Candidate for
Board Member; San Francisco Unified School District

Kimberly Wicoff is a dedicated reformer who has spent the last decade working on issues of equity and social change in San Francisco. A product of public schools in San Antonio, Texas, and the daughter of a public school teacher, she saw first-hand how important the broad and diverse experience of attending public school can be. But she also witnessed the inequalities that can result in those systems, as her father served for 18 years as the official child psychiatrist at two inner city school districts, helping special needs kids reintegrate into the mainstream system. Often these students were incorrectly labeled as special needs, and those issues were exacerbated by the poor quality of the schools in under-resourced communities. So in high school Kimberly volunteered as a debate coach at an urban high school and served on the Octagon Club as a tutor and service volunteer in her community.

Kimberly left Texas to attend college at Princeton University in New Jersey and then moved to New York City, where she worked as a management consultant for three years. During that time she co-founded her company's high school mentoring program, which provided support to students from the Bronx. While she enjoyed her work, she felt a stronger pull to apply what she was learning about management to broader social problems.

In 1999 Kimberly moved to the Bay Area to attend Stanford Business School as part of its Public Management Program. It was at Stanford that Kimberly honed her passion for applying her skills to social sector problems, serving as a mentor in the I Have A Dream Foundation program in East Palo Alto and working with Yosemite National Park as a strategic planning intern.

Upon graduating from Stanford, Kimberly moved to San Francisco and joined the Bridgespan Group (http://www.bridgespan.org), a nonprofit consulting firm working with nonprofits and foundations to help them achieve greater social impact. During her 5 years at Bridgespan, Kimberly worked with a number of nonprofits that provided alternative educational options and sought to influence district reform. But she saw how difficult it was to drive change from the outside, so she left Bridgespan in 2006 to join Communities of Opportunity (COO), a public/private partnership fighting poverty and inequality in San Francisco's most disconnected neighborhoods (http://www.coosf.org).

Through her work at COO she has learned first hand what it takes to move bureaucratic systems and align the right players to get things done. She has already built partnerships with the school district to bring a drop out recovery program to San Francisco and to develop improved case management practices for students and families who struggle with issues both in the classroom and at home. She brings a unique combination of personal passion and practical work experience that will enable her not just to fight for progressive reform but to help make it happen.

Affiliations

And Castro for All + member Angel Island Association + Board member and past president Leukemia and Lymphoma Society + Team in Training participant Project Open Hand + volunteer