Candidate for
Member; Santa Clara County Board of Education; Trustee Area 1

I'm a 28 year resident of Palo Alto. I have been married to my husband Don for 28 years and we have two kids. One is a freshman at Gunn, and other is a fourth grader at Ohlone Elementary School.

I grew up in Northridge in southern California + yes, I'm a Valley Girl + and went to public schools through high school. My bachelor's degree in Engineering is from Caltech in Pasadena. I received my MS degree from UC Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

I worked for HP and Agilent for 18 years at different jobs including manufacturing engineer, hardware design engineer, sales engineer, sales manager, and hardware and software R&D manager. During my last three years at Agilent, I was in a jobshare arrangement which allowed me to work part time and spend time with my older child. I was laid off from Agilent when the dot-com bubble popped and stayed home. I had another child and starting getting involved in education.

My passion for bilingual education started with my first child's bilingual Mandarin/English preschool. I was so impressed by his education and seemingly effortless learning of Mandarin and 200 Chinese characters, that I wanted to see a Mandarin immersion program in Palo Alto's public school system, patterned after the very successful Spanish immersion program that was in place for 10 years.

After 6 years of building a grassroots organization, working with school board members and school district administration, and co-authoring federal and state grants to bring funding to Palo Alto for Mandarin language acquisition, the Ohlone Mandarin Immersion program was started in 2008.

I was appointed to the Santa Clara County School Board in 2007 and have been involved with different programs throughout the county from early start preschools to alternative programs for our at-risk youth, from special education classes for the medically fragile to the juvenile hall schools. I've performed site assessments for the Head Start program, and volunteered with the 1000 Hearts for 1000 Minds program.

I am very passionate about serving all the children in Santa Clara County; I'm especially inspired by the graduates of our Special Education and Alternative Education programs. The challenges faced by these kids from social, emotional, and physical environments are very difficult and the beaming faces of the students and their families at graduation is very gratifying.

I am committed to serving the children of Silicon Valley, and would be honored to have your vote on November 6.