LEADING EDGE FUND - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Retired Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Levi Strauss & Company
Albert F. Moreno served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Levi Strauss & Co., from 1996 to November 2005. Mr. Moreno joined Levi Strauss & Co. in 1978 where he was responsible for legal and brand protection affairs and oversaw the company's global security department. Mr. Moreno served as the Assistant Secretary of Levi Strauss & Co. until November 2005. He served as the Chief Counsel for Levi Strauss North America from 1994 to 1996 and also as its Deputy General Counsel from 1985 to 1994.
He has been a Director of Xcel Energy Inc. and has served on the Board of Trustees for the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, the Mexican Museum, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund, and the American Corporate Counsel Association. He served as a Director of New Century Energies Inc. and Levi Strauss Foundation. Mr. Moreno holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from San Diego State University and a degree in Latin American Economic Studies from the Universidad de Madrid. In 1970, he received his Law Degree from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board
- Leader
- Partner at Kapor Capital
Benjamin Todd Jealous is a Partner at Kapor Capital, where he invests in seed-stage startup companies that use technology to narrow gaps in society. An internationally renowned civil and human rights leader, Jealous works at the intersection of technology and social impact.
Jealous has been a leader of successful state and local movements to ban the death penalty, outlaw racial profiling, defend voting rights, secure marriage equality, and free multiple wrongfully incarcerated people.
Job Titles:
- Shareholder
- Shareholder at Lewis, Feinberg, Lee & Jackson
- Shareholder, Lewis, Feinberg, Lee & Jackson, P.C
Bill Lann Lee is shareholder at Lewis, Feinberg, Lee & Jackson, P.C., where he prosecutes civil rights and disability rights actions. Mr. Lee is a 40-year veteran civil rights lawyer. From December 1997 to January 2001, Mr. Lee served as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division in the United States Department of Justice in the Clinton Administration, as the nation's top civil rights prosecutor. Before joining Lewis Feinberg in 2007, Mr. Lee was a partner at the firm of Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, from 2001-2006. Earlier in his career, he spent 18 years as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the law firm founded by Justice Thurgood Marshall, in New York City and Los Angeles. He headed the Legal Defense Fund's western regional office in Los Angeles. He also prosecuted employment discrimination class actions for the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles. Super Lawyers magazine has named Mr. Lee one of the Top 100 Northern California Lawyers each year since 2011, and a Northern California Super Lawyer each year since 2004. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including from the U.S. Department of Justice, the American Bar Association, the California State Bar, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Organization of Chinese Americans and the Asian American Bar Association. He is a graduate of Columbia University Law School iand Yale College.
Chaney Turner is working to win tax and policy changes so people in the communities most harmed by the drug war can enter the cannabis economy, and realize equity and economic mobility by increasing reinvestment in those communities.
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Partner With Covington & Burling
- Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
Clara Shin is a partner with Covington & Burling and co-chairs the firm's global commercial litigation practice group. In the last few years alone, she obtained defense wins valued at over $3 billion in intellectual property, trade secret, and licensing disputes. Clara also developed the firm's first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategic plan and vice-chaired the Pro Bono Committee.
Earlier in her career, Clara served in the federal government on two occasions. From 1992 to 1995, she was on the start-up team that launched the AmeriCorps national service program. In parallel, she codesigned a $1 billion HUD program to revitalize distressed public housing developments and a DoD program to assist communities affected by military downsizing. Clara subsequently was appointed as a White House Fellow and served from 1998 to 1999 in the White House Office of the Chief of Staff. Clara has also led international initiatives. In the early days of glasnost, she helped to design Tahoe-BaikalInstitute, an environmental institute in California and Siberia which launched in 1991. During this same time period, she was involved in establishing Earth Train, a youth-led program for environmental activists worldwide.
Clara's board experience spans 25 years. In addition to the Rosenberg Foundation, she serves as a Director of the National Women's Law Center and People for the American Way. Her prior board service includes the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery, ACLU of Northern California, Asian Pacific Fund, National Partnership for Women and Families, and others. Clara earned her JD from Stanford Law School and clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She received her BA from Smith College.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer, Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties
Daniel Grossman was the Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Community Federation of the Bay Area until December 2021. Previously, he was CEO of SLOW Food for Fast Lives, founded in 2013 in order to provide healthy food options for people on the go. Prior to that, he founded Wild Planet Toys in 1993 and ran the company as CEO until 2012. Wild Planet was dedicated to developing non-violent, innovative products that appeal to both parents and kids. Before founding Wild Planet, Mr. Grossman was at Aviva Sports from 1991 to 1993. In 1992, he joined the senior management team of Mattel International.
Prior to joining Aviva Sports, Mr. Grossman earned his M.B.A. from Stanford University. He joined the program after serving seven years in the U.S. Foreign Service as a diplomat, both overseas and at the Department of State. Before joining the Foreign Service, Mr. Grossman served as a legislative aide to Congressman James Coyne in Washington D.C. He received his B.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University in 1980.
Job Titles:
- Professor Emerita and Former Academic Dean
Shauna Marshall received her B.A. from Washington University, St. Louis and her J.D. from U.C. Davis. She then joined the U.S. Justice Department's Honor Program as a trial attorney in the Antitrust Division. She left the Justice Department in 1984 and spent six years as a staff attorney for Equal Rights Advocates, working on impact cases, public education, and organizing campaigns on behalf of low-income women and women of color.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of Radio Bilingüe, Inc
- Founder and Director, Radio Bilingue
Hugo Morales is the Executive Director of Radio Bilingüe, Inc. In 1976, Mr. Morales and an all-volunteer staff of farmworkers, former farmworkers, and artists founded Radio Bilingüe, which, on July 4, 1980, began radio broadcast operation over the entire San Joaquin Valley. Radio Bilingüe is now a national satellite community radio service in Spanish, English and Mixteco that serves Latino radio audiences in the Northern Hemisphere. It has its headquarters in Fresno, regional offices in Salinas and El Centro, and national production studios in San Francisco. Radio Bilingüe has six full-power FM radio stations: 3 serving the San Joaquin Valley (KSJV- Fresno, KMPO-Modesto, KTQX-Bakersfield), one station serving Mendocino county (KVUH- Laytonville), one serving the Salinas Valley (KHDC-Salinas), and one serving the Imperial Valley (KUBO-El Centro). Radio Bilingüe is the recognized Spanish-language radio service for the public radio system in the United States. It serves over half a million listeners with its pioneering daily Spanish-language national talk show, Línea Abierta, its independently produced news service, Noticiero Latino, and its rainbow of Spanish-language traditional folk music for its national Latino audiences. The entire 24-hour daily operation is totally devoted to public service. Radio Bilingüe has a full-time staff of 25.
Mr. Morales is a Mixtec Indian from Oaxaca, Mexico. He was raised in Oaxaca until the age of nine when his family immigrated to California. He grew up as a farmworker in Sonoma County until he graduated in 1968 from Healdsburg High School where he had been elected student body president. He then went on to graduate from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. In 1994, he became the first resident of the San Joaquin Valley to be a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (known as the "genius award"). In May 1999, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting honored Mr. Morales with the Edward R. Murrow Award, public radio's highest distinction. Mr. Morales received the 2006 Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation. "The Prize for Cultural Freedom was established to recognize people whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and expression." Some of Mr. Morales' board memberships include: the Board of Directors of The California Endowment and the San Francisco Foundation, Fresno County First Five Commission, and The California Post Secondary Education Commission.
Jackie Byers is inspiring radical change through grass-roots organizing, telling the story of Black organizing that led to historic victories and a national reckoning around the role of police in schools and communities.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director at Hall Capital Partners LLC
Jamey Spencer is a Managing Director at Hall Capital Partners LLC and a member of the firm's Portfolio Management practice in San Francisco. He is responsible for developing investment strategy and constructing and managing client investment portfolios. Mr. Spencer also serves on the firm's Investment Review Committee. Prior to joining the firm in 2021, Mr. Spencer was a Senior Vice President at Jordan Park, where he led the firm's private investment efforts. Previously, Mr. Spencer was a Managing Director in the Private Client Practice and co-managed the Co-Investments team at Cambridge Associates. He has spent nearly two decades focused on private investments, including previous experience with The Riverside Company, Morgan Creek Capital Management, Fort Point Capital, and Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, and began his career in energy M&A and corporate finance with J.P. Morgan. Mr. Spencer is a member of the Investment Committee of the Marin Community Foundation, a member of the Board of Directors of Summer Search Bay Area, a member of the College Board of Visitors of Wake Forest University, and a member of the Bay Area Development Council of U.S. Soccer. He received a B.S. in Business magna cum laude from Wake Forest University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Job Titles:
- Chief
- Program Officer
- Manager of the Legal - Policy Department at the ACLU of Northern California
Kendra Fox-Davis, a long-time racial justice and gender justice advocate, previously served as an attorney at the United States Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, leading civil rights investigations of harassment and discrimination on the basis of race and gender, and investigating and resolving complaints of race and sex-based harassment and discrimination. As a Thurgood Marshall Fellow and staff attorney at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, Kendra helped challenge discriminatory police practices and gang injunctions targeting African American communities, among other accomplishments.
Kendra also has worked as the manager of the Legal-Policy department at the ACLU of Northern California, and as training director for the Center for Third World Organizing and NAACP National Voter Fund. She began her social justice work as a youth organizer and later served as President for the United States Student Association. She is on the Board of Governors for Public Advocates. Kendra joins the Rosenberg Foundation from the University of California, Office of the President, where she worked to protect the rights of survivors of sexual violence, ensuring compliance with Title IX across the university's 10 campuses, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as the Office of the President. Kendra earned a J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles - School of Law with a specialization in Critical Race Studies and Public Interest Law and Policy.
Job Titles:
- Strategic Program Advisor
Krea is an Indigenous mother of six who believes in community initiated solutions and the power of redemption and has anchored her work in education,community organizing, youth development, juvenile and criminal justice values for more than 20 years. For the past five years, she has served as member of the leadership team at the Young
Job Titles:
- Board Vice Chair and Secretary )
Lateefah Simon is a nationally recognized advocate for civil rights and racial justice in Oakland and the Bay Area. She has served as President of Akonadi Foundation since 2016. That same year-driven by Oscar Grant's death-she was elected to the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board of Directors as President. She was elected to a second term in November 2020. Since 2015, Lateefah also has served as a member of the Board of Trustees for the California State University, the nation's largest public university system, and state officials often turn to her for strategic advice on policy matters related to racial justice. In 2022 Akonadi Foundation welcomed Lateefah Simon to the Board of Directors as she transitioned from President of Akonadi to lead Meadow Fund. Lateefah received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award in 2003, making her the youngest woman to receive the award -in recognition of her work as Executive Director of the Young Women's Freedom Center.
Lateefah previously served as Program Director at the Rosenberg Foundation, where she launched the Leading Edge Fund to seed, incubate, and accelerate bold ideas from the next generation of progressive movement leaders in California. She also held the position of Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, successfully launching community-based initiatives, such as the Second Chance Legal Services Clinic. In addition, Lateefah spearheaded San Francisco's first reentry anti-recidivism youth services division under the then-District Attorney Kamala Harris leadership.
Lateefah's other numerous awards include the California State Assembly's "Woman of the Year,"; the Jefferson Award for Extraordinary Public Service, and Inside Philanthropy's "Most Promising New Foundation President" (2018). Lateefah's additional awards include the Ford Foundation, the National Organization for Women, Lifetime Television, and O Magazine.
Job Titles:
- Business & Grants Manager
Linda has dedicated her working life to philanthropy and non-profit organizations for the past 20 years, and has managed the Rosenberg Foundation's grants and business administration for over a decade. She is co-founder of the Mad Hatter's Network hosted through the Northern California Grantmakers, a group dedicated to connecting small foundation staff who juggle multiple roles and responsibilities, and is a former Co-chair of the Northern California Grantmaker's Emergency Loan Fund Committee. Previously, she administered the grants, fiscal sponsorship and donor advised fund program at RSF Social Finance, a nonprofit organization offering investing, lending, and giving services to individuals and organizations committed to improving society and the environment. She started her nonprofit career as the sole employee working for the Board of the Randall Museum Friends. She graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Art from UC Santa Barbara. In her free time, she can be found on a hiking trail, in a yoga class, or reading books in her garden. close
Malkia Devich Cyril is creating a Radical Loss Movement, mobilizing California's bereaved Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other communities of color to build a radical practice of grief that can fuel transformative grievance and governance, replacing racialized policies and practices that punish and disenfranchise BIPOC grief.
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Managing Partner
- Founder, Managing Partner, and Co - CIO of HMI Capital
Marco (Mick) Hellman is a founder, managing partner, and co-CIO of HMI Capital. Before creating HMI Capital, he spent most of his career at Hellman & Friedman, LLC, where he was a managing director and member of the Investment Committee. Mr. Hellman also established Hellman & Friedman's Hong Kong office in 1992. He is the former chairman of the Board of Directors of Blackbaud and a former trustee at UC Berkeley Foundation. He is Chair of the Managing Board of HSB, LLC, a trustee of SFJAZZ, and a trustee of the USA Cycling Foundation. Mr. Hellman received an A.B. in Economics with high distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. with distinction from Harvard Business School.
Job Titles:
- California Business Leader
Job Titles:
- Racial Justice Staff Attorney
Meredith Desautels' goal is to help end the incarceration of youth in California. She believes the juvenile justice system represents the greatest failure of the country's democratic system and its promise of justice and opportunity for all.
"Making mistakes as a kid is supposed to be seen as a normal part of learning," Desautels said. "But in the juvenile justice system, it's seen as criminal behavior. Research shows that young people are developmentally different from adults and respond best to a system that is restorative, not punitive. As it stands, too often a first encounter with the juvenile justice system sets youth on a downward trajectory and undermines their lifelong potential. We need to get back to letting all youth make mistakes and supporting them in moving past those mistakes."
Desautels is a racial justice staff attorney at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area; she first joined the organization as a Skadden Fellow focusing on criminal justice and reentry. In 2011, she oversaw the launch of a new direct services program, the Second Chance Legal Clinic, and has since served as its director. To date, the Clinic has helped hundreds of formerly incarcerated clients clean up their records and access housing and employment. Desautels has also led the Lawyers' Committee's broader advocacy related to reentry and criminal justice reform, which has included successful impact litigation to protect the voting rights of people with convictions, and passage of state and local policies to expand expungement rights and limit the use of background checks in employment and housing.
Nicole Lee is working to end youth incarceration in Alameda County and pass that torch to the next generation of activists who are reimagining an entirely new youth justice system across California.
Phyllis Cook served for 25 years as the Executive Director of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Under her leadership from 1983-2008, the Endowment Fund assets grew from $28 million to over $2.8 billion. She was responsible for major gift solicitations, development, grantmaking, and oversight of 800 donor advised funds, 70 supporting foundations and 100 restricted funds. Ms. Cook also served as Assistant Director of the Jewish Community Federation.
Today, in addition to her role as Managing Director of PLC Philanthropic Services where she works with individuals and nonprofits to achieve their philanthropic objectives, she serves on the Board of Directors of the Bernard Osher Foundation, Gerson Bakar Foundation, Maisin Foundation, and Sandler Foundation among others. She has received numerous awards, including: 2008 Founders' Medallion from the Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles; 2007 Association of Jewish Community Organizational Professionals Mandelkorn Distinguished Service Award; 2007 Trustees' Citation for fundraising from the University of California, Berkeley, 2007 Community Endowment Excellence Award from United Jewish Communities; 1976 Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Young Leadership Award, and; JCF Women's Division Award for Devoted Service & Creative Leadership. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan (Phi Beta Kappa), where she was voted "Outstanding Senior Woman" and completed graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School in English.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Founder
- Co - Founder of Silicon Valley De - Bug
Raj Jayadev is the co-founder of Silicon Valley De-Bug. De-Bug is an organization that focuses on community organizing, advocacy, and multimedia storytelling based out of San José, California. Through De-Bug's criminal justice community program, the Albert Cobarrubias Justice Project, they created "participatory defense." Participatory defense is a community model that was developed for families whose loved ones are facing the criminal court system. The model will help impact the outcome of the case and transform the landscape of power in the courts.
De-Bug has initiated campaigns around bail reform, police accountability, sentencing reform and more. De-Bug has worked with and trained community groups across the country to become participatory defense hubs. There is now a National Participatory Defense Network that De-Bug coordinates, which represents hubs in over 30 cities. Jayadev's community work and writings have been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, BBC, TIME Magazine and media outlets across the country. In 2018, he was selected as a MacArthur Fellow.
When Raj Jayadev and his colleagues founded Silicon Valley De-Bug in 2001 to use media as a community-building tool, they never intended to work on criminal justice reform issues. In a region that has become synonymous with wealth and technology, they simply wanted to provide a platform for marginalized communities to participate in public conversations.
That changed when, eight years later, Jayadev and his team noticed a dramatic rise in arrests for public drunkenness in San Jose's downtown, including of staff and members who had not had a drop to drink. De-Bug organized the community around police accountability and reform-and saw a 50 percent drop in arrest rates in one year. That campaign, coupled with lessons De-Bug learned around rallying to prosecute a law enforcement agent who killed an unarmed father of five, Rudy Cardeanas, led the organization into police accountability work.
Job Titles:
- Treasurer of the Board
- Trustee
Robert (Bob) Friedman, fourth generation resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, has devoted his career to closing the racial wealth divide and unleashing the genius of all people. He founded Prosperity Now (formerly CFED) in 1978, which led the development of the US microenterprise, asset-building and economic development fields. He also helped found the Association of Economic Opportunity (AEO). In 1998, he received the Presidential Award for Microenterprise from President Clinton. In addition to being a longtime Rosenberg Foundation trustee, Bob currently serves on the boards of Prosperity Now, Ecotrust, and the San Francisco Foundation, and is a former board member of Levi Strauss & Co. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. He is author of A Few Thousand Dollars: Sparking Prosperity for Everyone (2019), The Safety Net as Ladder: Transfer Payments and Economic Development (1989) and Expanding the Opportunity to Produce (1983). close
Ms. Marshall spent the next four years in the Stanford and East Palo Alto community, receiving her J.S.M. from Stanford, lecturing in the areas of civil rights and community law practice at Stanford Law School, and directing the East Palo Alto Community Law Project. She joined the UC Hastings faculty as a Clinical Professor in 1994 and served as Associate Academic Dean from 2000 to 2002 and became Academic Dean in 2005. She stepped down as Academic Dean in June 2013 and is now an Emeritus member of the UC Hastings faculty. Her writings reflect her interest in ethical issues apparent in community law practice and civil rights litigation.
In October 2008, the Board of Directors of the Rosenberg Foundation appointed Timothy P. Silard as the Foundation's fifth president.