Board of Directors

Dr. O’Connor is a nationally recognized expert in the fields of political communication and telecommunications policy and applications. She is the author of numerous publications in both of these areas. Her numerous appointments, boards and chairs, include the: California Educational Technology Committee; Washington, DC based Alliance for Public Technology; Alliance; California Public Broadcasting Commission; Network Reliability and Interoperability Council; Bellcore’s Advisory Board; ATT’s Consumer Advisory Panel; Verizon’s Consumer Collaborative Council; ETS international ICT literacy effort; National ICT Policy Council; and California Educational Technology Industry Task Force. Dr. O’Connor is an expert consultant and has served a wide array of business, media, telecommunications, federal and state clients and task forces. Awards and honors include an by 1990 California State University outstanding teaching award; 1994 California State University Alumni Distinguished Professor Award; 1996 Technology Leadership award; 1998 Technology Pioneer Award.

Recent research grants and projects, include Ten California Public Utilities Commission Telecommunications Graduate Fellowships; and the Sacramento County Communications Audit and Web Portal development project.

Dr. O’Connor received her Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Southern California in 1974. She was featured in Newsweek’s 1995 “50 for the Future” a feature on the fifty people who will set policy and direction for global communications.

Dr. O’Connor has always blended her teaching, research and community service into a consistent commitment to explain the role of media in society and its impact on citizens, institutions and the democratic process and continues to teach a full load.

Reneé Martinez has worked in the field of community college education for over 42.5 years. Throughout her career a top priority has been to serve as a role model to all students and staff members, demonstrating what can be attained through setting positive goals and working hard. She supports her staff members by encouraging them to be independent in their work environment, to further their education and to provide good customer service to all needing their assistance and support.

In her spare time, Renee enjoys walking with friends, reading for pleasure and most importantly, spending time with family including her four grandchildren.

In August of 2012, Renee was appointed as interim President at Los Angeles City College (LACC) and in June of 2013, she became permanent president by the Chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District. Her responsibilities include managing all college departments, faculty, and staff as well as overseeing the college budget, student success, student support services and overseeing the bond supported building projects taking place on campus. Her principle responsibility is to provide the vision, leadership, and strategic direction to ensure that LACC achieves goals set forth by the Los Angeles Community College District. She continues to put students and those most in need at the forefront, and enjoys the challenges of developing and sustaining programs and policies that will continue the more-than-80-year tradition of education excellence in the Los Angeles Community College District. Her career, at every level, has been a reflection of the college mission of an inclusive and effective learning and working environment for all. The district goal of student success influences every decision she makes.

Rich retired in 2004 after a 34 year management career with Pacific Telephone/AT&T, Pacific Bell/Telesis, and SBC. He was a senior manager for over 20 years holding line and staff positions in Information Systems, Network Operations, Service Quality, Process Management, Human Resources, and Corporate Planning. He also served as Vice president-Chief of Staff for three different Presidents. In the latter part of his career he led several quality improvement teams focused on the deployment and operation of DSL technology in California. Since his retirement Rich has worked as a Consultant in the Telecommunications Industry.

Throughout his business career Rich was very active in the community. He was involved in fundraising for the Boy Scouts of America Councils in San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa Counties. Of note is his involvement with Las Trampas in Lafayette, an organization providing residential and vocational support to developmentally disabled adults in Contra Costa County. Rich has been on the Las Trampas board for over 20 years and has served as the board president on three occasions for over 8 years. He led the Las Trampas organization in its pioneering efforts to move the adults out of an institutional setting into community based housing.

Rich has a BS in Engineering from Cal Poly Pomona and an MBA in Finance from UC Berkely. He has also attended executive education programs at Harvard and Columbia.

Darrell J. Stewart is a Business Development Manager Public Sector, in the SLED (State, Local and Education) group at Intel Corporation. SLED’s charter is to directly engage public sector leaders, visionaries, advocates, and industry partners. Our mission is to make a difference in the lives of citizens by harnessing Intel technologies and solutions to solve serious public sector problems and to find the intersection between Intel’s business interests, the major public sector challenges, and Intel’s expertise and resources.

Before assuming his current position, Darrell spent several years working in Intel’s Reseller Channel Organization, where he worked with school districts to leverage E-Rate funding strategies. Before joining Intel, Darrell worked in sales for Anixter, Lucent Technologies and was the Regional Sales Manager for Brite Voice Systems, which developed a sold a number of interactive voice response products and services.

Darrell and his wife Dalys have been married for 25 years and they have three adult sons and their dog Dixie. Darrell resides in Long Beach, California.

Darrell majored in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.

linkedin.com/in/jeff-campbell-cisco

Martha M. Escutia, former California State Senator, was appointed vice president for USC Government Relations, effective May 1, 2013. Ms. Escutia oversees the university’s federal, state and local government relations. Immediately prior to joining USC, Ms. Escutia was a partner at The Senators, a law and consulting firm she co-founded, that provides strategic, legal, legislative, regulatory, and policy advice to a wide array of clients. She was also a partner at Manatt, Phelps and Phillips from 2007 to 2010.

Ms. Escutia was a member of the California State Senate from 1998 to 2006 and a member of the California State Assembly from 1992 to 1998. She was the first woman Chair of both the Assembly and Senate Judiciary Committees.
In January, 2014, she was appointed to the State Bar of California’s Council on Access and Fairness. She also serves on the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls and the Board of the California Emerging Technology Fund, a $100 million fund aimed at bridging the digital divide.

Beginning in fall 2014, she will be teaching Legislative Procedure at the USC Gould School of Law. She has also served as a guest lecturer at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and as an adjunct professor in the political science department at East Los Angeles Community College.

Ms. Escutia received her Juris Doctor from Georgetown University and her Bachelor of Science from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Frances Marie Gipson is a clinical associate professor of education in the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University, and also serves as director of the Urban Leadership program.

Most recently, Gipson served as the Chief Academic Officer (CAO) for the second largest school district in the nation, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). As a leader of leaders, she oversaw the instructional plan and capacity building for over 600,000 students in preschool through adult school programs – across over 20 departments.

Prior to her role as CAO, she was the LAUSD Local District East Superintendent serving over 100+ schools across the northeast and southeast Los Angeles regional communities. Her experience as a proud principal and teacher has shaped a mission of success with an “all means all” strategy. As the principal of the first complete family of International Baccalaureate Schools in LAUSD, Gipson transformed her campus from a Program Improvement school to a Los Angeles County of Education (LACOE) Promising Practice QEIA School, Title One Achieving School, and California Department of Education (CDE) Gold Ribbon Distinguished School. The Active Transformation Model resulted in a personalized campus that includes the first LAUSD district middle school dual language Mandarin Academy, Spanish Dual Language Academy, Environmental Science Academy, and two magnet schools offering highly-gifted and STEM programs. Believing in the power of preschool-16 partnerships, the school tripled the size of an award-winning MESA program and developed university partnerships. As a result, all students receive college scholarship opportunities, and the partnerships ensure that all students have access to highly personalized success pathways for A-G college and career readiness.

Gipson has also served learners as the administrator of instruction in LAUSD Local District 5 (LD5), and also as former director of Professional Development & Partnerships at UCLA’s Center X. Core to the work at UCLA was the design of transformative coaching models and notably recognized partnerships with the subject matter projects. In LD5, she supported leading for learning in 150+ schools in east, southeast, and south Los Angeles. During Gipson’s tenure at LD5, the district was recognized for student achievement growth models, English learner reclassification, highest district attendance rates, lowest suspension rates, greatest numbers of National Board Certification participants, and even organized the first East LA Arts Festival.

A highly regarded educator, she has published and designed quality curriculum at the district, state, national, and international levels. With this passion for active learning, she has taught educational leadership at CSULA, UCLA’s Teacher Education Program, and the Principals Leadership Institute. Gipson’s leadership has been formally recognized with the regional Administrator of the Year Award from ACSA; the Tae Han Kim award for humanitarian and cultural accomplishments; the CSULA Day of the Educator award for excellence in fieldwork supervision; the Excellence in Urban Leadership Award from Claremont Graduate University; Top 30 trailblazers, technologists, and transformers by the Center for Digital Education; the AALA Presidents Award; and most recently the Distinguished Alumni Award from CGU.

Gipson believes that “living in the system” and “disturbing the system” are both critical to agency and advocacy for youth, and ensure that our communities are at the center of all decisions. She is inspired to coach, mentor, and support the next generation of urban leaders who will promote flourishing urban school systems.

Jim Kirkland is General Counsel of Trimble, a leading technology company that delivers products and services that connect the physical and digital worlds. Core technologies in positioning, modeling, connectivity and data analytics enable customers to improve productivity, quality, safety and sustainability in a broad range of industries, including agriculture, construction, geospatial and transportation and logistics.

Kirkland previously oversaw strategic development and legal, regulatory and legislative affairs for Covad, a competitive telecommunications service provider, and at
Clearwire Technologies, Inc., a privately held broadband wireless Internet service provider based in Dallas, Texas.

Before joining Clearwire, Kirkland spent 17 years with Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo P.C. in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in communications law and worked with emerging-growth Internet, wireless and telecommunications companies.

Mr. Kirkland brings a wealth of knowledge of the business and regulatory environments affecting broadband and related technologies.

Kirkland holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Since 2016 Tim has been a lecturer in Management at California State University, Los Angeles. He draws upon his management experience to teach courses such as Organizational Behavior & Management; Business’s Responsibilities in Society; and Operations Management. Tim values passing on his knowledge and experience to the next generation of leaders at a University which is ranked by the equality mobility project as Number 1 in the country for upward social mobility. Tim retired from Verizon in 2016 after a 40-year management career with Verizon and its predecessor company GTE. His career spanned various job duties in six different states including accounting and finance, regulatory relations, customer service, community relations, and government affairs. His most recent position was Region President.

Tim has long been involved in community and business organizations. He served on the Board of Directors of the following organizations: Ventura County Community Foundation; Los Angeles Urban League; Asian Americans Advancing Justice; California Chamber of Commerce; California Business Roundtable; Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce (former Board Chair); and the California Foundation for the Environment and the Economy. In addition to the CETF Board Tim currently serves on the Board of Directors of Discovery Cube Science Center, Los Angeles.

Tim holds a degree in Business Administration and an MBA from Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania. He resides with his wife Anne in Westlake Village, California. He enjoys exercising, hiking, traveling, and reading.

Lenny Mendonca was the Chief Economic and Business Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom of California and Chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority. He is a Senior Partner Emeritus of McKinsey & Company and a Lecturer on Inequality at the Stanford Business School.

He founded McKinsey’s U.S. state and local public sector consulting practice. He also oversaw their knowledge development, Chairing the McKinsey Global Institute and the Firm’s communications, including the McKinsey Quarterly. He served for a decade on the McKinsey Shareholder Council (its Board of Directors). He retired from McKinsey in 2014.

He was formerly the Chair of New America and Children Now, co-Chair of California Forward, and co-founder and Chair of Fusecorps. He was the Vice-Chair of Common Cause. He is the Chair Emeritus of the Bay Area Council and their Economic Institute, and was vice-chair of the Stanford GSB Advisory Council. He was a trustee at the Committee for Economic Development. He served on the boards of Fidelity Charitable, Western Governors University, UC Merced, The Educational Results Partnership, The College Futures Foundation, California Competes, The Opportunity Institute, Commonwealth Club, National Association of NonPartisan Reformers, and The Guardian.org. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served on the Board of Trustees for Junior Statesmen of America, and the Advisory Boards of Y Analytics, QB3, the Haas Center at Stanford, Third Sector Capital, The CA Community College Chancellor’s Office, Measures for Justice, and the Public Policy Institute of California.

He received his MBA and certificate in public management from Stanford. He holds an AB, magna cum laude, in economics from Harvard.

He lives on the Half Moon Bay coast with his wife, Christine. They raised their two daughters, Allie and Rebecca, there and are the founders and owners of the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company, The Inn at Mavericks and the Pacific Standard Taproom. He is also Chair and primary owner of the Coastside News Group (Half Moon Bay Review).

Carlos Ramos is Principal Consultant with Maestro Public Sector.  He works with leading edge Silicon Valley innovators to bring innovation and transformative technologies to the public sector.  Carlos founded Maestro after completing a 27-year career in California Government where he was a key technology leader and innovator directly involved in California’s technology initiatives.

During his tenure in the public sector, Carlos served as CIO for the State of California where he set California’s IT strategic direction and had oversight over and responsibility for the entire State technology portfolio.

Under his leadership, California established itself as a leader in mobile computing, the use of geo spatial technologies, data analytics, cyber security, virtualization and in public sector adoption of cloud computing in the public sector.  In addition, Carlos lead creative initiatives to professionalize the State’s technology workforce.  He established the first ever statewide IT project management office, created a project management academy and partnered with Silicon Valley to train the State’s workforce.  Additionally, Carlos helped bring California’s innovations to other states as a member of the executive committee of the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO).

Carlos previously served as Director of the California Office of Systems Integration – with a $4.5 billion portfolio of California’s largest technology projects.  Carlos also concurrently held the position of Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services and was the Agency’s senior technology executive. He was the principal technology advisor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and was responsible for the entire HHS technology portfolio.

Prior to that, Carlos served as Director of the then Teale Data Center (now called Office of Technology Services).  During his tenure as director, Teale launched it’s e-government platform, a new co-location service for government agencies and established a Data Center mutual assistance consortium of government Data Centers for disaster recovery and data security.  Before his tenure at the Data Center, Carlos served as CIO for the California Department of Social Services.

Carlos has held many leadership commissions including:

• Board Member – Google Government Innovation Advisory Board
• Co-Chair – California Cyber Security Task Force
• Chair – California Broadband Council
• Member of the Executive Committee of the National Association of State CIOs
• Director – Stephen P Teale Data Center – State of California
• Chief Deputy Director – California Department of Child Support Services
• Deputy Director – California Department of Social Services
• Member – Governor’s E-Government Policy Advisory Group
• Chair – Data Center Directors Mutual Assistance & Policy Council
• Chair – Government Technology Conference
• Chair – California IT Executive Institute
• Executive Sponsor – California IT Leadership Academy

Shireen Santosham has over 20 years of experience working across sectors to find innovative solutions to pressing social issues.

Prior to Nextdoor, she led strategy, sustainability, and community engagement initiatives for large venture-backed startups as well as served as the Chief Innovation Officer for the Mayor of San Jose, where she secured multimillion-dollar partnerships to close the digital divide for over a million San Jose neighbors.  Her experience ranges from consulting at McKinsey to impact investing at Vulcan Capital to authoring ground-breaking research on the gender gap in digital acess for the GSMA.

Because of her achievements in the social impact space, she was named a Top San Francisco Changemaker Shaping the Future of Tech by Builtin, twice listed in GovTech’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers, and received a Stevie Award.

She testified before the U.S. Congress and spoke on numerous prominent stages including at the United Nations Conference on Women (Beijing +20).  Her work has been featured in Bloomberg Technology, the New York Times, and CNN.

Barb Johnston Yellowlees is a former California Telemedicine and eHealth Center Executive Director, has been working in eHealth since 1995, and has undertaken both program development and research regarding clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness. Barb’s current work at CTEC is focused on expanding healthcare access for rural and underserved populations by fostering the utilization of telemedicine technologies, telecommunications resources development, and direct funding for eHealth networks expansion throughout California.

Previously, Barb developed eMental Health programs in the United States and in Australia, where she served as an advisor to its Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. Most recently, Barb was the Chief Operations Officer for HealthShare, an internet-based virtual private network in Australia allowing rural communities to access otherwise unavailable mental health services. Prior to that position, Barb worked within Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research as an eHealth Manager, where she played a key role in developing an online program designed to treat patients with depression and bi-polar disorders. Additionally, she was the Research Manager for Kaiser Permanente’s benchmark study on the effectiveness of Telehomecare.

Barb is a frequent speaker on the tangible benefits of eHealth as a key component of comprehensive healthcare delivery services, and has presented papers on eHealth to the International community including the USA, Australia, Singapore, Canada, India, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. She has also served on the Norwegian Telemedicine Counsel.
A published author, Barb’s most recent work is a chapter in the book, Telepsychiatry and e-Mental Health, published by the Royal Society of Medicine in January 2003. Finally, Barb is an active member of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA), where she chaired the committee that developed the first Telehomecare clinical guidelines for the ATA.

Barb has a Master of Nursing Science, Management and Leadership.

Sunne Wright McPeak is the President and CEO of the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF), a statewide non-profit foundation whose mission is to close the Digital Divide by accelerating the deployment and adoption of broadband.  With McPeak’s vision and drive, CETF has positioned California as a national leader in advancing Digital Inclusion, developing and launching groundbreaking initiatives such as the Digital Literacy Executive Order, School2Home, California Telehealth Network, and public information campaigns Get Connected!, Internet For All Now, and Digital Equity Bill of Rights.  CETF has sponsored several successful bi-partisan legislative bills, including the Internet For All Now Act of 2017 (securing authorization for $545 million into the California Advanced Services Fund) and has negotiated Memoranda of Understanding for public benefits in conjunction with corporate consolidations with Frontier Communications, Charter Communications, and T-Mobile.

As Secretary of the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency (2003-2006), McPeak oversaw the largest State Agency. She was responsible for more than 42,000 employees and a budget in excess of $11 billion.  Under McPeak’s leadership, performance and productivity in all 14 Departments of the Agency improved significantly—cutting average wait times at the DMV from over an hour to 21 minutes, reducing by two-thirds the time to issue real estate licenses, and generating more than $180 million in savings.  She provided key policy leadership in support of the Governor to develop and implement major investments in transportation and infrastructure while fostering groundbreaking regional “sustainable smart growth” planning advancing the “3Es” for triple bottom-line returns:  Prosperous Economy; Quality Environment; Social Equity.

Before being recruited to the Governor’s Cabinet, McPeak served for 7 years as President and CEO of the Bay Area Council, a prominent employer-led policy organization addressing regional economic prosperity issues.  For 3 years prior, she served as the President and CEO of the Bay Area Economic Forum, a public-private partnership between the Bay Area Council and the Association of Bay Area Governments.  She pioneered regional economic performance metrics to drive public policy, adoption by local governments of a regional 3Es compact on sustainable smart growth, and capitalization of equity funds to invest in low-income neighborhoods.

McPeak served for more than 15 years on the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, having been first elected at age 30, and was elected President of the California State Association of Counties in 1983.  When she left office, her colleagues named the Board Chambers in her honor.  Prior to being elected to public office, McPeak owned a consulting business in health and human services.  She served on the Boards of Directors for 2 publicly-traded corporations for 20 years.  She was inducted into the National Academy of Public Administration in 2016 and received the Champion of Technology Award from the California State Fair in 2018.  McPeak represents CETF on the California Broadband Council.

Sunne (whose first name is her Norwegian grandmother’s family name) grew up on a small dairy farm in the San Joaquin Valley.  She earned a B.A. in an Individual Major (International Medicine) from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Masters of Public Heath in Health Education and Medical Care Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.  She has been awarded two honorary doctorates from California State University East Bay and John F. Kennedy University.  She and John McPeak have been married for more than 50 years and their family includes 2 sons, a daughter-in-law, and 4 grandchildren (and Breezy, the 5^th Norwegian Elkhound).