mission District. Trained in classical ballet by the legendary George Balanchine, Brenda has choreographed more than 80 pieces with ODC, which dedicates major resources to interdisciplinary collaboration and musical commissions. Known equally well for her capacity for arts administration (ODC was the first modern dance company in the US to own its home facility) as she is for her award-winning choreography, Brenda is a national spokesperson for dance, has been published widely, has received numerous awards including Isadora Duncan Dance Awards for both choreography and sustained achievement, and 40 years of support from the National Endowment for the Arts. In looking towards the future of the arts in the Bay Area, Brenda was energized by the opportunity to mentor Ariel Lucky, who like her, has equal passions for creating art and creating institutions. Taking inspiration from family history, which he excavates with an eye towards looking for personal stories that will resonate with broader socio-political topics, Ariel is a nationally acclaimed poet, actor, dancer, and playwright whose performances intersect at the crossroads of education, art, and activism. Born and raised in Oakland, California, Ariel was named a “Visionary” by the Utne Reader for the innovation and quality of his first play Free Land, which explores how the Homestead Act negatively impacted Native Americans while financially benefiting White settlers, and has toured across the country at over 50 theaters and universities. Ariel received The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s 2012 Playwright Commissioning Award, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation’s 2013 Visibility Award and the Zellerbach Family Foundation’s 2014 Community Arts Fund in support of his new play Amnesia. Ariel was eager to bring his gift for storytelling to ODC and to learn from Brenda how to create and sustain a vibrant community-based organization. Taking those lessons forward, Ariel has worked as Temple Administrator at Congregation B’nai Tikvah in Walnut Creek, where he is honing his operations management while also continuing his artistic practice in service of social justice, and recently was hired as Development Director for Development Director the Sogorea Te Land Trust, an Indigenous women led land trust working to rematriate traditional Ohlone land in the East Bay. Part of his work will be expanding participation in and the reach of the Shuumi Land Tax, a voluntary annual financial contribution that non-Indigenous people who live in the East Bay,.
ROBERT J. ROSENTHAL / HANNAH YOUNG
The Center for Investigative Reporting, Emeryville, CA
2016-2017
Robert J. Rosenthal is Executive Director of The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), is the nation’s first independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization dedicated to preserving democracy through fact-based investigative journalism. An award-winning journalist, Rosenthal has worked for some of the most respected newspapers in the country, including The New York Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer and, most recently, the San Francisco Chronicle. Rosenthal worked for 22 years at the Inquirer, starting as a reporter and eventually becoming its executive editor in 1998. As a reporter, Rosenthal won numerous awards, including the Overseas Press Club Award for magazine writing, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for distinguished foreign correspondence, and the National Association of Black Journalists Award for Third World Reporting. He was an editorial assistant on the Pulitzer-Prize winning Pentagon Papers project at The New York Times, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting, and has been a Pulitzer Prize judge four times. He joined CIR as executive director in 2008, which he has developed as a cutting-edge resource for digital innovation in journalism and a field leader in excellence in investigative journalism, qualities which were recognized in 2012 by a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. For his Butler Koshland Fellowship, Robert wanted to focus on digital innovation, hoping BKF could help him find a fellow who he could partner with to expand its multi-platform engagement efforts. With BKF, he selected Hannah Young, an emerging leader who is committed to ensuring that every American citizen has the information and access necessary to participate most fully in civic life. An advocate for, and a member of, the LGBTQ community, Hannah has a background in journalism, political organizing, and civic technology. Most recently, she worked for Code for America—a nonprofit with a mission to make government services simple, beautiful, and easy to use—where she developed their volunteer civic tech program into a national network of over 45,000 volunteers and 130 advocacy groups who worked collaboratively to make tech-based city services more accessible. She has a dual B.A. in Journalism and Political Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and has applied her skills with various organizations, including: Wisconsin State Broadcasting, Wisconsin State Journal, The Capital Times, and the Obama for America campaign. After working alongside her mentor, Robert, to create strategies to reach the public and spark action, she was hired to stay on at CIR in a newly-created role as Director of Audience where she leads the digital/social team to expand reach and engage more meaningfully with audiences.
EVA PATERSON / CHRISTOPHER BRIDGES
Equal Justice Society, Oakland, CA
2014-2015
Eva Paterson is the President and a co-founder of the Equal Justice Society (EJS), a legal organization transforming the nation’s consciousness on race through law, social science, and the arts. A tireless warrior for civil rights, Eva possesses a brilliant legal mind and a heartfelt passion for justice that inspires everyone she meets. She has held many prestigious leadership positions in the legal field and is the recipient of more than fifty awards. Eva is an expert in affirmative action and has authored several landmark lawsuits in support of equal educational opportunities. To augment these legal strategies, Eva has been engaging with artists, social scientists, and teachers in an effort to create a cultural shift around the issue of race and its negative impact on education outcomes. Through this innovative collaboration, Eva and her colleagues are forging a new set of tools that will help educators recognize and manage the role that unconscious bias (or unintentional racism) plays in decision-making. This hopeful project has the potential to deescalate the extremely disproportionate school suspension rates African American and Latino students are currently experiencing. To assist her with this project, Eva has chosen Chris Bridges as her Fellow. Like Eva, Chris has a true calling to social justice and, in his own words,“a longstanding commitment to, and passion for, legal advocacy, community empowerment, and organizing alongside communities of color seeking equitable living, education, and decreased representation in the criminal justice system.” Most recently, he’s been working in Oakland with the ACLU of Northern California and local school administrators to address the systemic disparities that have led to the current “School to Prison Pipeline” crisis. Excited by this opportunity to hone his coalition-building skills under an collaborative leader like Eva, Chris jumped into his work with her and the team at Equal Justice Society on building their common dream: a future where every child has the opportunity to reach their potential, regardless of race. Since his fellowship, Chris has been hired on at EJS as part of the legal team and has also recently founded IT TAKES A VILLAGE NATION, a social networking platform (currently in the beta phase), with the goal of creating an online space for people to connect and share resources around social justice movements.
ESTA SOLER / LISA KIM
Futures Without Violence, San Francisco, CA
2014-2015
Esta Soler is one of the world’s foremost experts on violence against women and children. She founded Futures Without Violence over 30 years ago and as its President has set the pace for its innovative educational programs, public education campaigns, policy development, and leadership training designed to prevent and end violence against women and children worldwide—including being instrumental in developing the landmark Violence Against Women and Children Act which has been passed by the U.S. Congress. Esta’s pioneering efforts to transform the cultural and legal treatment of gender-based violence are a major force in a movement that is radically altering the landscape of abuse; since she began her work, the incidence of domestic violence against adults has dropped by 50% in the U.S. As she launched some exciting new policy-based violence prevention initiatives, Esta was partnered with a fellow, Lisa Kim. Lisa is an emerging leader in global policy who is dedicated to ensuring the integration of gender-sensitive perspectives in social policies—both in the U.S. and abroad. Fluent in Spanish and Korean, her interest in international development issues has taken her to countries in Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia where she has worked with a number of development organizations. Promoting gender equality via violence reduction has been a focus of Lisa’s work and she is especially excited by projects that require guiding multiple stakeholders to discover common ground. Before her fellowship, she worked to develop a violence prevention program in Cambodia, led by The Asia Foundation, which allowed her to partner with community leaders, government agents, NGOs, and business interests. Post-fellowship, Lisa worked closely with Esta for a few years deepening her gender justice work while piloting Futures’ “Low Wage / High Risk” project which was designed to address the vulnerability of low-wage workers—in the retail, food service, hotel, homecare, and agricultural sectors—to gender-based violence and exploitation. Lisa now serves as the Program Manager for JVS’ High School Bridge program, overseeing its mission to JVS help youth in San Francisco, ages 14-24, transform their lives by building skills and connections to succeed in school and work.
JOE SPEIDEL / SARAH RAIFMAN
Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, UCSF, San Francisco, CA
2014-2015
Dr. Joseph Speidel has dedicated his career to increasing access to family planning information and services—both domestically and internationally—and has held several influential positions in the public health field. A prolific writer, Joe is the author of more that 100 articles and chapters and editor or author of 14 books and monographs on issues relating to family planning, contraception, and population. He is currently serving as Co-Director of UCSF’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health where he is launching an exciting new initiative to build opportunities for collaboration between experts in family planning and food scarcity issues. The principle strategy of his project is to mobilize a food security advocates, researchers, and program implementers to become family planning advocates by clearly making the case that population growth can be reduced and food security improved via voluntary family planning programs. To assist him in this ambitious effort, Joe selected Sarah Raifman as his fellow. Sarah has a broad background in public health and international development, but her twin passions are maternal health and reproductive rights. In her quest to improve women’s healthcare, she has had the privilege of learning first-hand from nurse-midwives in Zimbabwe, community health advocates in Ethiopia, and clinic workers in Samoa. She has published several peer-reviewed papers and has also authored clinic manuals designed for use in low resource settings. While much of her writing is focused on increasing access to family planning services, Sarah has also done extensive work on postnatal care, especially as it concerns a set of innovative new methods that allow for the inexpensive and rapid treatment of postpartum hemorrhages. Since her fellowship, Sarah has continued to work with the Bixby Center and a group there called Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSRH) where she has studied the effects of unintended pregnancy on women’s lives—both domestically and abroad—as part of the “Turnaway Study” project. She is currently enrolled in a PhD program at UCSF for Epidemiology and Translational Science. While earning her PhD, she will also continue her work as Program Director for Dr. Daniel Grossman at UCSF’s ANSRH where she focuses on evaluating the consequences of abortion restrictions on health and wellbeing, measuring the morbidity and mortality due to unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion, and exploring new models for family planning and abortion service provision in the United States and in other countries where abortion is legal, but not always accessible.
GLORIA DUFFY / MEHROZ BAIG
The Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, CA
2013-2014
Dr. Gloria Duffy is the President and CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nation’s oldest and largest public affairs forum. Prior to this position, Gloria was the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Special Coordinator for Cooperative Threat Reduction, serving under President Clinton 1993-1995. An expert on conflict resolution and nuclear non-proliferation, she has held positions with many prominent organizations, including Ploughshares Fund, Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Rand Corporation, and Global Outlook, an independent research institute on international security issues which she founded and led from 1985-1992. Gloria is a frequent guest on radio and television news programs, has been published in most major newspapers in the United States, and is also a contributor to the Huffington Post. Envisioning an opportunity for the Club to expand the reach of the high-quality content generated at its live programs, Gloria requested a fellow who could act as the Club’s in-house journalist—reporting on its important happenings and distributing this content to outside media outlets. Mehroz Baig was selected for this role. Mehroz is a talented journalist who has worked at CNN on the Fareed Zakaria Global Public Square program, as well as with other projects at NBC and PBS affiliates. She has a special interest in human rights, international affairs, and the experiences of Pakistani-Americans—much of her written work concerns these topics. During her time at the Club, Mehroz acted as an in-house journalist and developed a digital content strategy for its new state-of-the-art headquarters building. After her fellowship, Mehroz worked with the Center for Learning and Innovation at the San Francisco Department of Public Health—a branch within the department focused on bringing innovation to public health and strengthening the public health workforce—where she developed communications strategies for the a new national model of high-impact HIV prevention work. She is currently the Diversity Engagement Manager for Dropbox.
HUGO MORALES / JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ
Radio Bilingüe, Oakland, CA
2012-2013
Hugo Morales is founder and executive director of Radio Bilingüe, the National Latino Public Radio Network. Radio Bilingüe first began broadcasting in the San Joaquin Valley in 1980, and since then has grown to provide local, regional, and transnational community radio service in Spanish, English, and Mixteco (an indigenous Mexican language) to the United States and Mexico. Hugo has been widely recognized for his work with multicultural media and has received the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Edward R. Murrow Award, the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize, and the MacArthur “Genius” Award. In 2012 Radio Bilingüe began an unprecedented period of expansion with the plan to create six full-power FM radio stations along the US/Mexico border. Hugo sought a fellow who could help him realize his dream of providing culturally relevant programming for Latino audiences along the border, and selected Mexican immigrant José González to work with him on this project. José is an artist, conservationist, and educator. Most recently, José worked with the California Mini-Corps as its San Jose State University Coordinator, leading its work to provide migrant children with outdoor education, and continues to give courses at National Hispanic University. An award-winning teacher, José is also the recipient of the prestigious Doris Duke Conservation Fellowship. Since leaving Radio Bilingüe, José founded Latino Outdoors, an organization working to create a national community of Latino leaders in conservation and outdoor education. A prolific writer and popular public speaker, José has won numerous awards for his work and has been featured in many national campaigns to bring diversity to the outdoors. To learn more about José and his thoughts on being a “Green Chicano,” please visit his website.
LUCY BLAKE / PAUL BUROW
Northern Sierra Partnership, San Francisco, CA
2012-2013
Lucy Blake—a dedicated and visionary conservationist who has been awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Award—recently became President of the Northern Sierra Partnership. In this role, Lucy is spearheading a collaborative campaign—with partners the Feather River Land Trust, the Sierra Business Council, the Nature Conservancy, the Truckee Donner Land Trust, and the Trust for Public Land—to conserve, restore, and steward 167,000 acres of land in the northern Sierra region by 2020, and to raise the $222 million dollars needed to complete this mission. She chose fellow Paul Burow to work with her on this ambitious project. Paul is a Sierra-lover and gifted communicator who is excited to use his new media savvy to help build support for the Northern Sierra Partnership’s innovative approach to land conservation. Having participated in the founding of the Roosevelt Institute—a national think tank for college students—Paul has a keen interest in strategic planning, nonprofit management, and leadership development, especially as it concerns environmental policy. Immediately after completing his fellowship, he was hired by the Northern Sierra Partnership to serve as its Communications Manager. He is currently pursuing his PhD at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where he has been working in Montana with the tribal land departments of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on a land reclamation project. Paul is currently working on his dissertation project which examines the political and cultural life of piñon forests in North America’s Great Basin, focusing on a borderland region that conjoins California and Nevada. As both a historical and contemporary ethnographic project, Paul’s project looks at how the piñon pine and its iconic pine nuts tell a story of entanglement among humans, plants, and animals. He is particularly interested in the question of belonging and what it means to different communities, human and non-human, given complex histories and ongoing struggles revolving around environmental change, Indigenous rights, and rural economies in western Nevada and eastern California.
SANDRA HERNÁNDEZ / SHANNON MALONE GONZALEZ
San Francisco Foundation, San Francisco, CA
2011-2012
Dr. Sandra Hernández is the President and CEO of the California HealthCare Foundation and a practicing physician at San Francisco General Hospital AIDS Clinic. She is the former CEO of the San Francisco Foundation—a position she held for 16 years. A pioneering leader in public health, Sandra has dedicated herself to improving access to healthcare for our most vulnerable citizens. As an extension of this work, the San Francisco Foundation has become a leader in disaster preparedness—both internally and in the communities it serves. Sandra decided to focus her fellow on this cause and chose Mississippi-native Shannon Malone to help her improve preparedness for low-income communities. Shannon first became interested in this field and nonprofit work during Hurricane Katrina. Since then, Shannon served in AmeriCorps reconstructing communities impacted by Hurricanes Katrina, Ike, and Rita. Shannon is certified in Sheltering Operations, Mass Care, and Psychological First Aids, and while in San Francisco became a part of the Fire Department’s Neighborhood Emergency Response Team. Since completing her fellowship, Shannon co-founded the Girls Policy Institute to develop a community of young women policy leaders throughout the state of Mississippi who have been directly impacted by the child welfare system. Shannon has a MS in Nonprofit and NGO Leadership from The University of Pennsylvania and is currently working on her PhD in Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation explores how race, gender, sexuality, and social class influences black women and girls’ experiences with police and resistance to police violence.
GREG MOORE / BEN FASH
Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, San Francisco, CA
2011-2012
Greg Moore has served as the leader of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy (GGNPC) for thirty years, building it into a model organization. Internationally known for its excellence in park-making, serving visitors, creating educational programming, activating volunteers, and engaging donors, the Conservancy works to support the most visited National Park unit in the country. For his fellow, Greg chose Ben Fash, an artist, conservationist and educator who had originally been inspired towards ecological stewardship by the environmental devastation he witnessed while growing up in Copán, Honduras. Having just founded his own nonprofit—New Root, which supports the restoration and conservation of forest ecosystems in Honduras—Ben was eager to learn from an experienced leader like Greg. Alongside Greg, Ben managed executive communications, education programs, and fundraising for the Golden Gate Bridge 75th Anniversary. Once his fellowship was complete, Ben served for three years on the Conservancy’s Executive Team and in 2013, he led the development of the Conservancy’s proposal for the Presidio Exchange, an open-platform center for creative expression and the exchange of ideas about the intersection of nature and culture. He then focused his work on the ambitious New Presidio Parklands Project. In 2015, Ben left GGNPC in order to enroll in Clark University as a PhD student in their Geography department where he is encouraged in the complexities of his role as a scholar/activist/artist working between the United States and Honduras and where the creative methodologies he’s developing for under-resourced environmental movements have been enthusiastically supported. In 2019, Greg retired as GGNPC’s CEO and is now serving as its CEO Emeritus and Special Advisor.
MARTY KRASNEY / MOLLY ELGIN
Dalai Lama Fellows, San Francisco, CA
2010-2011
In 2010, activist and experienced nonprofit leader Marty Krasney was asked to serve as the Founding Director of the Dalai Lama Fellows (DLF.) This new secular global educational program aspires to improve the well-being of the human community by engaging university students and early-career citizen sector professionals in advancing the values that have distinguished the life and teachings of the 14th Dalai Lama: compassion, contemplation, courage, interconnectedness, collaboration, and service. Marty chose fellow Molly Elgin-Cossart to assist him in launching the organization. Molly is dedicated to the complex issues of international cooperation and global justice and since her fellowship has served as Chief of Staff at the Center on International Cooperation in New York City and Chief of Staff at the United Nations for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. She was also a Senior Fellow at a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, Center for American Progress, in its National Security and International Policy section. Her work there focused on the use of international development and diplomacy as tools to promote peace and stability in conflict-prone states. Molly worked at the Omidyar Foundation to lead US-based global policy and advocacy opportunities and worked with Governance & Citizen Engagement initiative investees to help them achieve sector level change. Most recently, Molly was hired by Markle as the Director of the ReWork America Task Force, a group of business, labor, technology, academic and policy leaders working to transform America’s labor market through pilots, partnerships, and policy. She is also currently teaches a course on “Technology and the Global Economy” at Georgetown University and is a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 2019, Marty has retired as DLF’s Executive Director, which under his leadership grew to more than 152 individuals across 40 nationalities, constituting an active global leadership network that serves as a continuing resource for human flourishing within next generation leadership. DLF is now a program of the University of Virginia’s Contemplative Sciences Center where Marty serves on the Advisory Committee.
DAVE SUTTON / TAYLOR MEE-LEE
Trust for Public Land, San Francisco, CA
2010-2011
Dave Sutton is the Northern California and Nevada Director of the Trust for Public Land. Known for his ability to bring multiple stakeholders into alignment, Dave is especially devoted to the Sierra Nevada region where he has helped to preserve thousands of acres of land. To extend his work there, Dave enlisted the help of fellow Taylor Mee-Lee. A passionate conservationist and classically trained cellist, Taylor had first become interested in the intersections between business and the environment while teaching high school students conservation practices on a working cattle ranch. Taylor was especially eager to learn more about the business side of public land acquisition—working side-by-side with an experienced leader like Dave gave Taylor the opportunity to do just that. Taylor brought enthusiasm and dedication to his work with the Trust for Public Land where he was eventually promoted to Senior Project Associate. After spending a year traveling in South East Asia, he is now back home in Davis working in the technology sector and volunteering with 350 Sacramento to advance climate legislation on the state level.
BOB FRIEDMAN / DAN GEBALLE
Corporation for Enterprise Development, San Francisco, CA
2009-2010
Bob Friedman founded the Corporation for Enterprise Development (now called Prosperity Now) in 1979 and is now its Chair Emeritus, having retired in 2019. A recognized leader in economic development innovation, Bob is active in the movement to bring excluded communities into the economic mainstream as entrepreneurs, savers, investors, and skilled employees. For his fellow, Bob chose Dan Geballe who was interested in using his background in the finance industry to support the building of assets for low-income people. Together they participated in the launch of the American Dream Match Funds and 1:1 Fund, programs that use microenterprise platforms to help low-income people increase their savings and break the cycle of poverty. While still active with this program and other microenterprise initiatives, Dan has recently earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and began a position with SJF Ventures, a socially responsible venture financing firm that specializes in environmental sustainability. Dan also serves on the Koshland Committee of the San Francisco Foundation, the board of the Levi Strauss Foundation, and the Advisory Committee of Butler Koshland Fellowships. In 2018, Bob published his third book, A Few Thousand Dollars: Sparking Prosperity for Everyone. In it, he argues that everyone needs a nest egg of at least a few thousand dollars to believe in and have a real economic future – as an entrepreneur, educated worker, homeowner, saver and investor – and that we could make this possible for everyone without spending another dollar, just by investing our wealth building tax incentives in everybody rather than just the lucky wealthy few. Bob serves on several Boards, including Ecotrust, the Rosenberg Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation and the Friedman Family Foundation.
JANET CARTER / NGOC LY
Coaching Corps, Oakland, CA
2009-2010
A champion for equity and equality, Janet Carter is the Executive Director of Coaching Corps – the only national nonprofit with the mission to ensure that youth in underserved communities have an opportunity to experience the benefits of playing sports with a dedicated coach and mentor. Prior to joining Coaching Corps, Janet was Vice President of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, now called Futures Without Violence, where she helped to grow the organization from a local nonprofit to a national leader in the effort to end family violence. During her 22 years at the Fund, Janet helped launch a national movement to end violence against women using the levers of organizing, program development, public policy, public education, social norm change, partnerships with unlikely allies, institutional change, and movement building. For her BKF fellowship, Janet selected fellow Ngoc Ly to help her work with Coaching Corps’ programs. Ngoc was inspired to get involved in public service by the experiences she had as a child, when she was taught English by volunteers from the YMCA after coming to the United States as a refugee. Having later been given the opportunity to play soccer as a teenager in San Francisco, Ngoc learned firsthand how participating in sports can help youth stay on a positive path. Coaching Corps’ mission to make opportunities for low-income children to participate in sports was a perfect fit with Ngoc’s interests and desire to give back. While there, she worked with the Team Up for Girls project creating opportunities for girls to receive the benefits of participating in sports. In addition to her passion for sports, Ngoc has also focused her career around civic involvement, especially from volunteers, and has served as the Community Liaison for McKesson. Currently Ngoc is taking time away from the workforce to be with her young son, Alexander.
MARY HUGHES / SHEILA BAPAT
The 2012 Project, Palo Alto, CA
2009-2010
Mary Hughes, a highly regarded political strategist and founder of the consulting firm Hughes & Company, chose fellow Sheila Bapat to help launch a non-partisan national movement to get more women into political office—the 2012 Project. Sheila, an attorney and accomplished reproductive rights activist, brought her own passion for social justice and political empowerment to Mary’s ambitious project. Together, Mary and Sheila built the 2012 Project from the ground up, eventually securing the prestigious Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University as their partner. The 2012 Project had great success during the 2012 election, activating hundreds of women to run for office and bringing major media attention the problem of gender disparity in the United States. Mary then went on to launch a campaign called “Close the Gap CA” to recruit progressive women to serve in the California State Legislature, which has since developed into a thriving organization. Post-fellowship, Sheila has been publishing her writing on reproductive law and policy, gender discrimination, and gender parity in the workforce and politics—her first book Part of the Family?: Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers and the Battle for Domestic Workers’ Rights was published in 2014. She is currently a Program Officer for the Security & Rights Collaborative at the Proteus Fund, leading the only national donor collaborative dedicated to supporting Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities in the United States.
MALCOLM MARGOLIN / KATE BRUMAGE
Heyday, Berkeley, CA
2006-2007
Malcolm is an author, publisher, and the Founder and former Executive Director of Heyday, an independent nonprofit publisher and cultural institution in Berkeley, California. Through Heyday, he published hundreds of books and oversaw the creation of two magazines, News from Native California (1987) and Bay Nature (2001). He also co-founded The Alliance for California Traditional Arts, The Inlandia Institute, and was instrumental in the creation of a number of Indian groups including The California Basketweavers Association and Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival. Malcolm has also written several books on California natural history, cultural history, and Indian life, including The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area (1978.) He has received many prestigious awards, including a community service award from The San Francisco Foundation, a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation, and the Chairman’s Commendation from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He agreed to become a mentor in hopes that the California publishing community could be benefited by a study of nonprofit publishing and that in the process, Heyday itself would be strengthened as well. With the help of his staff, he found Kate Brumage, who brought an entrepreneurial spirit and high energy to Heyday’s outreach efforts. She was subsequently appointed Director of Publishing Partnerships there, where she worked closely with the Board of Directors on marketing and development, and also served as managing editor for the Yosemite imprint—a joint project of the National Park Service and the Yosemite Conservancy. In 2011, Kate left Heyday to become to the first Executive Director of Butler Koshland Fellowships. In 2016, Malcolm founded the California Institute for Community, Art & Nature, an organization with a focus on community-building via its signature program which include “Re-Indigenizing California,” “The Center for Berkeley Studies,” and a monthly event series.
PEGGY SAIKA / SANDY KAJIYAMA
Asian Americans / Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, San Francisco, CA
2005-2006
Peggy Saika is a trailblazing leader who for decades has worked to empower women, achieve environmental justice, fight hate crimes and support immigrant and worker rights. Her quest for social justice is influenced by her own experience being born in an Arizona internment camp where her family was among 120,000 Japanese Americans unjustly detained during World War II. A tireless advocate for the Asian American community, she served as President/Executive Director of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP) from 2002 to 2015. Prior to that she was the founding executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and from 1983 to 1991 the executive director of the Asian Law Caucus. She is a co-founder of the Asian Women’s Shelter, Asians/Pacific Islanders for Choice, the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. Peggy participated as a BKF Mentor during her tenure at AAPIP, selecting Sandy Kajiyama as her fellow. Sandy had previously worked in marketing in the technology industry, but was looking for an opportunity to shift her career into public service. Together Peggy and Sandy participated in the creation of a new program to develop “giving circles” in Asian American communities, whereby communities pool their charitable contributions to have greater impact. This project has become tremendously influential with AAPIP’s community-based philanthropy model being adopted and adapted by hundred of communities. Directly after completing her fellowship, Sandy became the Community Philanthropy Manager at AAPIP and was subsequently promoted to the position of Systems Director. Peggy is currently serving as Interim CEO of the Common Counsel Foundation which focuses on community-oriented philanthropy by expanding resources for progressive social movements across the United States.
LAURIE OLSEN / LORRAINE CHOW
California Tomorrow, Oakland, CA
2004-2005
Laurie Olsen is an expert in multicultural education and has spent the last five decades researching, writing, advocating, and providing leadership development and technical assistance on educational equity with an emphasis on immigrant and English Learner education, language access and rights. She has published dozens of books and articles on the subject including the award-winning Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools. Laurie brought this expertise to her role as the long-time executive director of California Tomorrow, a nonprofit research, advocacy and technical assistance organization committed to building a fair and inclusive multicultural society. For her fellow, Laurie selected Lorraine Chow who has significant experience in the field of early childhood education. Lorraine was able to contribute to Laurie’s work at California Tomorrow while learning from Laurie how to influence the politics and public policy affecting early childhood education. Lorraine is now Professor of Early Childhood Education at American River College and is carrying out the kind of work California Tomorrow pioneered. Laurie has since left California Tomorrow, but continues to be a leader for programs promoting educational equity and advancement statewide, and is the Director of the Sobrato Early Academic Language initiative of the Sobrato Family Foundation, currently being replicated in 69 schools across 12 school districts in California.
MAURICIO LIM MILLER / MARCEL DIALLO
Family Independence Initiative, Oakland, CA
2003-2004
Mauricio Lim Miller founded Family Independence Initiative (FII) in 2001, with a mission to support and accelerate low-income families’ own efforts to improve their social and economic mobility. Inspired by the challenges he faced as a child living in poverty and his mother’s determination to create a better life for her children, Mauricio champions an approach that relies on families leading their own change and helping one another, which has helped generate substantial outcomes in diverse contexts around the United States. In recognition of his unconventional approach to generating economic mobility among low-income families, Mauricio was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2012. He is an Ashoka Fellow, a Purpose Prize winner, and was honored with an invitation to President Clinton’s 1999 State of the Union address and was appointed by President Obama to the White House Council for Community Solutions. Prior to founding FII, Mauricio spent 22 years as the Director of Asian Neighborhood Design, a community development agency in San Francisco and Oakland. During his tenure as President of FII, Mauricio selected arts activist Marcel Diallo as his fellow. Called the “Mayor of West Oakland” by friends, Marcel had been working, in the face of increasing development pressure, to keep the historic African-American cultural district of West Oakland thriving with Black home and business ownership. The fellowship gave Marcel access to the financing community while Mauricio’s work was benefited by this opportunity for him to learn more about the kind of challenges neighborhoods like these face. Marcel used what he learned as a fellow to form the Village Bottoms Community Building and Development Corporation in Oakland, which has created an urban farm, performance venues, affordable housing, and cooperative grocery services. His pioneering efforts were the subject of a cover article in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. Marcel is also a poet and author of Black New World Manifesto (with a foreword by Amiri Baraka) and co-founder of the Black Dot Artist’s Collective and Eastside Arts Alliance. Marcel’s most recent project—Oakland 2 New Orleans—is focused on creating opportunities for cultural and economic exchange in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This new chapter has given Mauricio an opportunity to share his ideas about economic innovation with New Orleans where he has worked with Marcel on project to create economic opportunity for the African American “Mardi Gras Indian” community. In 2016, Mauricio left his position at FII and then published his first book, The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty Is Wrong in 2017.