Candidate for
Board Member; Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District

I grew up in Colorado where I completed my primary and secondary education and then attended the University of Colorado, Boulder where I received my BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering. After graduation I came to Silicon Valley and worked at Amdahl for 5 years before going to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo where I received my MS in Engineering.

I have been working in the semiconductor field for over 25 years and am currently a Sr. Manager at Synopsys, a Mountain View company, where I manage an international team of engineers that support and develop IP products ,such as USB, Ethernet, PCIe and SATA.

I live with my family in the Martens-Carmelita neighborhood of Mountain View. My wife, Dipti, is a Chemical Engineer, working at IHS, formerly Stanford Research Institute. Our daughter, Jayna, is a freshman at MVHS and son, Ishaan, is a 4th grader at Huff Elementary. Our "second" daughter, Valerie Thys, is an exchange student from Belgium who is attending MVHS as a senior.

In addition to hosting Valerie, for the last 4 years we have been hosting QuestBridge scholars, who are high academic achievers from low income families, during their summer internship at QuestBridge headquarters in Palo Alto.

I am running because I am passionate about community service and education and I have the leadership, experience and drive to propel our school district to the next level.

I am active member of the Mountain View Rotary including holding a board position as membership chair. In addition I am on the Rotary Scholars committee which provides scholarships to MVHS, LAHS and Alta Vista students and active in all the other community service projects our club is involved in, including fundraising for CHAC, Community Services Agency, and Rotacare to name a few. In addition to Rotary, I'm also a volunteer tutor at MVHS's tutorial center, taught advanced math to 3rd through 5th grade and started the chess program at Castro and coached AYSO, Pony Baseball and Junior Giants, where I won the Willie MAC award for best coach in our district.

As a computer professional I've managed a diverse group from PhDs from Stanford to technicians and people from different ethnic backgrounds, much like the student body we have in our community. My experience has taught me how to promote the aspirations of everyone and at the same time move the whole team forward.

I have been on corporate boards and held positions on technology standard committees, such as CableLabs and Universal Serial Bus (USB) which required me to collaborate with many diverse points of views yet reach a consensus to provide the best technology and meet the vision we set out to accomplish.