Our Team

Lisa Brown, Board Chair, is an illustrator, author, designer, and cartoonist. Her award-winning picture books for children include The Airport Book, Mummy Cat by Marcus Ewert, Emily’s Blue Period by Cathleen Daly, and The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming by Lemony Snicket. Her writing and illustration has been published in a variety of publications, including NPR, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney’s, Lucky Peach, and The New York Times. She has been joyfully involved in 826 Valencia since its founding; as a donor, field trip illustrator and leader, workshop instructor, and publication contributor. Lisa teaches in the Illustration Department of the California College of the Arts. She received a BA in Humanities from Wesleyan University and an MS in Communications Design from Pratt Institute in New York City.

Ambar Bhattacharyya is a Managing Director at Maverick Ventures, a $400m venture capital fund based in San Francisco. Prior to joining Maverick, he was a Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners. Ambar began his career at Bain & Company. He also served as assistant to the CEO at MinuteClinic, where helped the company grow its national footprint prior to its acquisition by CVS. Ambar holds an M.B.A. with distinction from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in economics and a B.A. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Ambar previously served as a board member for the Bay Area Board of Generation Citizen and UP Academy in Boston and Dorchester. Ambar has been selected by the World Economic Forum as a Global Shaper and as one of the top 50 individuals in digital health by Rock Health in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, he was also selected to be an advisor to the California Healthcare Foundation Innovation Fund.

Liza Ramrayka is a social justice journalist with over 25 years of experience working for online and print media. A freelance features writer, columnist and commissioning editor for outlets including The Guardian, HuffPost and NewsDeeply, much of her work explores aspects of social exclusion, and aims to amplify the voices of marginalized communities. An early pioneer of solutions journalism – which uncovers effective responses to social problems – Liza writes about refugees and migration, equality, and diversity. She is also a journalism mentor, media skills trainer and editorial consultant. A board member at Children’s Day School, she is passionate about how education, and writing in particular, can connect students to their wider environment. Liza holds a BA in English and French literature and language, and a post-graduate diploma in journalism. Originally from the UK, she now lives in San Francisco with her partner, children Ella and Jake, and their beach-loving rescue pup, Biscuit.

Melissa Bender is a partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray where she has spent much of her 25-year career.  Melissa enjoys helping clients find creative solutions to their business challenges.  She is a co-leader of the firm’s private funds practice and also leads its crypto and blockchain initiative.  Melissa loves to train and work with junior lawyers, particularly when it comes to drafting complex agreements.  (Who says law is boring!)  Having grown up and lived all over the country, Melissa has been happy to call Burlingame home for the past decade.  Melissa discovered the piratical wonders of 826 Valencia with her two kids shortly after they moved to the Bay Area.  Now that both of her children have flown the nest, Melissa and her husband are off on their own adventures – escaping to the mountains for a hike, trying out a fun new restaurant or getting lost in a great book while lazing around with their dog, Ripley, at home.  Melissa graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English literature and attended law school at the University of Denver.

Bill is co-CEO at Mission North, a strategic communications firm serving the technology and life sciences industries. He has more than 25 years of experience advising technology companies at every stage — from stealth to Fortune 50. Bill specializes in helping companies navigate major moments of inflection and transformation with integrated corporate communications programs designed to grow reputation equity and create new categories. When he’s not advising clients, Bill focuses on developing Mission North’s award-winning culture and leading the agency’s corporate philanthropy program E3thos. He is a frequent commentator and contributor on the future of technology, media and communications. His articles have been published in Adweek, Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch and VentureBeat.

Ipek S. Burnett, Ph.D. is a Turkish-American author who provides a psychological critique of social, cultural, and political issues.

Born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, Ipek came to the United States to get a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in Modern Culture & Media and International Relations. She received her master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies. She has a doctorate degree in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.

Ipek is the author of A Jungian Inquiry into the American Psyche: The Violence of Innocence and the editor of the upcoming volume Re-Visioning the American Psyche: Jungian, Archetypal, and Mythological Reflections. She is a contributing writer at CounterPunch and author of two published novels in Turkey.

Ipek serves on the boards of nonprofit organizations and foundations that specialize in social justice and human rights. She is the Co-Chair of Human Rights Watch’s Executive Committee in San Francisco.

Bianca Catalan is an 826 alum who started participating in 826 programs when she was a 7th grader at Everett Middle School. Since then, she has participated in various other programs, been on staff, and served on our Alumni Board. She is currently the Director of Engagement of San Francisco University High School, where she attended as a student. She is also a board member for San Francisco Youth Theater.

Shikha Paul Donde is Senior Counsel at Uber, and has over 15 years of in-house experience in technology companies, specializing in areas of Ethics and Compliance. She is a graduate of UC San Diego, where she majored in Political Science and minored in Law and Society, and received her law degree at Golden Gate University School of Law.

A creative pioneer, Carolyn has over 20 years of experience leading marketing teams and building creative and effective marketing strategies for high-profile companies. Most recently, she was Dropbox’s Chief Marketing Officer. She led Dropbox’s global marketing organization, driving initiatives to develop the company’s iconic and enduring brand, engaging and acquiring customers, and building lasting relationships that help Dropbox users around the world unleash their creative energy. Before joining Dropbox, Carolyn spent time advising emerging brands from tech to beauty—including Pure Storage, where she was responsible for building the company’s digital marketing strategy and developing their brand and messaging architecture. For over a decade, Carolyn ran Global Consumer Marketing at Electronic Arts, helping to define the strength and personality of EA SPORTS and developing high impact campaigns for franchises from Madden Football to FIFA to Battlefield. She also led the company’s digital transformation across its marketing effort.

Enikia Ford Morthel is an urban educator with over 15 years of experience serving the Bay Area’s most historically underserved communities. She is currently Superintendent, Berkeley Unified School District and was formerly Asst. Superintendent for the San Francisco Unified School District’s Bayview/Potrero Hill communities, as part of a collaborative team created to transform San Francisco’s lowest-performing schools. Prior to this appointment, she facilitated the turnaround of underperforming schools and incubation of new schools in some of the Bay Area’s highest-need neighborhoods.

Enikia sees education as an act of social justice and is committed to the transformation of our educational system to be more responsive, relevant, and revolutionary in the lives of the children who need it most. Outside of her day job, Enikia continues to engage and empower communities of color. She advances these efforts in her role as professor/Senior Lecturer of Urban Education at Loyola Marymount University. She has consulted for companies like ETS, LeapFrog, and a number of Bay Area CBOs, and partnered with Seneca Family of Agencies as a lead developer of the All-In Partnership, which has transformed Special Education and Response to Intervention in many schools serving communities of increased trauma.

She serves on a number of boards and is excited to share her passion and experience in support of the vision of 826 Valencia. Originally from Los Angeles, Enikia is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a Master’s degree in Education. Although she enjoys the ‘heart work’ that consumes much of her days, her most rewarding role has been that of mother and wife. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, William, and two children—Jayvyn (14) and Samaiya (5).

Keith Hunter is a tenured Associate Professor at the University of San Francisco where he teaches courses dealing with the structural, psychological and sociological aspects of management and leadership. Having partnered with 826 Valencia many times in his courses, he is also a strong advocate for community engaged learning and social justice at USF. Hunter is also a US Navy veteran whose six years of service included leadership in firefighting, radiological incident response, and shipboard engineering operations. After completing his military service, he pursued a career in software, earning undergraduate and Masters degrees in computer science. At Sandia National Laboratories, Hunter worked on research projects in evolutionary computation and agent based simulation before attending Carnegie Mellon University to obtain his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Management. Dr. Hunter is passionate about expanding opportunity and empowering people to help make the world a better place.

Osvaldo Marquez has been part of the 826 Valencia community for over 15 years. He started as a student tutee but soon joined other programs at 826 Valencia. He received a scholarship in 2010 from 826 Valencia to attend Pitzer College, where he majored in Sociology and Spanish. In 2014, he became the first in his family to graduate from college. He now works in the financial industry and lives in San Francisco. He believes that organizations like 826 Valencia make a significant and impactful difference in student’s educational goals and accomplishments.

Josh spent 7 years at Forbes and 8 years at Wired as a writer and editor and is now the CEO of Attention Span Media and editor in chief of Attention FWD. Raised by a single mother, a gaggle of aunts, uncles and grandparents, and encouraged by an extended family of literary enthusiasts, he attended Waldorf school, boarding school and college thanks to a constellation of financial aid packages, eventually graduating from Yale with a B.A. in English. After college Josh worked for a small weekly newspaper, covering school board meetings, bake sales and a murder or two. His efforts to dunk a basketball are the subject of Dunkumentary, a documentary that screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. From 2010 to 2014, he served as president of the Commonwealth Club of California’s INFORUM board. He holds a certification in Sustainable Capitalism & ESG from Berkeley Law.

Scott Rubin leads brand, marketing, and communications for Lux Capital, a venture capital firm investing in frontier technology at all stages of growth. Previously, Scott held multiple roles in public policy, communications, and marketing at Google, Andreesen Horowitz, and Atlassian. Scott earned his AB at Harvard University, with a concentration in Literature and a (very unofficial) secondary focus in Primate Anthropology. He received his MA from The Writing Seminars (Fiction) at Johns Hopkins University. He is the co-author of In Every Tongue, a book exploring the intersection of race and religion. When he’s not at his desk, Scott keeps bees and grows apples, pears, plums, and figs at Lazy Dog Farm, his century-old family farm in Sonoma County, CA.

Rachel Swain Yeaman is a writer, communications consultant, and long-time advocate for social justice and civil rights. Over the course of many years, Rachel conceived and directed winning media and communications campaigns for many national and regional advocacy organizations, including the ACLU. She has served on the boards of several nonprofits, including the Breast Cancer Fund and Children’s Day School, where she chaired the capital campaign that enabled the purchase and construction of a new independent, progressive middle school in the heart of San Francisco. Rachel holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is thrilled to bring her passion for social justice and children’s writing to the board of 826.

Monica is a Partner at G2 Venture Partners, a venture and growth equity firm focused on technologies that are digitizing and decarbonizing traditional industries. She invests in companies transforming the way we work (future of work), buy (circular economy), and eat (food & agriculture).

Monica was previously part of the FP&A team at Tesla, where she helped scale Model S manufacturing. She was a core member of McKinsey and Company’s sustainability practice and worked on scaling solar in North America, India, Tanzania, and Rwanda. Monica spent a year as a climate change researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked with the World Wildlife Fund in Dubai. She has been a volunteer with Let’s Get Ready, helping under-resourced students prepare for college admissions, and Language ETC, helping immigrants to the US learn English.

Monica has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Columbia University. She grew up in India and the Middle East, and now lives in Redwood City, CA with her husband and their tuxedo cat Oreo.