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

I am a father of two boys -- one who is a freshman at Mountain View High School and another who is in seventh grade at Graham Middle School and will attend Mountain View High School in two years.

I moved to Mountain View five years ago to take a job a Yahoo, where I still work. I am the Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property for Yahoo. I have been practicing intellectual property law for 25 years, and have held positions in-house, in private practice, for the US Government, and the United Nations.

In addition, I have experience in education, having taught patent enforcement law for several years at my alma mater, The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. I also have experience with younger children as a soccer coach in AYSO. In short, I know the challenges of teaching, both inside the classroom and out.

It is through the experience of trying to get an exemption to the state-mandated 9th grade PE requirement for my older son that I became interested in serving on the Board. In short, based on my experiences, it is clear to me that the Board can improve how it treats its constituents, how it decides to give advantages to one student over another, how it communicates with the people it serves, and how it engages on the substance of the issues that it is tasked with managing.

I believe that my legal experience, my sense of fairness, and my interest in individual people would be of great use on the Board.