TransForm Welcomes New Board Members for 2012

New Board members join with a few long-term members at December 2011 Board Orientation. From left to right: Richard Raya, Brian Raymond (new), Yoriko Kishimoto (new), Andy Thornley, Corinne Winter, Rick Theis (new), Amanda Brown-Stevens, Barnali Ghosh (new), Jennifer Jeffers (new).

A Renewed Vision and Dynamic New Directors for 2012 and Beyond

After a year-long process supported by the James Irvine Foundation, TransForm transitioned its Board of Directors from a leadership body composed exclusively of executive and policy staff from partnering non-profit organizations to one that includes individuals with a tremendous range of skills, perspectives and capacity.

A new framework and vision for the Board was created. It clarified the Board's three primary areas of leadership:

1. Organizational direction:  Board engages in strategy and policy discussions, guides strategic planning, and identifies trends, opportunities and challenges;
2. Organizational sustainability:  Board ensures good stewardship of assets through sound fiscal strategies.  Makes a powerful contribution to sustainability by leading the major donor campaign, supporting other fundraising activities and being a 100% giving board;
3. Organizational excellence: Assesses effectiveness and contributes personal expertise to increase overall impact, and ensures legal and ethical organizational practices.

After intense outreach and many meetings, five new Board members were recommended by the Board Development Committee and joined TransForm's Board in December 2011. These new Board members add expertise in social justice leadership, state-level policy, fundraising and strategic financial planning. They are Barnali Ghosh, Jennifer Jeffers, Yoriko Kishimoto, Brian Raymond and Rick Theis (full bios below). They join nine existing Board members who bring institutional knowledge and a renewed commitment to TransForm.

TransForm continues to recruit new Board members – please let Laura Keegan Boudreau, TransForm's Chief Operating Officer, know if you or someone you know might be interested in helping guide and support TransForm into the future!

Brian Raymond

Brian is the Senior Policy Consultant, Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy. Brian  analyzes emerging policy issues and supports the health policy decision making process within Kaiser Permanente. His current areas of concentration include health information technology and obesity prevention. Brian also manages projects and roundtable discussions to produce suggestions for health policy improvement. Brian began his career with Kaiser in 1983. Prior to his work at the Institute, he conducted market research, membership forecasts and competition analysis, and provided analytic support to Kaiser senior executives. Brian holds a Bachelor's degree in community health administration from UC Davis and a Master's degree in Public Health from UC Berkeley.

Yoriko Kishimoto

Yoriko started her life as a community activist when she received a postcard from the City of Palo Alto saying they planned to raise the speed limit on her family's residential street. As the mother of two toddlers at the time, she decided to stand up and do something about it. She successfully worked with friends and neighbors to shed light on the issue and ensure the City Council preserved their safe streets.

From those beginnings, Yoriko went on to serve as Palo Alto Mayor and City Council member for eight years. She remained faithful to her mission of building a green economy through innovation and improved city services while preserving a balanced budget. She successfully forged coalitions for positive change with neighborhood groups, schools, environmentalists, business leaders and regional agencies. She promoted cleantech and clean energy businesses, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, zero waste programs, green building ordinances, community buses, farmers markets, and other measures to grow our creative economy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, mitigating traffic and minimizing the impact on our natural environment.

Yoriko has also served on the Board of Directors for Santa Clara County's Valley Transportation Authority and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. She was chair of BAAQMD's Climate Protection Committee and an original member of the Joint Policy Committee (which brings together the four regional agencies).

Currently Yoriko is on board of the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District, and was extremely engaged in founding Friends of Caltrain, which formed recently and has been extremely effective in staving off cuts from Caltrain. Yoriko holds a bachelors degree from Wesleyan and an MBA from Stanford University. She has served as a management consultant for technology entrepreneurs on both sides of the Pacific for more than twenty years, helping new businesses launch global partnerships. She also co-authored The Third Century: America's Resurgence in the Asian Era, a groundbreaking book on America's strength as an open economy and diverse society during a time of great change.

Yoriko has been somewhat engaged with TransForm over the years, and has been working with Chris Lepe on Caltrain issues over the past year. She still lives in Palo Alto and is interested in supporting and being an Ambassador for TransForm's work in the South Bay, as well as getting more in touch with regional and state transportation and land use policy.

Rick Theis

Rick is the founder and board chair of the Leadership Institute for Ecology and the Economy, which he launched in 2000 to help those interested in a sustainable future to learn about the ecosystem we live in, and to realize that public policy must change if we are to have a better future for ourselves and our children.

Rick's passion for these issues began during his time as executive director of the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association, when he realized that protection of agricultural land required better city planning and urban growth boundaries. Urban planning became an avocation. Rick served on the Santa Rosa Planning Commission and became a founder of the Sonoma County Transportation Land-Use Coalition. He also saw the need to protect wildlife habitat and open space. He realized that his lifelong concern for social justice fit together with concern for economic and environmental issues as integral to the concept of sustainability.

Rick's has also served as the public relations director for the wine division of Coca-Cola; as public relations manager for the Wine Institute; and as a television producer for the University of Minnesota. He serves a trustee of the Sonoma Academy and on the Executive Committee of the Accountable Development Coalition.

Rick was involved in TransForm from its very first meetings as BATLUC, and has been an engaged activist and for the last several years a generous supporter. He lives in Sebastopol and is interested in supporting TransForm's work in any way, but especially sees this as an opportunity to bring North Bay issues such as SMART and key Sonoma land use issues to the Board.

Barnali Ghosh

Barnali is a LEED-certified California landscape architect with over a decade of experience. She specializes in the design of public parks, schoolyards, and streetscapes, with an emphasis on sustainability and universal design. She most recently worked with MIG (www.migcom.com), a West Coast planning, design, communications, management, and technology firm. One area of the firm's interest is in exploring the future of streets and what America's roadways would be like if they were designed for living, instead of driving.

She has been car-free by choice for all twelve years that she has lived in the Bay Area, relying on bikes, public transit, walking, and carsharing. Barnali spent 2009-2010 doing a year-long green citizen journalism project, writing on issues related to global transportation and climate justice, as she and her husband attempted to travel around the world aviation-free. Her reporting can be found at Year Of No Flying (www.yearofnoflying.com). Since returning to the United States. Barnali has been reaching out to share her experiences, build bridges, and help build awareness of climate and transportation issues, particularly in South Asian American communities.

She has also been building on her decade of volunteer work with Asha for Education/Berkeley (www.ashanet.org/berkeley), organizing major fundraising events, and coordinating project work for an all-volunteer funding agency supporting secular education projects in India.

Barnali is also founding member of the Aviation Justice coalition (www.aviationjustice.org), formed in 2010 to raise awareness about the impacts of aviation related to climate change, noise, pollution, and civil rights, while advocating for alternatives to an unsustainable system.

Barnali holds a Masters of Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Manipal Institute of Technology, India. Barnali speaks Hindi, Bengali and Kannada. In her spare time, she enjoys long walks, good food, movies, and nurturing her newfound love of acting. She is a Berkeley resident.

She has been a fan of TransForm for quite a while, as she relies on the Bay Area's transit systems to get around, and she and her husband got more focused on our work when we took on the OAC campaign. She is interested in getting more involved in the policy and advocacy work, bringing in her design background, getting the South Asian American communities more engaged in these issues, and being an ambassador for TransForm. Barnali spoke at our "Car-Free Heroes" TransForum a few months ago, and wowed the audience with her passion and eloquence.

Jennifer Jeffers

Jennifer is an associate in the Environment and Energy Group at Morrison & Foerster LLP's San Francisco office. She counsels domestic and international clients on land use, environmental, and regulatory matters in a number of sectors, including natural resources, renewable energy, water, climate change, and real property development. She represents clients in matters involving the Endangered Species Acts, the National Environmental Policy Act, the California Environmental Quality Act, and other environmental statutes. She also advises clients on compliance with state and local agency regulations regarding commercial, mixed-use, and renewable energy project development and permitting, including zoning, land use, and environmental compliance. She has been assigned by the law firm as one of the lead attorneys to stay in touch with rules regarding the implementation of AB 32 and SB 375.

Prior to law school, Jennifer managed Conservation International's Regional Marine Strategies program in Washington, D.C., where she provided marine biodiversity management strategies to regional staff, local and national governments, and public institutions in 11 countries worldwide. She also was engaged in successful fundraising efforts for those programs.

Jennifer graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a J.D. and Certificate of Environmental Law from the School of Law (Boalt Hall) and a M.S. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Before joining Morrison & Foerster, she was an intern at the Environment, Land, and Natural Resources Section of the California Attorney General's Office and a law clerk for a boutique land use and natural resources law firm in San Francisco. Jennifer is thrilled to be living in a walkable, transit-oriented area of Oakland (near Piedmont Ave.) and is passionate about improving public transportation, though has not been directly involved in advocacy for these issues. She sought out Stuart and Laura during a BoardMatch event eight months ago and has stayed in touch since. She is excited to support the board's work in any way; with her legal background, with fundraising efforts, and whatever she is most need for.

TransForm Seeks New Board Members

Help lead an organization with a critical mission and an incredible track record…

Join TransForm's Board of Directors or Policy Committee

TransForm has grown rapidly in recent years, thanks to our track record of success and a mission that is increasingly understood to be critical to the environment, social equity and public health.  Now, with California’s groundbreaking 2008 law that sets greenhouse gas targets for smarter transportation and land use, we have unprecedented opportunity to disseminate the work we have done in the Bay Area, and potentially shift the fundamental paradigm of growth away from sprawling development towards walkable, affordable communities.

Of course, all this growth and opportunity mean that TransForm as an organization is becoming more complex, and as such, our leadership needs are evolving.  We are currently recruiting a cohort of new board members to help us transition from a founding Board comprised of representatives of non-profit partners, to a diverse and dynamic Board made up of individuals with a broad range of skills, interests and perspectives.  

What Our Board Does

The Board provides leadership for TransForm in three critical areas:

Organizational direction:  Engages in strategy and policy discussions, guides strategic planning, and identifies trends, opportunities and challenges. 

Organizational sustainability:  Ensures good stewardship of our assets through sound fiscal strategies.  Makes a powerful contribution to our sustainability by leading our major donor campaign, supporting other fundraising activities and being a 100% giving board.

Organizational excellence:  Assesses our effectiveness and contributes personal expertise to increase our impact,  and ensures legal and ethical organizational practices.

Who We’re Looking For

During this first round of recruitment, we are looking for individuals who are passionate about our mission and can bring some combination of:

• Social justice leadership
• State-level transportation leadership
• Fundraising interest and experience
• Strategic financial planning

Ideally each Board member also brings an extensive network of contacts and is willing to serve as an ambassador for TransForm. We ask all Board members to sit down with staff and talk openly and honestly about how they can help us reach our fundraising targets. The Board meets bi-monthly.

For more information, please contact BoardofDirectors@TransFormCA.org.

Special thanks to the James Irvine Foundation for supporting TransForm's Board Development, as well as several of our programs.

Want to just focus on Transportation and Land Use Policy? 

In addition to the new Board, TransForm will be starting a Policy Committee that will be open to non-Board members. 

About Our Policy Committee: The newly formed TransForm Policy Committee (TPC) will be comprised of Board members and other issue experts who serve as the staff’s guiding advisory body on policy issues.  The committee will give input and advice to staff on a wide range of issues, and will make recommendations to the Board on positions for the organization. 

TransForm staff will rely on the TPC to provide guidance and input on all of the areas of programmatic work.  While the Board of Directors has final say on positions, the TPC is the venue for discussion, debate and refinement of positions, and advice and support as we develop our campaigns.  This committee is an essential partner in assuring that TransForm is effectively using staff resources and being as strategic as possible in our campaigns.

Who We Are Looking For:  We are seeking members with expertise in issue areas such as affordable housing, land conservation, environmental justice and state transportation policy.  We also seek a geographic balance around the Bay Area, and regarding state policy.  Members serve as themselves and not on behalf of any other organizations, and are expected to represent TransForm’s interests in their deliberations. 

The TPC will meet approximately 10 times per year, with in-person and phone options.  TPC members are expected to commit to attending at least 7 of the 10 meetings per year. 

For more information, please contact BoardofDirectors@TransFormCA.org. 

Graham Brownstein

Ann Cheng

Nora Cody

Stuart Cohen

Rachel Davidman

Camille Guiriba

Jeff Hobson

John Knox White

Karen Kunze

Chris Lepe

Marta Lindsey

Sara Marcellino

Susan Nguyen

Sandra Padilla

Sara Poznik

Joél Ramos

Shannon Tracey

Ebonie Wallace