Board of Trustees
The Board of Trustees of The Berkeley School is made up of volunteers who are dedicated to the quality and stability of the school. It is composed primarily of parents and community members. The Board’s meetings are held monthly, and are open to the community. Here is a brief bio of each member of the Board.
- Marites Abueg
- Pat Buechner
- David S. Chang
- Roz Hamar
- Amy Huang
- Ann Fischer Hecht, Chair
- Lisa Hanson, Secretary
- Signy Judd
- Lucy Mahaffey
- Janet McGarvey
- Kristi McKenney
- Helen Meyer, Vice-Chair
- Summer Nastich
- Josh Newman, Treasurer
- John Pound
- Dobee Snowber
Marites Abueg
Marites Abueg is an architect with over 20 years of experience. For the last eight, she has co-owned Abueg Morris Architects with her husband of 19 years, Keith Morris. She has co-chaired TBS’ Pick-a-Party Committee with Keith for the last two years, and currently co-chairs the TBS Site Committee, which is analyzing the present and future physical needs and priorities of the school. Her daughters Anika and Teah are in 5th and 3rd grade, respectively, and have been in the school since 2008.
Pat Buechner
Pat received his BA in Government from Beloit College in Wisconsin, putting it to work in Washington, D.C. first as a Congressional aide and later as media liaison for the Australian Embassy. Following his lifelong passion for games and technology, in 1996 he and his wife Ann moved to Berkeley, where he joined Maxis, the videogame studio best known for the popular simulation games SimCity and The Sims. Since Maxis was acquired by videogame giant Electronic Arts, Pat has held a variety of public relations, marketing, and business development roles and is currently a Vice President of Marketing. The Buechner family has been a part of The Berkeley (Montessori) School community since 2000, when their daughter Emma entered the ECC. Emma graduated from TBS in 2010 and now attends College Preparatory School; son Ben is now in third grade in Temescal Creek. While the school has changed locations, teachers, program, and name, Pat has always believed in its commitment to help kids become intellectually curious.
David S. Chang
David was born in Taipei, Taiwan and lived there until the age of five, when his family relocated to southern California. He graduated from Stanford University, where he earned dual degrees in Biology and English. After a research stint at the NASA-Ames Research Center, he attended medical school at Wake Forest University and remained there for his orthopaedic surgery residency. After nine years in North Carolina, David returned to southern California to complete his fellowship in sports medicine with the Santa Monica Orthopaedic Group. Now he practices orthopaedic surgery and sports medicine in the Oakland-Berkeley area with the practice he founded in 2006. He serves as Vice-Chair in the Department of Surgery at Alta Bates Hospital and consults as a physician for several collegiate and professional sports teams and sporting events. David met his wife, Catherine, a Berkeley native, in medical school; she is a practicing internal medicine-geriatrics physician. They relocated to Berkeley in 2005 and have three boys, ages 7.5, 6, and 4.
Roz Hamar
Roz Hamar has served as Head of School at the Montessori-inspired Marin Horizon School since 1995, and her experience as a senior administrator includes four years as head of the upper school at The Barrie School, which also had its roots in Montessori principles and practices, in Silver Spring, Maryland. She has more than 35 years of experience in education (teaching, research, program development, program assessment and administration). Roz has served as a trustee of the Homestead Valley Community Association, the Earth Day Every Day Fund of the Marin Community Foundation, Leadership High School of San Francisco, Windrush School, and the California Association of Independent School.
Ann Fischer Hecht, Chair
Ann Fischer Hecht, Chair, holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University, and her business background includes sales and business development in the professional staffing, computer hardware and software industries. Her family has been part of the TBS community for eight years. Her daughter, Kailey, is currently a 7th grader in the Middle School, and her son, Dylan, a 2011 TBS graduate, now attends San Francisco’s Urban High School. Her non-profit experience includes serving on the boards of the Mosaic Project, The Glenridge Cooperative Nursery School and the Children’s Community Center Preschool. At TBS she has served on the Eco-Fund, Strategic Planning, and Development Committees.
Lisa Hanson, Secretary
Lisa is the production manager for campaign strategy and media firm Whitehurst/Mosher Campaigns and public affairs company Barnes Mosher Whitehurst Lauter & Partners. She also does freelance direct mail production for several other Bay Area clients. She has extensive political and campaign experience at local, state and national levels. Lisa previously founded and ran her own East Bay political consulting firm and managed a number of successful candidate and ballot measure campaigns. A native of Chicago, Lisa attended Indiana University. Lisa served as Chair of the TBS Parents Association for three years and served as co-chair of our highly successful Honoring Our Teachers Gala and Auction for its first two years. Her daughter is in fourth grade.
Amy Huang
Amy Huang is a management consultant, providing organizational and leadership development, and succession planning expertise to Fortune 100’s “Best Companies to Work For” around the country. She is trained as a clinical psychologist and continues to mentor and supervise psychology graduate students in psychological assessment, to which she brings more than 15 years of teaching experience as a faculty and staff member at various graduate programs and mental health agencies in the Bay Area. Amy has basic competency in Mandarin and French. She also maintains a private practice in Oakland where she offers career transition coaching.
Amy is the proud mother of two TBS children and has lived in the Bay Area most of her life.
Signy Judd
Signy holds a master’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a doctoral candidate in medical sociology at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a current fellow at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a think tank at UCSF, where she conducts research on women’s experiences with reproductive technologies and the de-medicalization of abortion. Before this, Signy worked both domestically and internationally to promote reproductive health and rights, for organizations ranging from Planned Parenthood in Richmond, California to CARE International in Quito, Ecuador. Signy was elected to the Board of Trustees in spring of 2010, and serves as the Board liaison to the accreditation committee. Signy’s daughter, Beckett, is in first grade this year, and her son, Osby, is a student at the ECC.
Lucy Mahaffey
Lucy is the mother of a TBS graduate now at The Urban School, and a TBS seventh grade student. At TBS, Lucy has served as a substitute teacher (where she created the 6th grade California and American History units), room parent, Admissions Ambassador and member of the Strategic Planning Steering Committee. Her previous academic experience was as a Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant and Instructor in the UC Berkeley Department of Comparative Literature, a teacher at Flushing Language Center and Teaching Assistant and Teacher at the Bennington College Early Childhood Center. Currently, she is the Head Teacher at the Sunday School at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, where she helped create a Montessori-based religious education program for children ages 3 to 12. She also serves the Cathedral congregation as a member of the Family Ministries Advisory Board.
Janet McGarvey
Janet has been an educator for over thirty years. For much of that time, she taught English at the Branson School, University High School, and the Hamlin School. For four years she was the Director of the Western regional office of Independent Educational Services, a non-profit teacher placement service. She also served on the founding Board of the Bay School for nine years. Janet is the founding Director of The Bay Area Teacher Development Collaborative, a non-profit organization serving more than 51 independent schools from Sacramento to Saratoga, now in its tenth year. In her non-professional life Janet is a horsewoman, and she enjoys competing in cutting and reining. Janet is married to Craig McGarvey and is the mother of Tessa; she lives in San Francisco.
Kristi McKenney
Kristi McKenney is the mother of two graduates of The Berkeley School. The elder graduated from College Preparatory School this year and headed to Occidental College in the fall. The younger is finishing his freshman year at Saint Mary’s High School. Kristi currently serves as the Manager of Planning and Development for the Oakland International Airport, owned and operated by the Port of Oakland. In this role she is responsible for planning, funding and implementing a $400 million capital program. Her responsibilities include directing Project Management staff, managing complex interdisciplinary teams, and overseeing large contracts. In 2010, Kristi was appointed to the Strategic Planning Task Force to develop a new five-year Strategic Plan for the Port of Oakland conceived from the ground up. Kristi also serves as the Port of Oakland representative on regional, state and federal aviation planning matters. She has over 20 years of experience in airport physical and environmental planning, capital development, and operations management, serving both as a consultant and as an airport representative. She is former Chair and currently serves on the Environmental Committee of the Airports Council International – North America and the Airports Council International World Environment Standing Committee. She was recently appointed a member of the Expert Panel for the Airport cooperative Research Program Study of Climate Adaptation and Resilience for Airports. Kristi earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautics from San Jose State University and her Masters of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Helen Meyer, Vice-Chair
Helen is Executive Vice President of Meyer Sound Laboratories, Inc. In 1979, Helen and John Meyer founded Meyer Sound Laboratories, where they have been producing world-class professional audio products for 30 years. In 2008, the Berkeley Community Fund presented Helen and John Benjamin Ide Wheeler Medal and Helen was named a 2008 Woman of Distinction by the “East Bay Business Times.” A long-time Berkeley resident with two children and three grandchildren, Helen is actively involved with numerous arts organizations including Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre and Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and is a board member of Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Brooklyn’s Mark Morris Dance Group. She is also a member of the Alameda County Workforce Investment Board. Meyer Sound is a corporate sponsor of the San Francisco Opera and California Shakespeare Theatre.
Summer Nastich
Summer Nastich practices environmental law as an associate attorney at SmithTrager LLP. In addition to her paid work, she volunteers for the Alameda County Bar’s Volunteer Legal Services Corporation, serving clients pro bono. Summer and Katherine Kettler are the parents of kindergarten student Myles Kettler (and two-year-old twins, Ainsley and Paxton). By the way, prior to pursuing higher education for over a decade, Summer attended Berkeley Montessori School, at the Early Childhood Campus.
Josh Newman
Josh Newman serves as Treasurer of The Berkeley School and heads its Finance and Audit Committees. Josh founded EdTec Inc., to provide complete outsourced business services to charter schools in California. Josh serves as co-chair of TBS’s Strategic Task Force, co-directing the collection and interpretation of data to inform the board’s next Strategic Planning process. He also helped construct the set for last year’s 4/5 play, assisting in the transformation of the University Campus courtyard into a California gold rush town. Josh and Martha Diepenbrock are the parents of Tessa, in the Blackberry Creek classroom, and Zoe, in Middle School.
John Pound
John Pound is President of Integrity Brands, a niche investment firm focused on the retail and consumer sectors. He founded Integrity in 1999 after a career that included, in addition to work in the retail and consumer arena, research and policy work in financial market regulation, active investing, and corporate governance. He received an A.B. from Harvard and the M.A., M. Phil, and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Yale University. He worked on corporate control and insider trading policies in the mid-1980s at the Securities and Exchange Commission and taught financial market policy for ten years at Harvard University, where he was a leader on corporate governance reform. He served on the Board of Directors of The Gymboree Corp for ten years, and presently serves on the boards of two public and three private companies, including Cost Plus World Market; Three Twins Ice Cream, of Petaluma; and Hunter Dixon, Inc., a New York-based fashion apparel company. John lives in Marin County with his wife Rachel. He has two sons, JJ (9) and Ben (15). He is a recreational pilot and an amateur photographer; his landscape photos have been featured in publications and are also in several private collections.
Dobee Snowber
Dobee Snowber works as a Senior Logistics Director and HR Manager for Sitcom Furniture, where she has been employed since moving to the Bay Area in 1998. She has worked in the field of distribution management and administration and HR for more 20 years, here and in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she resided for twelve years prior to her further migration west. She is also a working artist (printmaking and painting), making time between time, or whenever possible, to create. Dobee holds a BA in Intellectual History/Feminist Studies from Kirkland College and a
BFA in Printmaking and Painting from the Maine College of Art. She has served on the boards of Nia House Learning Center in various roles, including board president. She is currently board president for the ACCI Gallery in Berkeley. In addition, she serves on the Executive Committee of TBSPA and co-chaired this year’s Bylaws Task Force. Dobee and her partner Clare Woakes are the parents of Jesse (Strawberry Creek) and Michael (Sweet Briar) and have been at TBS since 2008.
