National Equity Project board members are education and community leaders committed to our mission who provide governance oversight and support of our work.

President

Lande Ajose, Deputy Director, California Competes

An expert in education and job training of low-income adults, Ms. Ajose is the new President of the National Equity Project board as of 2011, and has taken a new role as the Deputy Director of California Competes.  She has extensive experience in developing effective change strategies, most recently through her work at BTW Informing Change, where she directed complex planning and evaluation engagements related to education, poverty alleviation, and other issues of inequity.  Her clients included the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.  Community college success was a major focus of Ms. Ajose’s previous work at MDRC, where she managed a comprehensive evaluation of the Achieving the Dream initiative, and at the James Irvine Foundation, where she was a senior program officer. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.A. in Urban Planning from the School of Public Affairs, University of California at Los Angeles. She earned her B.A. in Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College.  Ms. Ajose joined the National Equity Project board in 2009.

Vice President

TBD 

Secretary

Anakarita Allen, Deputy Superintendent, Emery Unified School District

Ms. Allen was the principal of Anna Yates Elementary School from 2005-2008 and continues to provide leadership to that school as she has taken on greater responsibilities in the Emery Unified School District‘s central office. At Anna Yates, she led the school to significant achievement gains and improvements in the educational experience of students through community partnerships, parent outreach, and smaller learning communities. She has worked with Project coaches since 2005, and joined the National Equity Project board in 2006.

Treasurer

Norman Rosenblatt, Founding Board Member

Norm Rosenblatt has been a director and senior executive at several real estate corporations including The Rim Corporation and Innkeeper Associates, where he supervised the financing and construction of numerous hotels in the Bay Area. Norm is a graduate of Yale University and lives in San Francisco. He was one of the founding board members of University High School in San Francisco. Norm has been a National Equity Project board member since 1995, when he helped found the original organization BayCES.

Members

Barak Ben-Gal, Vice President of Finance, Support.Com, Inc.

Born and raised in Israel, Barak moved to the United States when he was ten years old. He currently leads finance-related operations for Support.com, Inc. He came to Support.com after serving as Senior Director of Change Management for Yahoo’s Finance Transformation Office. Previously, he served as the Budget Director for Oakland Unified School District, where he helped bring the District back to fiscal solvency after it went bankrupt. Prior to that, Barak served as the Director of Strategic Planning for Mediaplex, Inc., a technology and media company, where he handled corporate strategy, IPO’s, and mergers and acquisitions. Previously, he worked as a management consultant with LEK Consulting in a variety of sectors, including biotech, transportation, and energy.

Barak has been extensively involved with social sector organizations, including serving as a Board Fellow with the Full Circle Fund, spending a summer as a Project Entrepreneur at Ashoka, and currently serving as a Board Member and Treasurer for the Gay-Straight Alliance in California. He was selected for the prestigious Broad Residency in Urban Education, is a founding member of Temple Emanu-El’s Young Adult Leadership Committee, and served on the Israel Commission of the Jewish Community Federation. He has lectured about his experiences in educational funding and leadership at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and San Jose State University, and in 2007 became the subject of both a Haas School of Business case competition and a Wall Street Journal editorial.

Barak has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics at Harvard University, a Master of Business Administration at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a Master of Education at Stanford University’s School of Education. He is currently residing in Albany, California, with his partner Massimo and their two amazing children.

Gregory Hodge, Community Development Associates

Mr. Hodge is a youth development policy advocate and member of the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education from 2000-2008. He was previously the Chief Executive Officer for California Tomorrow, an Oakland-based organization dedicated to building a strong multiracial and multicultural society. He also previously served as the Executive Director of Safe Passages, the Oakland Child Health and Safety Initiative. Prior to Safe Passages, Mr. Hodge was the Executive Director of the Urban Strategies Council, where he served as the director of the youth development initiative, managed the Freedom Schools program, and worked as the regional representative of the Black Community Crusade for Children, an effort coordinated nationally by the Children’s Defense Fund. He is a co-founder of the firm Community Development Associates, which offers strategic planning and org development services to social change organizations.  Mr. Hodge has also worked as an attorney in private practice handling a variety of civil litigation matters. His involvements include member of the national Annenberg School District Reform Task Force. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Northwestern University and a law degree from Golden Gate University, San Francisco, California. He is married and is the father of four children. He joined the National Equity Project board in 2004.

Lillian Lopez, Wells Fargo Community Programs

Ms. Lopez is a parent activist and former board member with the Oakland Community Organizations, a National Equity Project partner in the New Small Autonomous Schools reform, where she was very active in parent organizing efforts calling for equitable access to quality schools for East Oakland.  She was the OCO organizer for MetWest High School, and a member of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown’s Commission on Education. Her work as a parent activist for educational equity is featured in the book Hard Lessons: The Promise of an Inner-City Charter School by Jonathan Schorr (Ballentine, 2002). Ms. Lopez joined the National Equity Project board in 2004.

Cleo Protopapas, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD)

Ms. Protopapas is responsible for the design and implementation of smaller learning communities in comprehensive Oakland high schools, and has also facilitated several Algebra initiatives in the district. She coaches principals on instructional leadership and supports the development of Algebra professional learning communities. Ms. Protopapas is also Director of the OUSD-UC Summer Algebra Academies, which prepare academically at-risk students for success in algebra and serve as a project-based professional development institute for its algebra instructors. Previously leader of the district’s CAHSEE Initiative, her work contributed to significantly improved CAHSEE passage and proficiency rates and to OUSD becoming the most improved urban district in California in 2004 through 2007. Ms. Protopapas joined the National Equity Project board in 2002.

David Silver, CEO, College Track

In 2011, David Silver joined College Track as CEO to bring his experience and commitment to ensuring that more students have access to a college degree.  Previously Mr. Silver was the founding principal of Think College Now (TCN) Elementary School in Oakland, one of only three Oakland schools to receive a California Distinguished School Award in 2008, and recipient of Title I Achievement Awards for success in narrowing the achievement gap. For two years before becoming principal in 2003, he worked with parents, teachers, and National Equity Project coaches to create TCN.  Before starting a model school Mr. Silver served as the assistant principal at Lockwood Elementary, after having completed his principal certification and masters at Harvard University.  From 1998-2001, he was the program director of Teach for America in the Bay Area. Previously, he taught bilingual second grade and coached basketball in Oakland and Compton. Mr. Silver joined the National Equity Project board in 2008.

Robert Spencer, Urban Economics

Robert Spencer has more than 15 years of financing and consulting experience with local agencies throughout California. He is an economist with extensive experience assisting public agencies with the development of sound financial and economic policies. Much of his work is related to public services funding to serve a community’s growth or revitalization. Mr. Spencer was a member and President of the Oakland Board of Education in the late 1990′s and remains actively involved in Oakland education reform. He is a member of the board of the Oakland Schools Foundation, and member and past President of the Board of Trustees of the William H. Donner Foundation.  Mr. Spencer holds a Masters of Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, Colorado College. He joined the National Equity Project board in 2004.

Mark Strickland, Managing Partner, Schoolhouse Partners

Mr. Strickland is the co-founder and managing partner of Schoolhouse Partners, a firm that helps a variety of education organizations grow and become more sustainable.  He is also a current board member at Edvantia, a nonprofit educational research organization.  He has been a principal of The Parthenon Group, chairman of the board for SearchSoft Solutions, and a board member for Sensitech. He came to know the National Equity Project through his work advising our leadership team on growth and business development, and was elected to the board in 2011.  Mr. Strickland has a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering from Duke University, and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Shiree Teng, Social Justice Strategy and Evaluation Consultant

Shiree Teng joined the National Equity Project board in 2011. She has worked in the social sector for 30 years as a social and racial justice champion – as a front line organizer, network facilitator, capacity builder, grantmaker, and evaluator and learning partner.  For the past thirteen years, she has worked as a Program Officer and Consultant to Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness program. She is a member of the national consultant pool for Building Capacity for Organizational Resilience and Renewal (BCORR) supported by a collaborative group of social justice funders. She has worked in the Mid-South Delta region and Benton Harbor, Michigan with Omowale Satterwhite, founder of NCDI, and as an evaluator of Kellogg Foundation investments in those regions. Ms. Teng was the lead evaluator for Rockwood Leadership Institute, and continues to support RLI’s learning and reflection process. Ms. Teng chairs the board of Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. In 2008, she received the Alliance of Nonprofit Management Capacity Builder of the Year Award.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Ms. Teng is fluent in three Chinese dialects. Having lived and worked in Watsonville and Salinas with cannery and farmworkers, she has a functional understanding of Spanish. She holds degrees in Social Welfare and Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and is a doctoral student in Human and Organizational Development at Fielding Graduate University. She lives in the Fruitvale District in Oakland.