GEORGE LUCAS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Preschool Program Director
Amanda Reardon holds a bachelor's degree in birth-kindergarten teacher education and a master's degree in curriculum and instruction, and now studies teacher leadership as a doctoral student. Amanda was the Student Teacher of the Year in North Carolina in 2016 and began her career teaching pre-K and kindergarten. She has served as a practicum student mentor, cooperating teacher, and university graduate assistant, and is now the director of a preschool program in New Jersey, where she strives to deliver high-quality professional development.
* Please note: The Foundation is a nonpartisan organization, and does not take positions on any legislation or ballot measures, nor does it endorse or oppose any candidates in elections to public office.
Annette Perez, Ed.D., holds a doctorate in educational leadership from the Sage Colleges of Albany. Dr. Perez is an educational leader with over 20 years of experience in education as a classroom teacher, staff developer, and school leader. Dr. Perez has taught a program development and grantsmanship class at Alfred University, where she taught and empowered students to pursue new opportunities to enrich their community at large. Dr. Perez is passionate about improving educational equity and works to uplift traditionally underserved communities.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Executive Director, Edutopia
Cindy Johanson is the executive director of Edutopia, produced by the George Lucas Educational Foundation.
For more than 30 years, Cindy has led the design and expansion of digital services with a primary focus on education. Prior to her work with Edutopia, Cindy served as senior vice president of interactive and education for the Public Broadcasting Service. At PBS, she was responsible for the launch and growth of the award-winning pbs.org and its suite of Internet sites, including pbskids.org, pbsparents.org, and pbsteacher-source.org. Cindy's passion for online learning started in 1989 with text-based interfaces and 300 baud modems when she managed teacher support and training for Learning Link, an online service for K-12 classrooms. She currently serves as a board member for The Crucible, a nonprofit industrial arts school in Oakland, California, and as a member of the leadership council for XR Marin, a public regional training center for education and innovation in XR (Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and 360-degree Video Production).
Cindy holds a master's degree from Teachers College, Columbia University and a bachelor's degree in communications from Ohio University.
Job Titles:
- Special Education Teacher
Dr. Christina Folkman is from Miami, Florida, and has been teaching for 15 years. She earned a master's degree in curriculum and instruction and a doctorate in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University. In addition to her degrees, she has certificates in elementary education, English language arts, English as a second language, and special education. For the last four years, she has taught first through sixth grade special education, with a focus and passion for working with students with autism. She places a high degree of importance on helping special education students achieve a strong sense of social and emotional well-being in order to help them meet their highest academic potential.
Dr. Lisa Carr has been committed to counseling and recruiting students for more than 30 years in college admissions, student affairs, and public school. She currently serves as a school counselor at Bethlehem Central High School, in Delmar, New York. Lisa is a member of the leadership team for Bridge2College for first-generation students and enjoys mentoring affinity groups. Previously, Dr. Carr was the director of admissions at Russell Sage College and taught several graduate school classes for educators over the years.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Special Education
- Professor of Special Education at University of Massachusetts Boston
Dr. Lusa Lo is a professor of special education at University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses on family-school-community partnerships and educational planning and practices for English learners with disabilities. Dr. Lo works closely with schools, communities, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies nationally and internationally to develop parent training programs and make policy changes, so students with disabilities and their families from diverse backgrounds can be well supported.
Job Titles:
- High School English Teacher
Jason Abril is a high school English teacher and Model United Nations, Young Democrats Club, and film club sponsor. He is a former film executive with Brooklyn Films in Los Angeles, where he worked on a variety of feature films and television shows. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and currently resides in Richmond, Virginia.
As the inaugural Executive Director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (Stanford PACS), Kim Meredith has been responsible for strong financial performance and organizational growth including scaling the Stanford PACS budget eight times in five years. Ms. Meredith joined in July 2009, and then one year later led the team to acquire the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), and in March 2012 opened the Stanford PACS office in Beijing at the Stanford Center at Peking University. Ms. Meredith brings dynamic and innovative leadership to implement the mission of Stanford PACS and SSIR.
Ms. Meredith engages scholars, students, practitioners and leaders in interdisciplinary research to explore ideas for social change. She serves a unique role by bridging research to practice, successfully informing philanthropy, nonprofit practice, policy and social innovation.
Prior to joining Stanford PACS, Ms. Meredith served as the Chief Development Officer for Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York City. Before joining PPFA, she served for nine years as the Chief Operating Officer at Planned Parenthood in San Francisco. Ms. Meredith launched her business career in corporate America at AT&T for 10 years.
Ms. Meredith currently serves on the Board of Directors of the California Family Health Council, awarding grants of $20 million annually for reproductive health; the George Lucas Education Foundation - Edutopia, the leading voice illuminating and showcasing what works in education; and the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2), where she serves as board liaison to grantee Asylum Access working on global refugee rights. Ms. Meredith graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics. In 2005, she received a fellowship to the Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director, Lucas Education Research
- First Executive Director of Lucas Education Research
Kristin is the first Executive Director of Lucas Education Research, founded in 2013 as a sister division to Edutopia at the George Lucas Educational Foundation. The division's mission and strategy, developed by Kristin, focuses on building an evidence base to support transformative practices in K-12 education. The group's specific five-year strategy focuses on building an evidence base for rigorous project based learning by employing design-based implementation research. Innovative methods for conducting research incorporate the use of a web portal to disseminate project based learning curricula, collect teachers' adaptations, build community, support teachers, and gather analytics.
Before heading Lucas Education Research, Kristin served as Vice President of Research and Validation at Scholastic Inc., from 2003 to 2013. During her tenure at Scholastic, Kristin implemented a continuous research and evaluation cycle that strategically improved the company's blended-model interventions, setting the highest-quality benchmarks for research in educational publishing. Before joining Scholastic, Kristin worked at two education-related start-ups in the Bay Area: LeapFrog Enterprises and Scientific Learning. In each case, Kristin developed the research strategy from the earliest start-up phase through an initial public offering.
Prior to this work, Ms. De Vivo conducted extensive neuropsychological and achievement testing with young children and adults at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City and at the University of California at San Francisco. She received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.
Job Titles:
- Special Education Teacher
Kymberlee Ricke is originally from Aurora, Illinois. She has two bachelor of science degrees-one in special education (deaf and hard of hearing) and one in elementary education. She taught deaf and hard-of-hearing students for five years before moving into general education for 15 years. After attaining a learning behavior specialist certification in 2017, she moved into teaching special education, where she has remained. As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, Kymberlee loves working with neurodiverse kids and strives to be the type of teacher she wishes she had as a child. She believes working in special education is the right fit for her, as she and her students "speak the same language." She endeavors to work with, not against, how the neurodiverse brain functions.
Marshall Turner chairs the board of directors of the AB Funds, a family of 96 mutual funds managed by AllianceBernstein LLP in New York. In addition to the George Lucas Educational Foundation, he is a member of the boards of: Xilinx, Inc. a $3.16B revenue semiconductor industry leader in adaptive and intelligent computing; and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
He is a former CEO or interim CEO of four technology companies and one broadcasting station. His technology industry experience also includes twenty years as a venture capital fund principal, and an early career as an industrial designer and biomedical engineer. While a biomedical engineer and Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health, he and a heart surgeon colleague designed an implantable left ventricular heart assist pump, and co-led the team that tested the device through twenty-nine calf implant surgeries, and published several papers on their work. Selected as a White House Fellow in 1970, he remained in Washington after his fellowship year to join the start-up leadership team of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Mr. Turner's public and community service has included chairing the boards of two national organizations - the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- as well as the Reed Union School District in Marin County during a period of major reform, and KQED, Inc., San Francisco's public broadcasting station. PBS, and the Museum of Radio and Television in New York are among his other non-profit boards. He has served on twenty-two public or private companies active in software, electronics, biotechnology, computer, telecommunication, consumer product, solar power and education markets.
Mr. Turner holds a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master's Degree in Product Design from Stanford University, and a Master's Degree in Business Administration from Harvard University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Chairman of the Board for DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc
- President of Ariel Investments
Mellody Hobson is president of Ariel Investments. Headquartered in Chicago, the firm offers six no-load mutual funds for individual investors and defined contribution plans as well as separately managed accounts for institutions and high net worth individuals. As president, Mellody is responsible for firm-wide management and strategic planning, overseeing all operations outside of research and portfolio management. Additionally, she serves as chairman of the board of trustees for Ariel Investment Trust.
Beyond her work at Ariel, Mellody has become a nationally recognized voice on financial literacy and investor education. She is a regular contributor and analyst on finance, the markets and economic trends for CBS News. She also contributes weekly money tips on the Tom Joyner Morning Show and pens a regular column for Black Enterprise magazine. As a passionate advocate for investor education, she is a spokesperson for the Ariel/Hewitt Study: 401(k) Plans in Living Color and the Ariel Black Investor Survey, both of which examine investing patterns among minorities.
Mellody is chairman of the board for DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. as well as a director of The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. and Starbucks Corporation. Her community outreach includes serving as chairman of After School Matters, a non-profit that provides Chicago teens with high quality, out-of-school time programs. She is a board member of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, The Chicago Public Education Fund, and Sundance Institute, where she has been appointed emeritus trustee. She is also on the executive committee of the Investment Company Institute's board of governors. Mellody earned her AB degree from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of International Relations and Public Policy. She also received honorary doctorate degrees in humanities from both Howard University and St. Mary's College.
Job Titles:
- Early Elementary School Teacher
Mr. Keenan W. Lee, M. Ed, is an African American urban educator in Central Pennsylvania. Mr. Lee specializes in curriculum and instruction with a concentration in early childhood education and is also a certified English as a Second Language (ESL) specialist. Having grown up in a low socioeconomic area, Mr. Lee brings a unique perspective to teaching children and uses his experiences to build relationships with his students.
Currently, Mr. Lee teaches first grade in his urban school district, with six years of experience with teaching children in pre-kindergarten through first grade. Through the use of social media, Mr. Lee has used his platform to bring awareness to the lack of funding in education, social and racial injustices in schools, and the importance of networking with peers to develop a fundamental professional learning community.
Robert Bradley is currently retired. Prior to retirement, Mr. Bradley spent 30 years handling the tax, investment and financial matters for wealthy families.
Most recently, he was the Chief Executive Officer of Ekahi Aloha LLC, a single-family office headquartered in the San Francisco bay area. Prior to his work at Ekahi Aloha LLC, Mr. Bradley was the Chief Operating Officer for Skywalker Properties Ltd LLC, a commercial real estate company based in San Francisco. Mr. Bradley also worked for many years as a Partner at Howson & Simon LLP, a boutique multi-family office accounting practice. Mr. Bradley began his career in the tax practice at Price Waterhouse.
Mr. Bradley serves on the Advisory Boards for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Benioff Ocean Initiative. Mr. Bradley is a Certified Public Accountant, licensed in California (currently inactive). He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from University of California, Irvine and a Masters of Business Administration from University of California, Davis.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Co - Founder and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors
Steve Arnold is co-founder and vice chairman of the board of directors of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. He also serves on the boards of a number of other non-profit organizations focused on improving education and human development. He chairs the boards of Enlearn, which is building an innovative machine learning product to improve math education, and Healthy Minds Innovations, which is developing products and services to support wellbeing and human flourishing. He also serves on the boards of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning and the New Mexico School for the Arts, and chairs the Advisory Council for Angela Duckworth's Character Lab.
He is a co-founder and partner emeritus at Polaris Partners, a venture capital and growth equity investment firm. Prior to starting Polaris, Steve spent more than 15 years in executive positions in software companies and the digital media industry. He served as vice president of Broadband Media Applications at Microsoft and as president and CEO of Continuum Productions (now Corbis), a company founded by Bill Gates to pioneer the creation of large digital libraries. Before joining Continuum, Steve served as vice president and general manager of LucasArts Games and Learning divisions, and as vice president of the New Media Group at Lucasfilm Ltd.