Parents and Families
To give you a feeling for some of the folks involved in the school, here are a few of the many amazing parents who have chosen TBS:
- Gregoire Jacquet – Local gourmet take-out restaurant legend
- David Trachtenberg – Noted Berkeley architect
- Jacqueline Olive – Independent multimedia producer
- Rebeka Silva – Oral and maxillofacial surgeon
- Lisa Anne Porter – Nationally renowned acting and voice coach
- Marites Abueg and Keith Morris – Architects and designers
- Elizabeth Trachtenberg – Leading geneticist at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Center
- Peggy Orenstein – Author / Journalist, and regular New York Times Magazine contributor
- Stuart Sands – Musician, world traveler and computer scientist
- Matt Taeker and Wilma Wyss – Urban designer / graphic designer / urban chicken farmers
- Cecilia Echeverría – Professional philanthropod
- Steve Adams – Avant garde jazz saxophonist and music instructor
- Wil Burns – Leading environmental law professor at Santa Clara Law School
- Bernd Sturmfels – Professor of Mathematics at Berkeley; past director of MSRI
- Ali Partovi – Serial social media entrpreneur & strategic advisor
- Jenny Freeman and Dean Lobovits – Marriage therapists based in Berkeley
- Catherine MacNeal – Stage, TV and film Actress; Co-founder of Cambodia Tomorrow
- Gunnar and Marcella Madsen – Composer, writer, actor, singer, director (and gadfly!)
- Joshua Newman – Founder of EdTec; consultant; part-time professor
- David Hochschild and Cynthia Li – Solar energy entrepreneur; UCSF professor & internist
- Linda Press Wulf – Author, parent & TBS Community Caring Committee co-chair
- Steven Okazaki – Four-time Oscar nominee for documentary films
Gregoire Jacquet
Gregoire Jacquet is the owner and chef of the famous fine food take-out restaurant Gregoire, which San Francisco magazine named one of the “Bay Area’s Top Nine Takeout Spots” and which is the home of his famous potato puffs. His original location in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto serves over 8,000 meals each month, and he now has a second location in Oakland’s Piedmont district, from which he runs his very successful catering sideline. His son Milo is a Sweet Briar Creek student, and his daughter Elodie is in Blackberry Creek.
David Trachtenberg
In over twenty years of working as an architect in Berkeley, David and his firm, Trachtenberg Architects, has made an impact on the culture of Berkeley and the Bay Area. He is fortunate to have been entrusted to design buildings for many local institutions including, to name just a few, the Berkeley Bowl Marketplace, Cody’s Books, Acme Bread, KPFA Radio, ACLU Headquarters, The Trust for Public Land Headquarters, and numerous other commercial and residential projects. David received his BA in Architecture from UC Berkeley and his Masters of Architecture from Harvard. The interplay of design, economics, culture, community and construction remains a source of endless engagement in his work.
Jacqueline Olive
Jacqueline Olive is an independent multimedia producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area who principally uses filmmaking to tell nuanced stories of people, places, and cultures overlooked or misrepresented in media. After earning a master’s degree in documentary film at the University of Florida’s Documentary Institute, she worked for three seasons assisting with the production of the internationally-themed PBS series, Global Voices, and the Emmy award-winning documentary series, Independent Lens. Bringing experience in many fields from news photography to firefighting, Jacqueline has directed, produced, filmed, and written television news stories and short and long-form documentaries that combine an emphasis on compelling visual storytelling with critical analysis. Utilizing a variety of web-based platforms, Jacqueline also produces digital media pieces that expand the reach of her films. In the past year, she has created a series of web-shorts that highlight ardent voices on all sides of the same-sex marriage debate and is currently developing Always in Season, a documentary that reveals how the lynching of African Americans for more than a century until the mid-1960s still impacts Americans today. She is also producing a complementary Second Life project. Jacqueline’s son Teo is in the sixth grade at TBS.
Rebeka Silva, DMD
Rebeka Silva, DMD, is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and Chief of Dental Services at the VA Medical Center, San Francisco. She is Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, UCSF Medical Center. In addition, she has a part-time private practice in downtown San Francisco (www.bayareaoralsurgeons.com/). At the VA, Dr. Silva’s clinical focus is the surgical reconstruction of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) and the management of oral pathology, including reconstruction of the jaws. In her private practice, her emphasis is on wisdom tooth surgery, dental extractions, and dental implant surgery. The author of numerous papers and an in-demand lecturer, she was recently awarded an NIH grant as principal investigator to develop a visuohaptic surgical computational platform with her collaborators at Stanford University. Rebeka enjoys getting her hands dirty while gardening and is an enthusiastic mom to her daughter, Estrella (Cerrito Creek classroom), who has been a TBS student for 6 years.
Lisa Anne Porter
Lisa Anne Porter is a designated Linklater voice instructor, acting, voice, dialect and text professor and a professional actress and director. Lisa teaches in the MFA program at the American Conservatory Theatre and the BFA and MFA programs at UC Davis and the Academy of Art University. She was an associate professor in the BFA program at Syracuse University for six years. She has also taught master classes in voice, dialect, Shakespeare and text in the ACT Summer Training Congress and Studio program, at San Francisco State University, Shakespeare & Company, The Tepper Center in NYC, Naropa University, Stagebridge, Mendocino College, California Shakespeare Festival, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre. She has coached voice and dialect in over forty productions. She has performed with numerous repertory companies and Shakespeare festivals throughout the country, including the American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, California Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare/Santa Cruz, Shakespeare Festival/LA, Marin Theatre Company, Shakespeare & Company, Syracuse Stage, Sacramento Theatre Company, GeVa Theatre Company, the Magic Theatre, Interact Theatre Company, the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival and Boston Theatreworks. She has a B.A. in Theatre and American Studies from Wesleyan University and an M.F.A. from the American Conservatory Theatre.
Marites Abueg and Keith Morris
If you’ve ever dined at À Côté Restaurant, Renee’s Place, Becky’s Chinese, Marica, Tomatina Berkeley, or Venus Restaurant, you’ve experienced firsthand the design work of Marites and Keith, aka Abueg Morris Architects. Their latest San Francisco eatery, Nopalito, was named one of the nation’s 19 best new restaurants by Esquire magazine, and in Michael Bauer’s/SF Chronicle’s Top 10 New Restaurants of 2009. Other notable design projects include the remodel of Alice Water’s residential kitchen and home, and an addition to a prominent 1916 Julia Morgan residence, her largest residential project after Hearst Castle. They inject a ready warmth and comfort in their design, layering textures and mixing modern, handcrafted and vintage elements. They love to invest in their communities, and value highly their relationships with local craftspeople and vendors, focusing on sustainable construction and repurposed materials.
Originally midwesterners, the pair met at the University of Cincinnati’s Architecture school, and have been together for 25 years, married for 19, and in business together since 2003. Marites, a self-confessed “designaholic” and “go-to” resource maven, also dabbles in jewelry and paper arts. Keith continues his lifelong love of percussion, gigging out with a psychedelic folk rock band (Big Lion), and has recently taken to long-road cycling. Ever in a state of growth, they endure (and are grateful for) the daily lessons in parenting they receive from their two adroit daughters, Anika (9) and Teah (6).
Elizabeth Trachtenberg
Elizabeth Trachtenberg, PhD, is Director of the Center of Applied Genomics, Director HLA/Immunogenetics & Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, and Research Scientist at Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland. In addition to her work in clinical genetic medicine, she has a robust research program that is supported by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Trachtenberg’s research focuses on the genes involved in immune regulation and their role in stem cell transplantation, cancer, autoimmune and infectious disease in humans. Dr. Trachtenberg has been at Children’s Hospital Oakland for over 14 years, and has published >30 manuscripts. She completed a double major in studio art and biology from UC Berkeley, and MS and PHD degrees in biomedical sciences & molecular genetics from the U Hawaii School of Medicine, O’ahu. In her off time Beth wallows in the joys of her children (Mia, BMS 2009; Samuel TBS 2015) and husband, David, and enjoys a large group of additional family and good friends. Beth says that when her children are older, she will start to paint seriously again!
Peggy Orenstein
Peggy Orenstein is the author, most recently, of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Waiting for Daisy. Her previous books include Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love and Life in a Half-Changed World, and the best-selling SchoolGirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap. A Contributing Writer for The New York Times Magazine, she has also written for such publications as The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Vogue, Discover, More, Mother Jones, O: The Oprah Magazine, and The New Yorker, and has broadcast commentaries on NPR’s All Things Considered. Her new book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, will be published by HarperCollins in November, 2010.
Stuart Sands
Stuart Sands, father of Khoa Sands, a Kindergarten student in Blackberry Creek, has enjoyed extensive travel in South and SouthEast Asia and East, Central, and Southern Africa among other destinations. He has crossed the Himalayas twice on solo efforts and trekked to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. He has been charged by a silverback gorilla and has spent the night deep in the Ituri forest camping with pygmies until everyone fell asleep around the campfire. Additionally, he has been a musician for 40 years, playing in a wide variety of bands that few have ever heard of and even fewer enjoyed, but was broadcast in Berlin the night the wall came down. His third date with his future wife, Ann Kim, took place in Bhutan and lasted for three weeks and included drinks with the Princess. He works in the technology field as an Enterprise Architect, responsible for the design of complex computer-human systems. He created a set of two glowing, pulsing, conversing brains for the Burning Man festival.
Matt Taeker and Wilma Wyss
An urban designer working for the Planning Department for the city of Berkeley, Matt is an expert on environmentally sustainable urban design.
Wilma Wyss is a graphic designer and sculptor. She has been a freelance print designer for over twenty years. Lately she’s branched out into 3-D art, which has different challenges. She feels passionate about color and pattern. Samples of her work are on her website.
Their son Joseph is a seventh grader and he has been at TBS since fourth grade. Joseph has two older brothers. The family is rounded out with our dog and nine pet chickens.
Cecilia Echeverría
Cecilia Echeverría is a professional philanthropod. Unlike a philanthropist that uses his or her own resources for charitable purposes, a philanthropod works with philanthropists, foundations, and/or corporations to undertake charitable work on their behalf. She recently joined the Blue Shield of California Foundation as a Program Officer. In this role she manages a $10 million portfolio of grants focused on strengthening the health care safety net including community clinics, public hospitals and school-based health centers. Before this move, Ceci was with The California Endowment, where she provided strategic direction to The Endowment’s efforts to promote school health, expand public health insurance coverage, and strengthen the health care safety net. Before that she was with the California HealthCare Foundation, where she helped to develop and evaluate programs that leveraged Medicare and Medi-Cal. She also spent a few years in Washington DC as a legislative analyst for the Congressional Research Service, providing expert advice to lawmakers on a wide range of health policy issues.
She is a three-time UC Berkeley graduate, with a BA in Social Welfare (1994), a Masters in Public Policy (1997), and a Masters in Public Health (1997). Ceci and her husband, Tomas Echeverría, live in Berkeley with their children: Sofia (7) in Blackberry Creek and Nicolas (2).
Steve Adams
Steve Adams plays saxophones, flutes, and electronics, and composes music. He’s best known as a member of the Rova Sax Quartet, whom he’s been with for twenty years, and also plays with the Bill Horvitz Band, Matt Small’s Crushing Spiral Ensemble and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, as well as leading his own projects. During the ‘70s and ‘80s he lived in Boston, where he was a member of Your Neighborhood Saxophone Quartet, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic and Composers in Red Sneakers, among others. Steve won a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2000 and teaches at Mills College. (Evan Adams, TBS 2010)
Wil Burns
Dr. Wil Burns is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Law & Policy at the Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California; however, this year he is in residence at Williams College in Wiliamstown, Massachusetts as the Class of 1946 Visiting Distinguished Professor at the Center for Environmental Studies. Additionally, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy and Co-Chair of the International Environmental Law Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association. He is also the former co-chair of the International Environmental Law interest group of the American Society of International Law. Prior to becoming an academic, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs for the State of Wisconsin and worked in the non-governmental sector for twenty years, including as Executive Director of the Pacific Center for International Studies, a think-tank that focused on implementation of international wildlife treaty regimes, including the Convention on Biological Diversity and International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. He has published over 75 articles in law, science, and policy journals and has co-edited four books. His current areas of research focus are: international climate change litigation; adaptation strategies to address climate change; the impact of climate change on small island States, and the effectiveness of international treaty regimes to conserve cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises).
Bernd Sturmfels
Bernd Sturmfels received doctoral degrees in Mathematics in 1987 from the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany. After two postdoctoral years at the Insitute for Mathematics and its Applications, Minneapolis, and the Research Institute for Symbolic Computation, Linz, Austria, he taught at Cornell University, before joining UC Berkeley in 1995, where he is Professor of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science. His honors include a National Young Investigator Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship. Sturmfels served as von Neumann Professor at TU Munich in Summer 2002, and he was a Clay Senior Scholar in 2004. A leading experimentalist among mathematicians, Sturmfels has authored or edited 13 books and about 150 research articles, in the areas of combinatorics, algebraic geometry, symbolic computation and their applications. He currently works on algebraic methods in statistics and computational biology.
Ali Partovi
SVP of Biz Dev, MySpace. Co-founder, iLike. Co-founder, LinkExchange.
Father of Soli Partovi (Laurel Creek), Ali is an entrepreneur and angel investor. His most recent startup, music discovery service iLike, was recently acquired by MySpace after building an audience of over 50 million consumers and providing the leading music applications on Facebook, iGoogle, and the most popular concert listing app for iPhone / iPod Touch. Ali currently serves as head of business development for MySpace. Ali’s first startup, LinkExchange, was acquired by Microsoft in 1998. Ali has also served as a strategic advisor to many other startups including Paypal, Overture, and Tellme. Ali also helps daughter Soli and younger sons Jude and Reza, with their budding business, “Lola’s Eggs,” selling fresh eggs from their backyard chicken coop to neighbors and friends.
Jenny Freeman and Dean Lobovits
Jenny and Dean are marriage therapists who practice in Berkley. In addition they are authors, consultants and presenters in their field. They have contributed to the literature on child and family therapy, especially with their book Playful Approaches to Serious Problems: Narrative Therapy with Children and Their Families.
Catherine MacNeal
Catherine MacNeal is a working stage, television and film. During her years in LA, she appeared on sitcoms (Cheers, Night Court) soaps (Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless), dramas (CSI, Star Trek, Judging Amy) films (Clear and Present Danger, The Muse) a regular role as the mom on 100 DEEDS FOR EDDIE MCDOWD on Nickelodeon and on stage. She has produced plays in Los Angeles, New York and Dublin. She recently completed productions of DOUBT AND WIT at the B Street Theatre in Sacramento and hopes to be on more Bay Area stages. Her last TV work was on the pilot for Parenthood. In 2002, she co-founded Cambodia Tomorrow to offer educational opportunities to children living in orphanages in Cambodia. The organization provides English and computer training for 100 children and has granted seven university scholarships.
Gunnar and Marcella Madsen
Gunnar Madsen is a composer, writer, actor, singer, director and gadfly. He’s written for the Minnesota Opera, Lincoln Center, Universal Pictures and National Public Radio; he has performed on The Tonight Show, the Smothers Brothers Show, PBS, BBC, and major stages in North America and Europe; he’s won nominations for a Grammy, a Bammy, and an Izzy, and awards from ASCAP, the LA Weekly, the LA Drama Critics Circle, the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, and UC Berkeley. He founded the internationally acclaimed acapella group The Bobs, and for ten years was a driving creative force in their success. His family CDs, “Old Mr. Mackle Hackle”, “Ants in My Pants!” and “I’m Growing” have won virtually every major award for children’s music. He provided the singing voice for the portrayal of Sammy Davis Jr. in the film “the Rat Pack”, and his ravishing waltzes are featured throughout the 2nd season of HBO’s “Sex and the City”. He co-wrote the award-winning hit musical “The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World”, which the NYTimes called “awe-inspiring”. His documentary film about an organic farming community for mentally disabled people in Russia was an official selection of the Ojai International Film Festival. His picture book, “Old Mr. Mackle Hackle” (Little, Brown & Co.), is called “ebullient” by the Horn Book, and he and his music are in the Vince Vaughan/Jennifer Aniston film “The Break-Up”.
Marcella Madsen, along with her mother Judith Gilman, owns the renowned shopping destination Nest, at 2300 Fillmore Street in San Francisco. Lucky magazine says “If we had to give top honors to one home décor store in San Francisco, Nest would be it.” Living, Etc. (style magazine from the UK) named it one of “The 50 hottest interiors shops in the world”. And Frommer’s writes: “Don’t come into Fillmore’s cutest French interiors store without your credit cards. Nest carries adorable throws, handmade quilts, must-have slippers and sleepwear, and a number of other things you never knew you needed until now.” Gunnar and Marcella’s son Quinn is a student in Temescal Creek.
Joshua Newman
Josh Newman is the Founder, President & CEO of EdTec Inc., a company that provides financial management services for some fifty public Charter Schools serving over seven thousand students. He started his career as an educational policy analyst for the California Post- Secondary Education Commission and then worked as a staff member in the California Legislature.
Josh also is the proud father of two adopted children. “I heard one being born through the delivery room door, and I was in the room helping with the second. What a gift!” he said. Josh’s wife, Martha started a charter school serving high school drop-outs in Oakland. “Martha and I are deeply involved in the education world. We are happily at TBS because we know it is the best place for our kids to thrive academically as well as socially and emotionally. We also appreciate the community of caring parents that we are coming to know at the school.”
After earning an MBA in 1986 at Harvard Business School, Josh worked in industry for a dozen years, first as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and then as a senior executive in venture-backed high technology companies. He served, for example, as the founder and CEO of Petstore.com. Josh is an Industry Fellow at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley. He co-teaches a course in Organizational Leadership to undergraduates. Josh and his family recently returned from a one-year sabbatical in Argentina where they studied Spanish, hiked in the Andes and spent time together as a family. Josh was also fortunate to travel to Antarctica on a scientific ship with his father.
David Hochschild and Cynthia Li
David Hochschild has worked in the solar energy field for ten years and is currently with Solaria, a solar manufacturer headquartered in Fremont that has developed a new low-cost solar panel. He is co-founder of The Vote Solar Initiative, a national solar energy advocacy and policy group. He was appointed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to serve as a San Francisco Public Utilities Commissioner. In addition, he is beekeeper, a basketball player, and avid 49ers fan. He was born and raised in the SF Bay Area.
Cynthia Li is an internist at San Francisco General Hospital where she works in the Urgent Care Clinic and teaches UCSF residents. In addition to working with underserved populations, her professional interests focus on environmental health and alternative and complementary medicine. Her work has included volunteering with Doctors Without Borders in China and doing advocacy work in regulating harmful chemicals. Her other interests include Latin jazz piano, gardening, and backyard chickens. She is from Austin, TX, and is fluent in Mandarin. David and Cynthia’s daughter, Rosa Hochschild, is a student in Eugenia classroom.
Linda Press Wulf
Linda Press Wulf left South Africa when she was 21 and lived in Toronto, Tokyo, Jerusalem, and San Francisco. For the past 20 years, she has been happily settled in Berkeley and lives with her husband, Stanley Wulf; their two teenage sons; the Favorite Son, a golden retriever; Bunbun, a rescue rabbit; Millie the Chicken, who used to live behind Wildcat classroom; approximately 20 goldfish; and a life-size stone lion. She spent several years writing her first book of historical fiction, intended for 10-13 year olds, and then she spent even more years finding an agent (eventually three, to be precise) who in turn could find a publisher. In 2006 “The Night of the Burning: Devorah’s Story” was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the U.S. and then by Bloomsbury in the UK. It is a fictionalized account of the dramatic childhood in the 1920s of her late mother-in-law, a woman she never met. Her next book will come out in 2010, based on a detail of history that has interested her since she heard a brief mention in elementary school: the Children’s Crusade of 1212. She is now working on her first adult novel, set in South Africa in the 1960s, and trying her hand at a film script revolving around the Shattuck Avenue cafe where she and her writing partner, TBS Parents Association co-chair Hyungsook Kim, write together in companionable silence. Her son Yoni, now in 7th grade at TBS, has been at the school since part way through 1st grade. He does not share his mother’s love of writing, reading, and gardening, but he loves robotics and anything fronted by a screen.
Steven Okazaki
Independent filmmaker Steven Okazaki makes ultra-serious documentaries about genocide, nuclear war and drug addiction, but he is also capable of lighter moments, evidenced in his films about the Minnesota State Fair and Tokyo’s art scene. He is a four-time Academy Award nominee (1985, 1990, 2005, 2008). His films for HBO and PBS, include the Oscar and Peabody winner Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo, the Primetime Emmy winner White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the recent Oscar nominated The Conscience of Nhem En. He works out of the Saul Zaentz Media Center in Berkeley. Clips from his films can be seen at farfilm.com.
