Candidate for
Director; El Camino Hospital District

Throughout the country the institutions managed by publicly elected officials are the pillars upon which the quality of life is built. In our community these institutions include city and county government, school boards and our district hospital which is chartered to foster the delivery of quality health care throughout the community.

For many of us, quality healthcare is very personal. My mother was able to live to see her twin grand-daughters because of medical advancements not available when I was growing up. Her life was extended using a Cyber-knife developed here locally and my twin girls have had a happy, healthy childhood because of advancements in NICU technology and care despite being born at 32 weeks, weighing just 3 ¼ pounds each.

My emotional commitment to these local institutions runs deep. My father was one of the founding doctors of El Camino Hospital and served as its 3rd Chief of Staff in 1963. My mother served for more than two decades in public office: on the Board of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District and as City Councilwoman and Mayor of Mountain View.

El Camino hospital is prominent in some of my early memories: I remember getting an early tetanus shot after stepping on a nail at the construction site that was to be my father's medical office across the street from El Camino Hospital. Getting my tonsils out was less painful not so much for the plentiful ice cream but for having my father and our family friends constantly stopping by my hospital bed.

My professional background includes 25 years as a small businessman and high-tech executive. I own my own small business, Sylvan Learning Center franchise, that tutors children in grades K-12 and have worked at world-class, technology companies such Dell and HP as well as at start-ups. Currently I am the Practice Leader for IBM Enterprise Marketing Management's Digital Marketing Services team.

The values I learned by watching what my family did, as well as what they said, emphasize ethical, not just legal, obligations to the stewardship of public resources. As board members, I agree with the Institute for Local Government that: "In public service, your responsibility to do what you believe is best for your community trumps the value of loyalty. The ethical approach, and what the public expects you to do, is what's best for your community.

• Work to improve the quality of life in the community and promote the best interests of the public.
• Promote the efficient use of agency resources."

A History of Community Service The commitment that we as citizens of a society have to invest our time in our community was ingrained in my psyche from the very beginning + my parents set the example based on their actions.

By the time I was 7 my mother had been elected to the Foothill Community College Board of Trustees and my father had become the Chief of Staff at El Camino Hospital. Throughout the 60's I walked door-to-door for my mother's re-election campaign and propositions long since forgotten. Part of reaching Eagle Scout is a community service project: I worked with the library to develop a community needs assessment survey that contributed to the library's future service offering.

At Almond I was a fixture at the early morning student council meetings and was elected Secretary of my 8th grade class at Egan in spite of delivering what, at least to me, appeared to be the most nervous, shaky-hand speech ever given by an 8th grader. At Los Altos high I was elected Secretary of our junior class and Vice-President of our Senior Class. Admittedly our most notable accomplishment was the revival of the Senior Class prom + a tradition that had disappeared through the transition of the late 60's and early 70's. Luckily for me, there are no known, surviving photos of me in a powder blue tuxedo.

I believe that as part of our obligation as citizens we should have a national draft that would require everyone to invest at least one year in military or social service. After college I spent one-year as a VISTA community organizer in New Orleans working to empower the very same families that were largely displaced by the Katarina Hurricane. Our greatest success was supporting the local community leaders in their efforts to release millions of dollars of Section 8 rent subsidy dollars intended for the poor of New Orleans that were sitting unused in the local Housing Authority bank account.

Following my year in New Orleans I spend 9 ½ weeks of a 10 week Marine Corp Officer Candidates School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia. This was a program that allowed me to test myself against the best and to learn a great deal of respect for our military. OCS is designed to allow candidates such as myself to participate but to choose not to continue before accepting a commission. While I earned my commission as a second lieutenant I chose to begin my career in the private sector.

One of my proudest accomplishments was at Stanford Graduate School of Business where I co-founded the Challenge for Charity. Challenge for Charity is a year long competition among 6 west coast business school culminating in a weekend of competitive events that raises money for local charities. The competition continues to succeed with multiple goals: http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordc4c/cgi-bin/wordpress/ 1. Involve professionals in their community at the beginning of their careers
2. Allow students from different schools to interact
3. Raise funds for charities such as the special Olympics.

In college, I took a semester off and worked on Capitol Hill for Congressman Pete McCloskey. Later I took time off from Hewlett-Packard to work as the Northern California Director for Ed Zschau in his campaign for US Senate. I also had the opportunity to work for Steve Poizner in his campaign for the Assembly.

Education I completed the tri-fecta of Los Altos public schools in 1974: Almond Elementary School, Egan Junior High School and Los Altos High School.

I earned my AB magna cum laude in economics from Harvard University where I wrote my thesis on the De-regulation of the Securities Industry. Harvard was an incredibly rich environment that allowed its students the exposure to and engagement with an incredible variety of programs and leaders. I first shook Jimmy Carter's hand in a meeting of 15 people when he was a little known Governor from Georgia. The Institute of Politics < http://www.iop.harvard.edu/> provided an un-paralled exposure to public servants. In 1976 I had the opportunity to escort then Congressman Leon Panetta from Monterey, current Secretary of Defense .

I played Freshman Tennis and later was the Treasurer for the Jimmy Fund Skating Show: a dormitory driven event that has raised over $2.2 million for Cancer Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Evening_with_Champions

I returned to the peninsula to earn my MBA at Stanford. In addition to co-founding the challenge for charity I was one of the leaders of the 1983 Conference on Entrepreneurship.