Candidate for
School Board Director; City of Berkeley

Professionally, I am an attorney, and have dedicated my career to improving our state's foster care and delinquency systems.

I work at the local, state and national levels on legislation, policy and budget reform measures, all designed to prevent children and youth from entering the foster care or juvenile justice systems, or to ensure that if brought into the system, there are supports and resources in place to bring separated families together safely, and to rehabilitate youth offenders. In addition to being an advocate for children, youth and families, I manage state, federal and private funding in excess of $125 million, and am responsible for developing and administering program budgets in all 58 California court systems.

My passion and commitment to education runs deep: in 2005 I took a year off from my job to teach middle school math in San Francisco's Hunter's Point neighborhood. The experience was profound and humbling, and gave me a first-hand understanding of the complexity of the challenges facing students, families, teachers and administrators as we strive to improve educational outcomes for our most struggling and vulnerable children.

Personally, I have been actively involved in the schools since my oldest child, now 17, was in Kindergarten. I have served on elementary school Site Governance Councils, and on the district's BSEP P&O Committee. In my work at both the school site and district levels I have consistently:

• Advocated for the alignment of resources with priorities
• Collaborated to identify measurable objectives for intervention activities
• Ensured that parent concerns regarding classroom management and discipline issues are addressed
• Argued for sufficient resources to support the Universal Learning Support System model.