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SEERS Fellows Bios

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2023

Banner of the 2023 SEERS Fellows (L-R): Steve Good, Tinisch Hollins, Beth Schmidt, and Shakirah Simley

 

 

Steve Good

Steve Good is president and CEO of Five Keys Schools and Programs, which is nationally recognized as one of the leading trauma-informed restorative justice organizations dedicated to ending mass incarceration. Steve led Five Keys from its early years as the first-ever charter high school serving adults in a county jail, transforming it into a leading-edge non-profit that reengages 25,000 at-risk and in-risk transitional-age youth and adults in 12 California counties through education, workforce development, reentry, case management, and housing. 

Good’s vision was to offer people impacted by racism, poverty, trauma, and incarceration a comprehensive range of tools to live positive, self-determined lives. He has developed a vast network of partnerships to create pathways to college, workforce development, job placement services, transitional employment, and housing for homeless and reentry populations.

During this period, Five Keys’ annual budget has grown from $2 million in 2008 to $90 million in 2021 and employs over 500 formerly incarcerated individuals. Five Keys was named Hart Vision Charter School of the Year for 2014 and was winner of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government's Innovations in American Government award, the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy and Research Better Government's Reducing Recidivism Through Education award, and the Smart on Crime award from Vice President (then California Attorney General) Kamala Harris.

Tinisch Hollins

Tinisch Hollins has over two decades of professional experience in community organizing, guiding government systems, and informing public policy to make social change. She is a gifted critical thinker, public speaker, and seasoned facilitator who uses both professional training and lived experience to build shared understanding and to frame practical and sustainable solutions rooted in community well-being. Through demonstrated leadership in the fields of violence prevention and social justice, she has built effective partnerships with impacted communities, decision-makers, influencers, and stakeholders throughout California.

Currently, Tinisch serves as the executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice (CSJ), one of the nation’s most effective criminal justice reform agencies. CSJ works to reduce wasteful jail and prison spending and advance common-sense public safety solutions that address the root causes of crime and achieve long-term safety. In June 2020, she co-founded SF Black Wallstreet, an organization committed to preserving Black culture and building economic power in San Francisco. She also serves as vice chair of the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee.

Beth Schmidt

Beth Schmidt is the founder and CEO of Uppercase, an education technology company focused on making our nation’s very best teachers and their knowledge easily accessible. Uppercase allows early-stage educators to find a trusted community of peers and experts for the best advice, lesson plans and classes. 

Previously as senior director of education innovations for Emerson Collective, Beth drove Emerson Collective’s education strategy through investments, communications, media, convening, advocacy and policy efforts, as well as through partnerships with entrepreneurs, schools, and educators. Beth is also the founder of Wishbone.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to sending low-income students to high-quality summer programs. Beth taught 10th grade English in South Central Los Angeles through Teach For America and is a current board member of Teach for All. She graduated from Middlebury College and holds a master's in secondary education from Loyola Marymount University. 

Shakirah Simley

Shakirah Simley, a writer, seasoned organizer, and community development and policy strategist with almost two decades of experience working on social justice, food, gender and racial equity issues. She is the executive director of the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center, one of San Francisco’s oldest Black-led and serving community-based organizations, and home to some of the only permanent supportive affordable housing for transitional aged youth in San Francisco. A champion for racial equity and collaborative leader, Shakirah Simley continues to address systemic issues that have impacted generations of San Franciscans while uplifting the lives of families, youth, and seniors at the Center. 

Shakirah has a proven track record of public service, having previously served as the inaugural director for the Office of Racial Equity for the City and County of San Francisco, a legislative aide for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and the leader of the Southeast Community Center in Bayview. She is a graduate with honors from the University of Pennsylvania and a former Fulbright Scholar to Italy. She serves as a board member for SPUR, Alliance for Girls, and Foodwise. She is a former food artisan and forever food justice advocate. She has been featured in local and national publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, the New York Times, Eater, Bon Appétit, and National Geographic. The daughter of a social worker and granddaughter of a Black Panther, Shakirah was born and raised in Harlem, New York. Shakirah has lived in San Francisco for over 14 years, working to change access and opportunity for low-income communities and the generations of young people to come.

2022

SEERS Fellows 2022

Anthony Chang

Anthony Chang is the son of Chinese immigrant small business owners and has spent 20+ years working in economic opportunity and environmental sustainability in communities of color. He recently co-founded Manzanita Capital Collective with A-dae Romero-Briones and Mariela Cedeño to work towards the redistribution of capital, land, and power to tribal communities, farmers of color, and folks working towards food and land justice. They will initially focus on supporting POC-led collaboratives stewarding and governing their own capital (such as The People's Land Fund, CA Tribal FundEquitable Food Oriented Development Collaborative, and the LIFE / Open Letter group); working with donors and investors on aligning grants and investments with their values; and facilitating integrated capital and technical assistance for food and land justice projects. Prior to Manzanita Capital Collective, Anthony helped start and build Kitchen Table Advisors, a nonprofit that fuels economic viability and thriving livelihoods for a multi-racial next generation of sustainable small farms and ranches, and also spent 15+ years channeling capital to small business owners while in leadership roles at community development financial institutions like Accion Opportunity Fund and California FarmLink. Anthony also is a Castanea Fellow as well as serving on the board of Common Future and steering committee of the Fondo de Solidaridad de Mountain View

Joi Jackson-Morgan

Joi Jackson-Morgan is the executive director at 3rd Street Youth Center & Clinic. Joi’s most important contribution to 3rd Street has been her ability to combine insight into the history of the neighborhood with both her formal education in public health and her professional experience. Like several of the 3rd Street staff, Joi was born and raised in Bayview Hunters Point, the southeast sector of San Francisco. She has worked as a math and science teacher at several Bay Area junior high and high schools. While in graduate school, she worked as a research assistant on several laboratory and community-based health studies. Joi’s broad experience and education in health and education inform her approach to working with individual youth and the community as a whole.

Under Joi’s leadership, 3rd Street has experienced exponential growth fortifying its standing as a leader in housing and behavioral health services for the young people of Bayview Hunters Point and the surrounding neighborhoods, including recently opening San Francisco's first TAY Navigation Center for young adults experiencing homelessness in the Lower Polk community.  As a member of A Way Home America’s Grand Challenge–San Francisco’s Ride or Die team, Joi is committed to centering the importance of racial equity and justice in all of her work to end youth homelessness.

Joi is currently the co-chair of the MegaBlack SF COVID-19 Task Force and she is a former co-chair of the San Francisco Soda and Sugary Beverages Tax Advisory Committee. Joi is also the emeritus-director of the founding chapter of New Leaders Council San Francisco Chapter, a fellowship dedicated to cultivating new progressive community leaders. Joi received her masters of public health from Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and her BS in biology at California State University East Bay.

Lateefah Simon

Lateefah Simon is a nationally recognized advocate for civil rights and racial justice in Oakland and the Bay Area. She is president of Meadow Fund, and a member of the board of directors of Akonadi Foundation, where she served as president for five years. In 2016—driven by Oscar Grant's death—she was elected president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit board of directors. 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. Lateefah received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award in 2003—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 was also 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 leadership of then-District Attorney Kamala Harris.

Lateefah's 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.

2020

2020 SEERS Fellows

Lenore Anderson

Lenore Anderson is co-founder and president of Alliance for Safety and Justice (ASJ), a national organization that partners with governors, state legislators, and advocates to replace over-incarceration with policies that prioritize prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation to stop the cycles of crime. ASJ is an outgrowth of Californians for Safety and Justice (CSJ), which Lenore founded in 2012 and is now the nation’s largest state-based criminal justice reform advocacy organization. Both ASJ and CSJ have won reforms in multiple states that are now reducing state prison populations by more than 40,000 people, investing hundreds of millions of dollars into crime prevention and treatment, and providing funding for trauma recovery centers to serve victims of crime. Previously, Lenore served as chief of policy and chief of the Alternative Programs Division at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office; director of public safety for the Mayor of Oakland, CA; and director of the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. She holds a JD from NYU School of Law and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.   

Olatunde Sobomehin  

Olatunde Sobomehin, ’03, is the CEO and lead servant of StreetCode Academy, an innovation hub providing free tech classes to communities of color. StreetCode’s mission is to provide its students with the mindset, skills, and networks needed to thrive in the technology industry. Since 2014, StreetCode has more than doubled every year, growing from serving 20 students in 2014, to now serving 1,000 students annually and providing over 30,000 hours of free instruction. In addition to StreetCode Academy, Olatunde has co-founded Esface, a youth sports and culture brand and Trillicon Valley, a lifestyle brand with products in technology, fashion, and branding. He is a proud graduate of Stanford University, and he and his wife, Tamara, have four children: Olatayo, Temilola, Tatiola, and Olataiye.

Scott Warren

Scott Warren is the CEO of Generation Citizen. He co-founded the organization at Brown University with fellow student Anna Ninan during their senior year, working with students in the local Providence community. From that starting point in 2008, Scott has grown Generation Citizen to become one of the preeminent civics education organizations in the country, promoting Action Civics across diverse geographies through best-in-class programming and concrete policy change.  Scott was named an Echoing Green Fellow in 2010 and a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow in 2012. He published a book in 2019, Generation Citizen: The Power of Youth in Politics. He continues to write on subjects ranging from youth political engagement to African politics to sports, and has been published and featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Education Week, the New York Daily News, Huffington Post, San Diego Union Tribune, Sports Illustrated, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Providence Journal.

2019

SEERS fellows 2019

George McGraw

George McGraw is a human rights researcher and advocate specializing in the human right to water and sanitation in the United States. George currently serves as founder and CEO of DigDeep.org, the only WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) organization serving disadvantaged communities in the United States. Founded in Los Angeles in 2011, DigDeep develops education, research, and infrastructure programs aimed at universalizing access to clean, hot-and-cold running water and basic sanitation. Under George's leadership, DigDeep won the 2018 U.S. Water Prize for its Navajo Water Project, which has brought clean, running water to hundreds of Native families across New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Now George is leading an effort with Michigan State University, the U.S. Water Alliance, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the root causes of domestic water poverty, which still afflicts some 1.6 million Americans without access to running water or basic sanitation. George holds an MA in international law and conflict management from the United Nations University for Peace.

Tomiquia Moss

Tomiquia Moss joined Hamilton Families as the CEO in 2017. Hamilton Families offers emergency, transitional, and permanent housing services for families experiencing homelessness. With more than 20 years of leadership and management experience, Tomiquia is locally and nationally recognized as a dynamic nonprofit and public sector leader with expertise in public policy and community development. From 2014 to 2017, she served directly under the mayors of both San Francisco and Oakland, most recently as chief of staff for Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. Previously, she was the executive director of the HOPE SF initiative, a public housing and neighborhood revitalization effort with the late San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee’s Office. Known for innovating in the public sector, Tomiquia served as the founding project director of the San Francisco Community Justice Center of the Superior Court of California. As a social worker and advocate for social justice, she holds a master’s in public administration from Golden Gate University. Tomiquia and her family are proud to call Oakland home.

Damon Packwood

Damon Packwood has years of experience working with urban youth in academic development and college access. A former Upward Bound student, he graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara and went back to his community to work for Upward Bound for several years. He has also designed the academic program for Juma Ventures and helped launch the Hack the Hood program. Damon has experience working in the tech, radio, film, and news media industries for companies KGO Radio, Disney Radio, and ABC 7; the mobile app Art Authority; and later as a tech journalist for Bitmob and New America Media. He is a 2016 Echoing Green Black Male Achievement Fellow and the co-founder and executive director of Gameheads. Gameheads is a tech training program that uses video game design, development, and DevOps to train young people for the tech ecosystem, college, career, and civic life.

Doniece Sandoval

Doniece Sandoval is the founder of Lava Mae, a nonprofit that began by converting public transportation buses into bathrooms on wheels to deliver hygiene and reconnect people experiencing homelessness with their dignity. She began Lava Mae after learning there were 16 shower stalls and about as many toilets for San Francisco’s 7,500 houseless men, women, and children. Her odyssey with Lava Mae started in 2012, when gentrification hit her neighborhood. She witnessed three neighbors – all in their 80s – get evicted, take up residence in their cars only to have those repossessed and, because wait lists for shelters were – and still are – thousands-long, end up dying on the street before help was available.
Around the same time, she took a cab ride that changed her life. When the cab hit the district with the highest concentration of people experiencing homelessness, the cabbie turned over his shoulder and said, “Welcome to the land of broken dreams.” As she looked out the window, her first thought was that not a single person on the street, when they were little, dreamed of growing up to be houseless. Yet there they were. The thought of them as children, like her then 5-year-old daughter, pierced her. She vowed she would find a way to help.
In the four years since launching its service, Lava Mae has served 14,000 Californians and is scaling by sharing an open source toolkit to respond to the 2,000 requests for help from communities as far away as Zimbabwe and as close as New York. Born and raised in South Texas, Doniece has made San Francisco her home for the last two decades. Her accolades include being a Jefferson Award winner, 2017 CNN Hero, 2016 KIND Person Awardee, and a 2015 Toyota Mother of Invention. Doniece, however, is most proud of the honor bestowed upon her by her 12-year-old daughter, who calls her a Homeless Super Hero.

2018

SEERS fellows 2018

Denise Raquel Dunning 

Dr.  Denise  Raquel  Dunning is the Founder and Executive Director of Rise Up, which advances health, education, and equity globally. Since the organization’s founding in 2009, Rise Up’s global network of 500 leaders has improved health, education, and rights for 7 million girls, youth, and women, and advocated for over 100 laws and policies impacting 115 million people. Dr. Dunning teaches in the UCSF’s Masters of Global Health program, and is a Board Member of the Public Health Institute and Engender Health. She previously worked for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the  Rockefeller  Foundation and served as a  Fulbright Scholar with the Inter-American Development Bank in Honduras. Dr. Dunning has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the  UC Berkeley, a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton  University, and graduated Summa  Cum Laude from Duke  University.  She has lived in Guatemala, Honduras, India, and South Africa, and speaks four languages. Dr. Dunning’s recent awards include selection by the Gates Institute’s 120 Under Forty Global Leaders and winner of the Powerful Women of the Bay Area Award.

Christa Gannon 

Christa Gannon is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY), an award-winning nonprofit dedicated to breaking the cycle of violence, crime, and incarceration of teens. FLY serves youth in three Bay Area counties with legal education, leadership training, and one-on-one mentoring, and engages in local system reform efforts to help youth get off probation, engaged in school, and back on track with their lives. Christa has received numerous awards for her work at FLY, including the James Irvine Leadership Award, Human Rights Award for the City of San Jose, Stanford Law School’s Inaugural Alumni Public Service Award, the Law Foundation’s, Youth Advocate of the Year Award, a Bay Area Women of Influence Award, and an induction as an Ashoka Fellow (one of the first in the field of Juvenile Justice in the United States). Christa has B.S. both in sociology and law and society from University of California Santa Barbara, she graduated with honors from Stanford Law School, and is a member of the California Bar.

Laura Weidman Powers

Laura Weidman Powers is the co-founder and CEO of Code2040, a nonprofit organization that creates pathways to educational, professional, and entrepreneurial success in technology for underrepresented minorities with a specific focus on Blacks and Latinxs. Code2040 aims to ensure that by the year 2040 -the start of the decade when the US will be majority people of color -we are proportionally represented in America’s innovation economy as technologists, investors, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs. In summer 2016, Laura joined the Obama Administration for a six-month term as a senior advisor to U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith. Most recently before co-founding Code2040, Laura served as head of product at a consumer web startup. Prior to that, she co-founded two organizations in the education space, one nonprofit arts education organization in West Philadelphia that is currently celebrating its 12th year, and one for-profit tutoring company that gave rise to a book. Laura has a BA cum laude from Harvard College and a JD and an MBA from Stanford University.

2017

SEERS fellows 2017

Christopher (Chris) Ategeka 

Christopher Ategeka is a Ugandan Engineer and Social Entrepreneur who is working to ensure everyone on the African continent has access to timely, quality health care. He founded Health Access Corps (formerly Rides for Lives) to combat the dire shortage of healthcare personnel across the African continent. In an effort to curb the “brain drain” of talented healthcare professionals from African communities, Health Access Crops incentivizes trained healthcare professionals to stay and work within their local communities. Chris has won many awards for his work, most recently, TED Fellow and World Economic forum Young Global Leader. He is a 2014 Forbes Magazine 30 Under 30, Ashoka fellow and Echoing Green fellow. Chris’ work has been featured in many major media publications both local and International such as BBC, Forbes and FastCompany. Chris holds a Bachelors of Science, and Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Cristi Hegranes 

Cristi Hegranes is the Founder and Executive Director of Global Press. A 2013 Ashoka Fellow, Cristi is an experienced social entrepreneur, a media innovation pioneer, and a renowned international journalism trainer.

Global Press exists to create a more just and informed world by employing local female journalists to produce ethical, accurate news coverage from the world’s least-covered places. Global Press operates a training program, Global Press Institute, an award-winning news publication, Global Press Journal, and an innovative syndication division, Global Press News Service. GPI has trained and employed 180 journalists across 26 developing countries, including Haiti, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. 

Carolyn Laub 

Carolyn Laub is a non-profit strategy consultant and social entrepreneur based in San Francisco. She consults with social justice non-profits and foundations on strategy, policy, movement building, strategic communications, scaling and replication. She leverages deep content expertise in LGBTQ equality, education justice, youth leadership, and community organizing. Carolyn is a strategist with the Wonder: Strategies for Good network of communication strategists. Recently, she co-founded Springboard Partners, an incubator of both high impact social justice campaigns and startup companies. Previously, Carolyn founded Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) Network, which organizes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) youth advocating for safety and justice in schools. Over 16 years she grew the number of GSA clubs in California from 40 to 940, trained youth advocates who helped 12 statewide laws, replicated her California model in four other states, and created a network serving 3,000 GSA clubs in 39 states. Carolyn is an Echoing Green Fellow and Ashoka Fellow, as well as a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University.

Raj Jayadev

Raj Jayadev is the co-founder of Silicon Valley De-Bug, a community organizing and advocacy organization based in San Jose, California. For nearly fifteen years, the organization has been a platform for the least heard of Silicon Valley – youth, immigrants, low-income workers, the incarcerated – to impact the political, cultural, and social landscape of the region.

Through De-Bug’s criminal justice community organizing program called the Albert Cobarrubias Justice Project, they created “participatory defense” a methodology for families whose loved ones are facing the criminal court system to impact the outcome of the case of their loved one and change the landscape of power in the courts. De-Bug has incubated participatory defense hubs across the country and is building a national participatory defense network of community organizations to make ground up systemic change in the courts. Jayadev’s community organizing and writings have been featured in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Time.com, and media outlets across the country. He is a 2017 San Francisco Chronicle Visionary of the Year. To expand and deepen his work, he is currently an Ashoka Fellow and Rosenberg Leading Edge Fellow.

2016

SEERS fellows 2016

Josefina Alvarado Mena

Josefina Alvarado Mena is an education rights attorney. For the past twelve years, she has been the Chief Executive Officer for Safe Passages, a 501(c)(3) organization headquartered in Oakland, California. Safe Passages works to disrupt the cycle of poverty by engaging youth and families to build and drive a continuum of services that supports student success and community development. Currently, Safe Passages serves over 4,000 children and youth across 21 school communities. A native of Oakland flatlands, Josefina has dedicated her professional life to issues of social equity. Prior to Safe Passages, she founded the Educational Empowerment Program to provide free legal education and services to low income students in Oakland. She was also the Director of the Oakland Unified School District Department of Student, Family, and Community Services. Josefina holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and is a member of the State Bar of California. She is a recipient of: The Echoing Green Global Fellowship, California Latino Civil Rights Network, and James Irvine Foundation California Leadership Award.

Tomás Alvarez

Tomás Alvarez III is a social worker and social entrepreneur whose work focuses on developing culturally relevant mental health programs for youth, in particular boys and young men of color. At present, Tomás serves as CEO of Beats Rhymes and Life, Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Oakland (California) that provides “Hip-Hop Therapy”, an innovative therapeutic approach that uses popular youth expression in combination with proven therapeutic techniques to engage trouble teens in services. As an early pioneer of Hip-Hop Therapy, Tomás’ work has inspired others in his field to follow in his footsteps giving birth to a new field of study and practice. In 2014 Tomás was awarded a lifetime fellowship through Ashoka, a global organization that supports social entrepreneurs whose bold ideas have the power to transform patterns in society. More recently CNN named Tomás among their 2015 CNN Heroes. Tomás completed a BA in social work from San Francisco State University (2004) and master of social work from Smith College School for Social Work (2006).

Rajasvini (Vini) Bhansali

Rajasvini Bhansali is the Executive Director of International Development Exchange (IDEX) and a passionate advocate for participatory grassroots-led social change and movement building. In a wide-ranging career devoted to social and economic justice, she has led a national social enterprise, managed a public telecommunications infrastructure fund addressing digital divide issues and worked as a researcher, planner, policy analyst and strategy consultant. Vini also worked alongside community leaders as a capacity builder for youth polytechnics in rural Kenya for over two years. Born and raised in India, Vini earned a Master′s in Public Affairs (MPA) with a focus on technology and telecommunications policy from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and Bachelor′s degrees in Astrophysics and Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities & Social Sciences from UC Berkeley. Vini has been involved in community organizing and volunteer board roles for the last two decades. She is currently active on the Board of Directors for Greenpeace USA and the Rockwood Leadership Institute. Inspired by the potential of social justice philanthropy to support movements and community based organizations, Vini has also served on the steering committee for the Bay Area Justice Funders Network (BAJFN) and on the advisory board for the Agroecology Fund. She currently serves on the Planning Committee for the 2016 Association of Women in Development (AWID) International Forum on Women’s Rights and Development on cross-movement dialogues, solidarity and strategies. Vini lectures in the University of California at Berkeley Master’s Program in Development Practice; the University of Vermont Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources new Master’s Program in Ecological Sustainability as well as the Social Entrepreneurship program at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.This year she was honored with a Leaders in Action award by Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP). Vini is also a published poet, essayist, storyteller and popular educator. When not engaged with community organizations, Vini can be found hiking, cooking and dancing with friends.

Jered Lawson

Jered is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Pie Ranch, which began in 2004 on a 14-acre pie-slice-shaped piece of land with the goal of providing nourishment and education for community level social change. The ranch is located on the southern coast of San Mateo County, California and now comprises 100 acres of production, has over 30 staff and a volunteer board of directors. Their three program areas include youth education, farmer training, and regional partnerships -- all with the goal of cultivating a more healthy, just, and climate-friendly food system. Pie Ranch’s core values include integrated crop and livestock rotations, building soil health to sequester carbon, social and agricultural justice, and producing high-quality organic produce. Jered recently helped initiate the development of a county-based Food & Farm Bill with the San Mateo Food Systems Alliance and is building committed procurement partnerships with large organization food service such as Google Food & Stanford Dining with the goal to scale this model with other companies, universities, hospitals, and public school cafeterias.

2015

SEERS fellows 2015

Kennedy Jawoko 

Kennedy Jawoko is a career journalist working to harness the power of new technology to create an online portal for East African journalists reporting on agriculture and food security journalism in the region.

Katie Albright 

Katie Albright is the executive director of the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center, a community-based organization that works to support healthy families and promote children’s well being in the Bay Area.

Rob Gitin 

Rob Gitin is the co-founder and executive director of At The Crossroads, a San Francisco-based organization working with underserved homeless youth and young adults to help them build healthy and fulfilling lives.

Lateefah Simon

Lateefah Simon (not pictured) is an activist for at-risk youth and young women in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently the director of the California Future’s Program at the Rosenberg Foundation and previously served as the executive director of the Center for Young Women’s Development in San Francisco.

2014

SEERS fellows 2014

Natalie Bridgeman Fields

Natalie Bridgeman Fields leads the Accountability Counsel, which defends vulnerable communities across the developing world from abusive practices committed by international institutions.

Michael Lombardo 

Michael Lombardo is the CEO of Reading Partners, a not-for-profit organization that provides literacy programs for elementary schools in low-income communities across the United States.

Gemma Bulos 

Gemma Bulos is a multi award-winning social entrepreneur and director of the Global Women’s Water Initiative, an organization building a cadre of women trainers in East Africa versed in a holistic set of water, sanitation, and hygiene strategies. 

Lateefah Simon 

Lateefah Simon is an activist for at-risk youth and young women in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently the director of the California Future’s Program at the Rosenberg Foundation.

2013

SEERS fellows 2013

Simeon Koroma 

Simeon Koroma is the co-founder and director of Timap for Justice, a pioneering non-governmental organization in Sierra Leone, that provides free justice services through community-based paralegals employing mediation, advocacy, education, and organizing.

Gemma Bulos

Gemma Bulos is a multi award-winning social entrepreneur and director of the Global Women’s Water Initiative, an organization building a cadre of women trainers in East Africa versed in a holistic set of water, sanitation, and hygiene strategies.

Maxwell Matewere 

Maxwell Matewere is the executive director of Eye of the Child in Malawi, an organization which engages in child rights advocacy, training and strategic litigation to protect and promote child rights in Malawi.

Fall 2012

SEERS fellows Fall 2012

Emily Arnold-Fernandez 

Emily Arnold-Fernandez founded Asylum Access, an international organization dedicated to securing refugees’ rights by integrating individualized legal assistance, community legal empowerment, policy advocacy and strategic litigation.

Mazibuko Jara 

Mazibuko Jara is the founder of the Ntinga Ntaba ka Ndoda organization that supports rural development in the eastern cape of South Africa. Jara is also active in advocating for the rights of women under traditional law, and those living with HIV/AIDS.

Zainah Anwar 

Zainah Anwar is one of the founding members of Sisters in Islam, an NGO that works on women’s rights in Islam based in Malaysia. She also founded Musawah, a global movement of equality and justice within the Muslim family.

Spring 2012 

Taida Horozovic 

Taida Horozovic founded CURE, an organization committed to ending gender violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina through educational awareness, media tools, and global campaigns.

Ramzi Jaber 

Ramzi Jaber launched Visualizing Palestine, an initiative that uses visual stories and graphics to build international awareness around past and present injustices in Palestine.

Steve Williams 

Steve Williams co-founded the San Francisco-based organization POWER, which works to defend the rights of low income workers, immigrant women, and advocates for housing justice in some of San Francisco’s poorer communities.