The Board of Trustees
Alegria Barclay
Friend of TBS
Alegria Barclay serves as the Director of Social Justice and Equity at the Nueva School. Alegria has a long history of fighting for social change both within schools and the non-profit world. She has taught homeless youth to write poetry, supported rape survivors in their journey towards healing, helped LGBTQ students to feel included, lobbied for more diversity in young adult literature, and currently runs a four-day Equity & Inclusion Institute for prek-12 educators.
Having grown up and taught overseas across four continents, Alegria is a firm believer in both our shared humanity and our richly complex diversity. A queer woman of color, a mother of two, a poet, and an educator, she believes in inspiring others to exercise their radical imagination in building the Beloved Community.
Andy Singer
Originally from Chicago, IL, where he attended the Francis W. Parker School, Andy Singer is a parent of twin boys in 6th grade at TBS and lives with his family in the Rockridge neighborhood in Oakland.
Andy has a BA in Government from Hamilton College and an MBA from the University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business. He has worked in the high-tech industry for more than 25 years, serving in leadership positions in large public companies and venture-backed startups. He is currently the Vice President of Marketing for a cyber security startup company.
Since moving to Oakland in 2007, Andy has served in several volunteer leadership positions. From 2007 to 2009, he served as the District 1 representative to the City of Oakland Budget Advisory Committee. In 2015, when his children entered kindergarten at Chabot Elementary, part of the Oakland Unified School District, he served four years on the Chabot Elementary PTA Board of Directors. Andy served as the Vice-Chair of the Annual Fund campaign from 2015 to 2017 and then as Vice President of Fundraising from 2017 to 2019. From 2020 to 2021, Andy, selected by the Oakland Unified School District Board of Directors, served as the District 1 representative to the Equitable Enrollment Working Group, where he developed recommendations for revising the district’s enrollment policy. Andy joined the TBS Finance Committee in the Fall of 2021.
Bhumi Shah
Bhumi is a leader in governance, risk, compliance (GRC) and information security. She currently serves as Vice President and global head GRC & information security at Ridecell, a technology company she helped start which accelerates digital transformation for global leaders in mobility.
She has held leadership roles in audit and compliance at health-tech leaders nThrive and MedAssets and advised business leaders across various industries at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Bhumi has a master's degree from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, a bachelor's degree in engineering from Gujarat University's Nirma Institute of Technology, and several GRC and security certifications. She also co-founded and directed the Omkar Dance Academy in India.
Bhumi was born in India to a family without exta-ordinary means but with a strong belief in the transformative power of education and art. Bhumi’s college and graduate education, made possible by public funding and scholarships from two of India's largest corporate endowments, taught her the value of both public and private economic support for transformative opportunities in education.
Bhumi started her career tutoring kids on weekends during college. Transformative education helped Bhumi access a career that led to roles leading compliance for large public and private companies. Bhumi and her husband became best friends in high school while leading a successful strike against archaic militaristic treatment of students and eventually started a startup that helps global leaders in mobility accelerate both profitability and sustainability. These experiences taught Bhumi that positive change in society can be achieved through constructive, persistent, and creative engagement of different kinds. Bhumi is also a TBS parenting adult (Blackberry).
Carol Starks
Originally from the Chicago Area, Carol has been living and working in the Bay Area since 2008. She completed her undergraduate studies at Indiana University in Clinical Laboratory Studies and completed graduate studies from Rosalind Franklin School of Medicine and Science in both Healthcare Management and Clinical Laboratory Sciences with a focus in Transfusion Medicine.
She has 35 years experience in laboratory medicine, and 20 years in medical education holding positions as department director, clinical rotation coordinator, and part time lecturer.
Carol has also worked as an evaluator and application review committee member for the Accreditation Bureau of Health Education Schools for 20 years. Currently Carol is employed by Kaiser Permanente as the Assistant Laboratory Administrative Director, Laboratory Quality and Compliance at the Oakland campus. She recently gained Fellow status in 2019 with the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Emily Becerra Sigel
What Matters in Education is:
nurturing a child’s understanding of the world through exploration and self-expression.
Free Gary
Free began his career in education over 20 years ago in Richmond, Virginia where he taught both Math and English at multiple public middle and high schools in the area. Upon his transition to independent schools he has taken on a number of roles, including Admissions Associate, Director of Student Activities, English Teacher, Assistant Athletic Director, and Associate Director of Admissions. He has coached Boys’ Basketball, Track and Field, and Girls’ Tennis as well. Free is currently the Director of Admissions at De La Salle High School.
Originally from New York, his career path has guided him from Fairfax County, Virginia, to Tokyo, Japan with stops in Maryland, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Concord, California. Free received his Masters Degree in Independent School and Nonprofit Leadership from the Klingenstein Center, Teachers College at Columbia University. His undergraduate studies were at the University of Maine, Orono, where he played wide receiver and was a founding member of the Student Heritage Alliance Center. He is currently the co-chair of the Vanguard Conference for young Black men and their families in independent schools in the Bay Area. An avid basketball player, Free enjoys playing at San Quentin State Prison where he has used the game to build lifelong relationships and make a greater impact in the community.
Jessica Boualavong
Jessica is first and foremost an educator. With over 13 years of experience in the classroom, she is the current Lower School Science, STEM, and Technology Integration teacher at Town School for Boys. Here, she built the kindergarten through 4th-grade science curriculum, exceeding the Next Generation Science Standards by including engineering and technology benchmarks. The curriculum also benefited through her graduate school work where she is endorsed in STEM Leadership by NASA. She earned her Master of Curriculum and Instruction from Adams State University, and her B.S. in Neurobiology and Physiology from the University of Maryland, College Park. At Town, Jessica serves on the Learning Leadership Committee. Following the practices of Elena Aguilar, she is a mentor to new teachers, coaches a small group of educators using the Collaborative Inquiry strategy, and co-led full faculty workshops.
To further quench her curiosity, Jessica also serves on several committees for the California Academy of Sciences. She is a committee member of the Cal Academy’s DEIA initiative. Here she is creating programming for a DEIA training series for the network of 800+ volunteers working with Cal Academy. She is an Ambassador on the Hive Advisory Council, where she assists in membership recruitment, fundraising, marketing, and event planning. She helped lead the successful peer-to-peer fundraising campaign for Claude, the albino alligator’s updated heated rock. She also helped plan Cal Academy exclusive events including a wildflower hike in Point Reyes, a history walk and talk Lands End, stargazing at Sonoma observatory, Outside Lands engagements, and the annual Party After Dark. Several times a month, you may find her in the orange vest as she is a docent-in-training on the museum floor or leading groups on a hike for a BioBlitz with iNaturalist to document plants, animals, and insects for California Biodiversity Day or the City Nature Challenge.
Since 2016, Jessica has been selected by NAIS to be a Host and Convener for the Asian American Pacific Islander Affinity group for their People of Color Conference. She identifies Lao with Chinese ancestry and is the daughter of refugees. Annually, she and her team create and lead 3-day professional development workshops for 500+ members of the AAPI affinity group. This is a collaborative effort as leaders from all affinity groups meet monthly to understand the goals of that year’s conference, discuss national and local events affecting independent schools, and find ways to support the needs of all affinity groups. Through this process, she has engaged in year-long cohorts to mentor and coach new teachers and build a community for teachers who may feel alone as AAPI in their school communities. When not at POCC, she continues her journey of personal growth and support by attending SEED with a multi-school cohort at San Francisco Day School.
Jesica lives in downtown San Francisco with her two cats (Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace) and husband Adrian, founder of the legal aid non-profit Open Door Legal. Here she enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons, knitting a wardrobe of sweaters, testing new gadgets, traveling, and enjoying boba.
Kate Ai Le
Katherine brings experience working with Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations to
implement change through cross-functional teams. A parent of two kids, she has been part of
the TBS community since 2012, supporting both the Early Childhood and K-8 campuses.
Currently she serves on the Equity & Inclusion Advisory Committee and the Strategic Planning
Task Force, bringing her knowledge of DEIB practices and change leadership to the Board.
Katherine has a BA in Psychology and Business Administration and is working toward a Master
of Science in Organization Development at Pepperdine University.
What Matters in Education is:
Developing critical thinkers and compassionate lifelong learners to engage our world in
transformational change toward a sustainable, equitable, and mutually beneficial future.
Lisa Haney
Lisa Haney stepped into her dream job as Executive Director of CATDC in July of 2017. A lifelong educator of youth and adults, Lisa believes deeply in the transformative power of education. She began her career focused on international and multicultural education, teaching in Japan, Mexico, and Martinique before landing at the Athenian School in Danville, California. In her 25 years at Athenian she served in many roles, including international program director, literature teacher, and humanities department chair, before becoming dean of faculty development and a member of the leadership team. Beyond Athenian, Lisa has engaged in teacher education through UC Berkeley Extension, as well as the Berkeley and San Francisco Unified School Districts, and was selected for a year-long fellowship by the US State Department in 2006 to support teacher development in Tanzania. Lisa holds a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.A.T. from the School for International Training, Vermont. She will begin a PhD program in Depth Psychology with a focus on Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychologies in the Fall of 2022 at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara.
Samantha Snook
What Matters in Education is:
Empathy and empowerment. Let’s empower our children to feel deeply and lift up others.
Tim Nunes
Where are you based, and where have you lived?
Based in Berkeley, CA. Have lived in several different places across the US (Louisiana, Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, SF.)
What is your relationship to TBS? Do you have kids attending TBS (currently, in the past, or potentially in the future)?Daughter Jaeda is in 7th grade, has been at TBS since ECC.
What are your areas of expertise or fields of study?
Education.
What is your superpower?
Not having any superpowers.
What Matters in Education is:
The details. Good ideas are abundant. How they are brought to life can determine if, and for whom, they work.
The Berkeley School is a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) organization, and the bylaws of the corporation are available upon request. The TBS Board of Trustees is responsible for the long-term growth and prosperity of the school. Its primary role is to set the strategic direction for the school, ensuring its economic stability and financial future. Trustees represent current families, current faculty, alumni families, as well as the broader community. Board members are elected through a formally defined, multi-step process that begins with the Governance Committee.
Board of Trustees Blog
The TBS board maintains a blog to ensure that the school community understands the nature of independent school governance, is familiar with the processes and practices the board follows, and can follow the work that trustees undertake each year.
We hope that reading about the board’s activities will help all community members feel informed about the school’s future and encourage those interested in learning more to connect with us.