Board of Directors
Fred Alexander [bio]
Global Strategic Alliances Financial Innovations Group at PayPal
Jennifer Dulski – Chair [bio]
Global Head of Product Search/Shopping, Product Management at Google
Chris D. Funk [bio]
Superintendent of East Side Union High School District.
Lynda Cannon Greene – Secretary [bio]
Philanthropy and Education Consultant
Shirley Feldman, Ph.D. [bio]
Professor of Psychology (ret.) Stanford University
Susan Hanson [bio]
Philanthropy and Education Consultant
Vlado Herman – Treasurer [bio]
Community Volunteer
Jared Hyatt [bio]
Vice President of Business Development for VideoSurf
Mike Rodenbaugh [bio]
Principal, Rodenbaugh Law
Carla Robbins Silver – Vice-Chair [bio]
Executive Director of the Santa Fe Leadership Center
Tania Wilcox [bio]
Community Volunteer
Fred Alexander
Fred Alexander leads PayPal’s Global Strategic Alliances team within the Financial Innovations group. The group drives the worldwide strategy, business development and new ventures at PayPal. Fred’s role includes developing PayPal’s global alliances, strategy and framework necessary for scale, and building/deploying innovative products and services to be utilized by the Financial Services industries. Before joining PayPal, Fred worked in channel development, product management and e-commerce at Cisco Systems and Hewlett Packard. Throughout all of his roles, he’s developed extensive international business experience, having traveled and worked several years with business partners and customers in Latin America, Middle East, Europe and Africa. Fred also serves as a regional officer in his community service based fraternity, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. One of the main programs the fraternity operates is their young male mentoring program, which helps to prepare and educate inner-city young men for college and life. Fred earned his B.S. in Marketing and Accounting and an M.B.A. in Finance and Strategic Management from the Haas School of Business, at the University of California, Berkeley.
Jennifer Dulski
Jennifer has a long history with Breakthrough. She started as a teacher in the San Francisco program, was a founding teacher at the Louisville, KY site, and was the founder and executive director of the program in Pittsburgh, PA, which is still thriving after nearly 20 years. Jennifer currently chairs the board of Breakthrough Silicon Valley. In addition to her extensive work with Breakthrough, Jennifer leads product management for the global Shopping business at Google. She joined the Google team in 2011 after they acquired The Dealmap, (voted “Top 10 App of 2010” by The Wall Street Journal) where she was the CEO and co-founder. Prior to The Dealmap, Jennifer held a number of executive positions a Yahoo! during her 9 year tenure, including group vice president and general manager of the local and commerce businesses. Jennifer holds a B.A. and an M.B.A. from Cornell University. She lives in Palo Alto with her husband and two daughters.
Chris D. Funk
For over twenty years Chris has served students in Silicon Valley. Since 1994, he has worked in the San Jose Unified School District, the past thirteen years in administration. Chris served five years as Principal at Lincoln High School during which time Lincoln earned awards including 21st Century School of Distinction, the Lighthouse Award, and a California Distinguished School Award. In addition Lincoln earned six-year WASC accreditation, improved its API score by 45 points and closed the achievement gap between Hispanic and Caucasian students by 106 points representing a 40% gap decrease. He was on the team at Lincoln High School when SJUSD became the first district in California to usher in the UC, A-G graduation requirements (in 2000). In 2006, as San Jose Unified’s Director of Human Resources, Chris successfully negotiated successor contracts with all six bargaining units. He served as the Assistant Superintendent, Division of Instruction for San Jose Unified, a position held since 2007. He is now the Superintendent of East Side Union High School District.
Lynda Cannon Greene
Lynda has over thirty-five years experience working in education, philanthropy, non-profits, and business. After classroom teaching and working as a literacy specialist, Lynda developed an expertise in teacher professional development and joined Stanford University as the first director of the Stanford/Schools Collaborative. She has worked in consultation with school districts throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Palo Alto, Millbrae, San Mateo, Mountain View-Los Altos, and Evergreen. Lynda’s consulting clients include corporations: Adobe Systems, Applied Materials, Ask Jeeves, Intel, NVIDIA, Scholastic, and Tribune Education; foundations: Packard, Haas, Walter S. Johnson, and Stuart, and non-profits: The Tech Museum and the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University. A highlight of Lynda’s consulting projects is the design and creation in 2001 of the global Tech Museum Awards, which honors individuals and organizations that are using technology to make the world, safer, healthier, and more just. Two recent examples of Lynda’s corporate philanthropy consulting are Applied Materials’ Education Initiative and Adobe’s signature program Adobe Youth Voices.
Shirley Feldman, Ph.D.
Shirley is an academic psychologist who served as a professor and senior research scientist at Stanford University for more than 37 years. Her area of expertise is Adolescent Development, an age group on which she has conducted extensive research. She has published more than 120 books, monographs and research papers and has broad-based experience in giving talks to educators and parents. She is particularly interested in the transition from Elementary School to Middle School, and how family relationships and culture influence this transition. Her commitment to Breakthrough is longstanding: She undertook a major evaluation of the effectiveness of Summerbridge, the precursor program to Breakthrough, in which she assessed 44 sites and followed the students attending these sites for four years. She also evaluated how teaching at Summerbridge affected the Teachers career choices and their commitment to children from limited opportunity backgrounds. More recently, as a Breakthrough Board member, she evaluates students’ progress during the summer program, and evaluates which aspects of the Breakthrough Program are most effective.
Susan Hanson
Susan Hanson, Ph.D., is a senior researcher at the New Teacher Center and a consultant specializing in qualitative methodology to understand K-12 schools. She recently co-authored a book entitled Mentoring Teachers: Navigating the Real-World Tensions, has published articles and chapters, and presents regularly at conferences. Specializing in the use of qualitative methodology to understand K-12 schools, Dr. Hanson consults for foundations and previously worked at SRI and West Ed. Susan is active in philanthropy and is on the Partner Advisory Board of SV2. She has previously served on the Boards of Reading Partners and the Community School of Music and Arts. She is also an avid tennis player.
Vlado Herman
Vlado Herman was CFO of Yelp from December 2006 through July 2011. Prior to Yelp he held several roles at Yahoo, most recently as Senior Director of Operations Finance for the Search & Marketplace business unit. In addition, Vlado has held finance & accounting roles at Intel Corporation, Ernst & Young LLP and Unocal Corporation. Vlado holds an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and a B.S. in accounting from California State University, Northridge.
Jared Hyatt
Jared Hyatt is Vice President of Business Development for VideoSurf, the leading video discovery engine that allows users to discover and search for videos on any device. Jared leads the company’s strategic partnerships and sales initiatives and has formed alliances with leading media and technology companies including: MTV Networks, WarnerBros, NewsCorp, CBS, Verizon, Facebook, Hulu and more. Prior to VideoSurf, Jared served as Content Acquisition Associate for Google where he worked with major content providers to syndicate their content to Google’s product suite. Jared holds a B.A. in History with a Minor in International Relations Public Policy from Dartmouth College.
Mike Rodenbaugh
Mike Rodenbaugh is founder of Rodenbaugh Law and represents clients in all matters relating to the Domain Name System and DNS abusers’ impact on legitimate business interests. Prior to starting his own law firm in 2007, Mike was Senior Corporate Counsel at Yahoo! Inc. for more than seven years. During that time, Mike was a leader in the Yahoo! Employee Foundation, helping it grow from several dozen to several thousand active Yahoos participating in YEF’s fundraising and other events. Mike served as President of the Foundation during his final two years at Yahoo!, and was a member of its Board of Directors for more than five years. Mike also served as a trustee of the Sunnyvale Political Action Committee (www.sunpac.org) for several years, prior to joining the Board of Breakthrough Silicon Valley.
Carla Robbins Silver
Carla is the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Leadership Center. She has been a career independent school educator, administrator, and student. She has served as the Middle School Division Director and Director of Development at The Children’s School in La Jolla CA, the Director of Summerbridge San Francisco, A Breakthrough Program, English teacher at San Francisco University High School, and teacher and coach at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco and Holland Hall School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Carla attended Manzano Day School and Albuquerque Academy. She holds a B.A. in English from Emory University and an M.A. in Nonprofit Management and Leadership from the University of San Diego. She currently serves on the Board of Breakthrough Silicon Valley. She has worked with a number of nonprofit organizations and schools in areas of strategic planning, governance, development, and marketing and branding.
Tania Wilcox
Tania has devoted her entire professional life to helping students overcome educational inequalities. As a Latina immigrant, as well as the first in her family to graduate from college, she has a clear understanding of the obstacles facing our students. She was the Director of the original Breakthrough site in San Francisco and led in the replication efforts of the Breakthrough model in the early ‘90′s. By the time she left the organization in 1995, the program had been successfully replicated in 25 cities throughout the country. Tania went on to be the executive director of a social service agency for immigrant families, Families in Transition, and of a Spanish immersion pre-school, Nuestra Escuelita. She also supported the founding of Downtown College Prep and its Scholarship Program. Tania has been a consultant, board member, and volunteer for various non-profit agencies serving under-served youth. Currently, Tania serves on the board of Reading Partners, The Breakthrough Collaborative and is an SV2 partner.
