ST PAUL - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Secretary
- Trustee
Alexandra works professionally as an actor, primarily in voice over. She lives in San Rafael with her husband, pets, and (when home from college) two young adults. Alexandra has been part of the St. Paul's School community since the very beginning, in 1975, and is proud to see how the school has evolved over the years.
Andrew Williams is a St. Paul's alum with long and deep connections to the school and its alumni network. His nephew is a 4th grader and his niece is an incoming kindergartener. He is the Executive Director of East Bay United Soccer and has extensive experience in education, youth development, non-profit management, and community engagement. In 2017 he founded the 2020 Conference, a week-long empowerment and capacity-building experience for Bay Area High School students. His life has been committed to service, both nationally and internationally, including projects in South Africa and Guam, Peace Corps service in Cape Verde and Colombia, and, more recently, as Director of Community Engagement at SF University High School. Drew served on the committee to revise the SPES Mission and Values statement and has been involved in fundraising efforts. He wants to activate alumni engagement and support Community Engaged Learning.
Anthony Hopkins is the Eighth Grade Social Studies teacher. He has degrees in Education and teaching from UC Berkeley and New York University. He is also an education consultant, working with nonprofit organizations and government agencies supporting student-professional partnerships, aligning operations and curriculum with the company's mission statement and company development. He is also a professional photographer specializing in portraits and corporate headshots. He previously worked with TEDtalks, operating the longest running TEDx salon which focused on organizing and exploring ideas worth spreading across various communities. In California, Anthony has supported community wellness projects in Oakland. Such projects include Black Lives Matter Yoga in the parks, a free series of yoga; Create The Space, a wellness and entrepreneurship collective supporting people of color to become self-sustainable through mental wellness and financial wealth development; Barbershop Yoga, a men's group which focuses on healthy masculinity development through physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing with yoga, a book club, and allyship with Black To Yoga.
Job Titles:
- Head of School
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Trustee
- Head of School at St. Paul 's Episcopal School
Cheryl Ting joined the St. Paul's community as the Head of School in 2020. With nearly 30 years of experience in education, she has worked in three other Bay Area independent schools where she has held the positions of classroom teacher, department chair, dean, admissions director, and assistant head of school. She currently sits on CATDC's Board of Directors and the Boards of Maybeck High School and The Wesley School, and presents extensive workshops on the topics of equity and inclusion, diversity and leadership. She is the mother of two amazing humans, Maia, a musical artist, and Dylan, an undergraduate in the architecture program at Pratt. Cheryl loves to cook, eat, read, do puzzle games, listen to music, exercise, glamp, and hang out with her partner, Cameron, their two fur babies, and extended family and friends.
Cheryl Ting is the Head of School at St. Paul's Episcopal School and has over 25 years of experience in education. She currently sits on CAIS's Elementary Board of Standards, CATDC's Board of Directors, and Maybeck High School's Board of Trustees, and presents extensive workshops on the topics of equity and inclusion, diversity and leadership. She is the mother of two amazing humans, Maia, a musical artist, and Dylan, an undergraduate in the architecture program at Pratt. Cheryl is rediscovering life without teenagers in the house, with her partner, Cameron.
A native of Southern California, Elana Roston earned a B.A. in English from Yale University and an M.A. in Cinema Studies from NYU before returning to Los Angeles to spend a decade working as a radio and print journalist. At Santa Monica-based NPR station KCRW, she helped to launch "Which Way, L.A.?", an award-winning program which focused on local public affairs in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King verdict riots, then expanded to include national and international news. She served as a film critic and wrote a weekly column on cultural events for the alternative newsweekly New Times Los Angeles (a sister paper to the SF Weekly) and wrote freelance articles for publications including The Los Angeles Times and Premiere Magazine.
Since moving to the Bay Area with her husband, Scott Saul, a UC Berkeley professor, she has worked as an independent writer-editor and marveled over her son Max (St. Paul's Class of 2022)'s development, which accelerated when he joined St. Paul's in Fourth Grade. In her spare time, she participates in grassroots political action groups working to advance social justice and human dignity, and enjoys baking and solving crossword puzzles and other word games.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Co - Founder and CEO of Honors Pathway
Gene is Co-founder and CEO of Honors Pathway, an organization that partners with private universities and public high schools to operate MicroCollege programs. MicroCollege is a unique college pathway program where first-generation, low-income high school graduates become college ready by completing a year or two of transferrable college courses at no cost along with hi receiving hundreds of hours of intensive, small group support.
Prior to Honors Pathway, Mr. Wade co-founded and led several education companies, including One University Network, which partnered with universities in emerging economies to offer college degrees via mobile devices; UniversityNow, an affordable, self-paced university and online learning platform that currently serves over 100,000 students; Platform Learning, a K12 tutoring organization that served over 50,000 students and LearnNow, a charter school network that operated 11 schools serving 6,000 students.
Gene's work has been profiled by numerous news publications, including Forbes Magazine, The New York Times, Fast Company and the Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2011, he shared his personal story and vision for higher education at TEDx San Francisco.
Gene holds a BA from Morehouse College, JD from Harvard Law School and MBA from The Wharton School. He is a Board Member of The Pahara Institute and Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area.
Heidi C. Quan is a trusted advisor to clients handling risk management issues, litigation avoidance and representation in lawsuits. Heidi is an attorney with nearly 25 years of experience representing clients in general litigation and employment matters.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Treasurer
- Trustee
Jack is a partner at Capital IP Investment Partners, an investment firm based in San Francisco. He has worked in the finance industry for 20 years, and he previously worked for four years as an attorney representing start up companies. Before attending law school, he worked as a press aide on Capitol Hill for a United States Senator.
Jack received a B.A. in History from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. His three sons are members of the St. Paul's classes of 2015, 2018, and 2021.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Chief Marketing Officer at the Stellar Development Foundation
Jordan Edelstein is Chief Marketing Officer at the Stellar Development Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, a blockchain network that connects the world's financial infrastructure. His career in marketing spans more than 25 years across a wide range of companies and brands - from Yoplait yogurt to EA SPORTS, The Sims and MARVEL video games. He has overseen all aspects of marketing and communications and looks forward to bringing his expertise to the SPES Board of Trustees and community.
Jordan holds a BA in German and European Studies from Amherst College and an MBA in Marketing, Finance & Organizational Behavior from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. He and his wife live in Oakland and are the proud parents of students in the Class of '28 and Class of '30.
Job Titles:
- Co - Chair
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Trustee
- CEO of Girls Inc. of Alameda County
Julayne Austin Virgil is the CEO of Girls Inc. of Alameda County - an organization headquartered in Oakland and affiliated with the national Girls Inc. network whose mission is to inspire all girls to be strong, smart, and bold. She leads the 62-year old organization toward a vision of sustainability and continued impact for girls from historically under-resourced communities, while modernizing operations and building partnerships.
Julayne has a track record of growing national organizations and scaling innovative initiatives in key roles at Education Pioneers and The Ad Council. A recipient of the 2017 Nonprofit & Community Leader Award from the Oakland Chamber of Commerce's East Bay Women in Business, Julayne joined a 2019 delegation to Kenya to visit and learn from Kakenya Centres for Excellence, a transformative program for low-income girls in rural Kenya.
Julayne holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Southern California. She is a parent of St. Paul's students in the Classes of '27 and '29.
Job Titles:
- Director of Programs
- Program Director
Kenton Young, After School Program Director, joined St. Paul's in 1998. Mr. Young is a graduate of Holy Names University with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies. He also co-directs St. Paul's summer camp and has co-directed Aim High, a summer academic and cultural program, at St. Paul's.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- President of Apparel Impact Institute
Sustainable systems pioneer Lewis Perkins is the president of Apparel Impact Institute (Aii), the nonprofit dedicated to identifying, funding, scaling, and measuring the apparel and footwear industry's proven environmental impact solutions. Perkins is dedicated to building programs and systems designed to activate brands, manufacturers, financiers, and innovators to do their part to decarbonize the industry.
With over two decades of expertise in sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and philanthropy, Perkins formerly served as president of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (C2CPII) where he founded and led the Institute's Fashion Positive initiative. Prior to joining the C2CPII, Perkins served as director of sustainable strategies for the commercial sector of Mohawk Industries, a leading carpet manufacturer.
Perkins has been tapped as an advisor and consultant to innovative environmental initiatives and programs such as the Earthshot Prize, Google's Circular Economy Accelerator Program, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Circular Fibres Initiative, Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana's Sustainable Fashion Awards, the Global Change Award at the H&M Foundation, and CFDA Sustainability Design Mentorship, among others. He has also participated on the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Consumption and lent expertise as a keynote speaker at esteemed events including Aspen Ideas: Climate, Reuters, Global Fashion Summit, Economist Impact, COP27, Vogue Forces of Fashion, and more.
Perkins holds a Master of Business Administration in marketing and strategy with a focus on social responsibility from Emory University and a Bachelor of Arts from Washington & Lee University, from which he received the Distinguished Alumni Award.
Job Titles:
- Director of Middle School
Marcus Chang, Director of Middle School, is excited to join the St. Paul's community. He received his Bachelor of Science in Human Movement from San Francisco State and his Master of Arts in Educational Leadership from the Klingenstein Center at Teachers College. He has served in a variety of roles at his six previous schools, which include Athletic Director, Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Associate Head of School, and most recently Dean of Students. He and his partner, Meta, are the proud parents of Jordan who recently turned 17 and is starting his junior year! His family also includes two rambunctious dogs who keep them on their toes.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is a novelist and non-practicing attorney who studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her most recent novel, The Revisioners, won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award. Her third novel, On the Rooftop, will be published in September 2022. Her work has been published in Zyzzyva; The Paris Review; O, The Oprah Magazine; The New York Times Book Review; and other publications.
She serves on the board of the Community of Writers, the oldest annual writers' conference on the West Coast of the United States, and is a distinguished visiting professor in Fiction in the MFA program at St. Mary's College of California.
She and her husband, Thomas, live in Oakland where they proudly parent three children.
Melissa joined the St. Paul's staff in 2022. She graduated from Yale College, Yale University and has a masters in English and American Literature from New York University, where she also taught. She came to St. Paul's as a parent in 2016 and is the proud parent of two St. Paul's students. After serving as Parent Association President, among other volunteer roles, she joined the administrative staff and is thrilled to serve the community she loves.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Program Specialist for the Alameda County Public Health Department
Mona Shah is a seasoned non-profit leader with over 20 years of leadership experience in the fields of public health, social work, youth development and community based arts and culture.
Currently, Mona is a Program Specialist for the Alameda County Public Health Department. She is also an independent consultant supporting social justice focused non-profit organizations and foundations through her broad experience and knowledge in community engagement and partnership development, program development, project management and employment recruitment.
Mona has a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from UCLA and a Masters of Science in Social Work from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is a parent of a St. Paul's student in the Class of 2024.
Nate Stevenson is a St. Paul's alum (Class of 2006) with strong connections to the community since 1997. Nate is an experienced music marketing executive, having established his career working with notable artists such as Wale, Andra Day, Dua Lipa, Chloe x Halle, Lil Nas X, and OVO Sound. An Oakland native, he has been very active in the community, serving as an Education Lead for the Vanguard Conference and a Youth Advisor for Jack and Jill of America in addition to serving as an Advocacy Committee member for the Los Angeles Chapter of The Recording Academy, and the Communications & Community Outreach Director for The Hamba Group. He received a Bachelors of Arts in Business Studies from Drew University, and a Masters degree in Music Industry Administration from California State University Northridge. He's thrilled to be back at St. Paul's in a more integral role this year.
Nayo Brooks, Director of Lower School, joined St. Paul's in 2018. Ms. Brooks received her Bachelors of Arts in English from UC Davis, a Clear CLAD Multple Subject Teaching Credential and Masters in Education from the University of San Francisco, and is a National Board Certified Teacher. Ms. Brooks also works at Stanford's National Board Resource Center offering monthly support to teachers who are pursuing National Board certification. Prior to joining St. Paul's, Ms. Brooks taught for 19 years at Katherine Delmar Burke School in San Francisco. Ms. Brooks has a son who recently graduated from Linfield Universtiy in McMinnville, Oregon and enjoys spending time relaxing with family and friends.
Job Titles:
- Director of Finance & Operations
Nicole Start, Director of Finance & Operations, joined St. Paul's in 2004 as a teacher and then spent nine years as Director of Admissions before moving into the Business Office. She grew up in Oakland and then went east to Williams College for her B.A. She couldn't stay away from the Bay Area, however, so she returned to get her teaching credential from Holy Names University. Ms. Start speaks French (she enjoyed living in Paris for a year), loves hiking in the regional parks, and enjoys reading, sewing, and eating delicious food with friends and family.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Trustee
- Rector of St. Paul 's Episcopal Church
Raised and educated in Costa Rica, Rev. Mauricio Wilson is the rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church.
Before and during his seminary years, he served in parishes in San Jose, Costa Rica, and in Astoria and Jackson Heights, New York. He has directed youth programs, Spanish and English language Cursillo, and a hurricane relief effort. Rev. Wilson joined St. Paul's Episcopal Church in the fall of 2009 from All Saint's Church in Great Neck, New York. He received his Master of Divinity degree from General Theological Seminary in New York in 2000. He is a parent of alumni in the Classes of 2019 and 2021.
Job Titles:
- Attorney
- Co - Chair
- Trustee
Rhona Taylor is an attorney and currently works in the Title IX Office at UC Berkeley. Prior to joining her office, she was an assistant federal public defender at the Office of the Federal Public Defender, Northern District of California, as well as the Western District of Michigan, where she litigated complex financial fraud, internet crimes, drug trafficking and firearm offenses, among other things. Rhona also served as a directing attorney for the Institutions Project at Columbia Legal Services in Seattle where she represented people confined in Washington's jails, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, mental health facilities, and facilities for individuals with developmental disabilities. In addition, Rhona served as a public defender at the King County Department of Public Defense - The Defender Association Division representing people who were involuntarily committed into mental health institutions. Rhona finds it a privilege to work in the realm of civil rights, diversity, equity and inclusion.
Outside of her profession, Rhona enjoys curating events and experiences for family and friends, interior design, yoga, hiking, and traveling with her wonderful husband and three daughters. Rhona earned her JD from the University of Maryland School of Law and her BA in Political Science from Spelman College. Rhona is a parent of St. Paul's students in the Class of 2027 and Class of 2030.
Simrita Dhanjal, Director of Admissions, joined St. Paul's in 2016. Ms. Dhanjal (pronounced 'done-juhl') holds a Masters Degree in Curriculum Design and Instruction and taught Kindergarten through Fifth Grade students for 12 years. Prior to stepping into the world of education, Ms. Dhanjal worked in the IT industry as a Computer Engineer. When not at St. Paul's, she loves to spend time with her family and friends, dance, eat delicious foods, watch Bollywood movies, and travel to places to which she has never been.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Vice President of Communications and Marketing at Medicines360
Stacey currently serves as Vice President of communications and marketing at Medicines360, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company focused on addressing critical gaps in access to medicines for women. In this role, Stacey brings deep experience in strategic communications, brand identity, organizational development and social impact analysis to advance the company's efforts to close critical gaps in women's healthcare.
Stacey is passionate about harnessing communications to take on the most pressing societal challenges and has a unique background in developing strategies and communications campaigns that challenge outmoded ways of thinking about longstanding social disparities. As part of his current role, he focuses on building Medicines360's reputational equity, drawing from his 25 years of communications work spanning national nonprofits, regional community foundations, private philanthropic organizations and multinational advertising agencies.
Before rejoining Medicines360, Stacey led marketing and communications at Hopelab, a private operating foundation within the Omidyar group. At the East Bay Community Foundation, Stacey was instrumental in developing the Foundation's equity framework and developed its narrative supporting social justice and racial equity, which Inside Philanthropy recognized as the "Boldest Community Foundation of 2019."
Before transitioning to the social impact sector, Stacey spent the first part of his career in advertising, working with clients like Kraft Foods, The Walt Disney Company, LinkedIn and Buena Vista Home Entertainment. He also supported a host of medical device companies and helmed the consumer launch of the Essure birth control device.
Stacey holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and earned a master's in public administration from Baruch College, NY. Born and raised on the East Coast, he currently lives in Oakland with his wife and their two children; SPES classes of ‘27 and ‘31.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Associate Chancellor and Chief of Staff at the University of California
- Vice President, Parent Association
Terri O'Brien is the Associate Chancellor and Chief of Staff at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is an advisor to the Chancellor and leads initiatives in support of UCSF's operational and strategic priorities. Terri is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology.
Terri earned her PhD in biochemistry from UCSF and BA in biology from Williams College. She is a Bay Area native, growing up in Fremont, CA and attending Moreau Catholic High School. Terri enjoys running and spending time with her husband and two children in the Classes of '28 and '30.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Head of School at Live Oak School
Virginia Paik is Head of School at Live Oak School in San Francisco. Virginia has been at Live Oak since 2001, where she has held positions such as third grade teacher, Lower School Head, and Assistant Head of School. Virginia holds a B.A. in English Literature from Pomona College and an M.A. in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. She spent most of her nine years in the classroom as a kindergarten and preschool teacher. Virginia has served on the Board at several independent schools in the Bay Area. She has recently completed a term as the Board Secretary at the California Association of Independent Schools and as the Board Chair at the California Teacher Development Collaborative. Virginia lives in San Francisco with her husband and her high school aged daughter.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Vestry Representative, St. Paul 's Episcopal Church
Will Cowart has called St. Pauls' his church home for 12 years. He is a current member of the Vestry of St Paul's Church and the former Jr Warden. He and his partner James are the proud parents of Bella, class of 2024 and Michael. Will's commitment to St. Paul's School is reflected in his service as a room parent and bay community service. Will received his PhD. from University of California, San Francisco, and MBA from Stanford University. He looks forward to his role as the Vestry representative.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- President, Parent Association
Ynez has worked for 15 years in finance and operations management roles for single and multi-family offices. Currently, Ynez is the Chief Operating Officer for a single-family office. Ynez graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Biological Anthropology.
Ynez also serves as board Vice President for the Friends of the Oakland Public Library.
Ynez and her husband have a daughter who is thrilled to be at St. Paul's in the Class of 2029.