Advisory Board
Lateefah Baxter
Lateefah is Senior Global Marketing Manager with Walmart eCommerce. She previously spent nearly a decade leading marketing projects for Gap, Inc., and has also worked at Levi Strauss & Co. and Old Navy. Lateefah attended Boston University, where she majored in International Relations. She and her husband Cameron have a child at SF Day School, as well as a recent graduate.
Lauren Hirshfield Belden
Lauren is a passionate brand expert. She previously served as Senior Director of Strategy at Interbrand San Francisco and the Director of Innovation at Redscout. She later established a freelance career, working with clients like Domino’s, Clorox, FedEx, and many more. Lauren is also co-founder of the Tanzania Love Fund scholarship foundation. She graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College, where she majored in English and Creative Writing. You can probably find her chasing her daughter and son around Belden Barns, a Sonoma Mountain winery and farmstead that she launched in 2014 with her husband Nate.
Maggie Boyle
Maggie has been a nurse for 21 years, 16 of those as a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner. She has primarily worked with underserved populations in Omaha, Seattle and San Francisco, and current serves as a Nurse Navigator with the Breast Health Center at California Pacific Medical Center. Her volunteer work has included, but isn’t limited to, the Nebraska Health System Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, the 45th Street Homeless Youth Program in Seattle, UCSF Advanced Health Practitioner Advisory Board, Youth Speaks, and San Francisco Day School. Maggie’s devotion to nursing and her community connect with the core values of Breakthrough: collaboration, excellence, gratitude, perseverance and responsibility. She earned a BSN from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a MSN from the University of Washington. She has a child attending SF Day School, as well as a recent graduate.
Lucy Chen
Lucy is a Career and Executive Coach. She was previously the Product Lead at Oculus VR for the Rift software platform and is passionate about building the future of work through virtual reality. Her career has spanned across functions such as growth, product management, business strategy, data analytics, finance, investor relations, and brand marketing as well as industries across tech (Facebook, LinkedIn), finance (Bank of America Merrill Lynch), professional services (Gap International consulting), and consumer packaged goods (Procter & Gamble). Lucy graduated with a B.A. in Global Affairs from Yale University.
Cathy Dean
Cathy has 15 years of experience in financial services, industrial manufacturing, and high technology businesses. She serves on the Board of Gateway High School, which she previously chaired, and has been actively involved with the Brown Club of Northern California and the Junior League of San Francisco. Cathy holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She and her husband, Sandy, have three graduates from SF Day School.
John Dent
John is a Customer, Sales & Operations executive with 20+ years experience in results-oriented SaaS technology companies. John serves on the board of the Caneel Family Foundation which was created to support initiatives across education and healthcare. He holds a BA in English Literature from St. Lawrence University. John lives in San Francisco with his wife Lane, and two children who attend or recently graduated from SF Day School.
Onil Gunawardana
Onil is a Google product manager deeply interested in equitable access to education. He grew up in Sri Lanka and was fortunate to have received scholarships for a BS in Electrical Engineering from Yale, a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 1997 he co-founded Inspire, a nonprofit that provides strategic consulting to leaders of educational organizations. He has served on the Inspire board since 2002. He is also involved in several non-profits that offer academic scholarships in Sri Lanka.
Charles Hauck
Charles has over 20 years of management experience in the software, Internet, and real estate sectors, including start-up and Fortune 500 firms. He spent much of his earlier professional career at Microsoft in product and business management roles, including international roles in one of Microsoft’s global consumer businesses. He became involved with Breakthrough SF as a tutor in 2017 and believes strongly in the importance of excellent educational opportunities for everyone. He is a graduate of Stanford University with majors in History and Economics and earned an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
Darren Hwee
Darren is the Senior Director of Pharmacology at Cytokinetics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of new medicines for cardiovascular and skeletal muscle diseases. He was introduced to Breakthrough through Cytokinetics’ outreach initiatives to support school and non-profit organizational programs that help youth from underrepresented groups develop skills to reach their educational and career goals. Darren received a B.S. in Integrative Biology from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology from U.C. Davis.
Palin Liu
Palin is a Corporate Strategy Manager at Charles Schwab, helping to drive the overall retail experience for Schwab customers. His prior experiences spans across tech and financial services, including stints in technology investment banking, equity research and management consulting. Palin earned a B.A in Economics and a Master’s in Finance both from Claremont McKenna College. He volunteers at several organizations supporting underprivileged youth through college readiness programs, as well as sits on the strategy board for Schwab Employees for the Environment.
Aniela Mack
Aniela is a consultant at Bain & Company, a leading management consulting firm, with casework spanning the technology, private equity, and nonprofit spaces. Prior to Bain, Ani worked in impact investing as a Fund Fellow at TPG’s Rise Fund, where she supported projects in the healthcare and education sectors. Ani graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a degree in Economics and Education Studies, and recently earned her MBA at he Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. She was introduced to the Breakthrough SF community when she served as a Teaching Fellow in 2015.
Sonal Naik
Sonal has over 20 years of management consulting experience with several years in the healthcare and life sciences sector. During her time at Deloitte, she has led several projects focused on strategy, transformation, innovation, and operational excellence for Fortune 500 companies. She has a passion for customer experience, human centered design and applying technology to improve experience – which led her to her current role at a boutique consultancy called Navigate. She is a graduate of University of Michigan with a degree in Engineering. She and her husband Promit have a child at SF Day School, as well as a recent graduate.
Courtney Norris
Courtney worked in international development for a decade, serving as a program officer for The Asia Foundation and consultant for the International Rice Research Institute. She has a B.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and a joint M.S. degree in Agricultural Economics and International Agricultural Development from the University of California, Davis. She has co-authored two English-Vietnamese dictionaries and has also translated the work of several Vietnamese authors into English. She is a board member of the non-profit Viet Historical Preservation Foundation, which records oral histories of Vietnamese Americans, and also serves as a mentor for the New Leader Scholarship Program.
Mark Pan
Building culture and education organizations is Mark’s jam. It all started with three summers teaching at Breakthrough Silicon Valley and Hong Kong. He’s now a private HR consultant and Head of People at Kingdom Supercultures. He has also served as VP of People at Section and Director of Business Strategy at Newsela, a differentiated reading site. Prior to Newsela, Mark shaped universities’ online learning strategy as an early employee at Coursera, and taught in Malaysia as a Fulbright Scholar. Mark received his BA (magna cum laude) in urban studies and education from the University of Pennsylvania.
Jenny Pearlman
Jenny is Associate Director of Strategic Partnerships and Policy at Safe & Sound. She was previously a senior staff attorney with Public Advocates, a civil-rights and policy advocacy organization, and has consulted with Glide’s Family, Youth and Childcare Center, among other organizations. She serves on several non-profit boards, including Community Initiatives, Hedge Funds Care, The Little School, and San Francisco Day School. Ms. Pearlman graduated cum laude from Georgetown Law Center and received a degree in International Politics from Georgetown University.
Silpa Pericherla
Silpa is a Managing Director of Global Equities at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, where she focuses on public and private equity investments. Prior to joining the foundation, Silpa held investment roles at Seneca Capital, R6 Capital, and the Carlyle Group. Silpa graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Economics from Yale University. She and her college sweetheart Chris live in San Francisco with their three children.
Aarti Raman
Aarti is Head of Sales Strategy and Operations at Canva. She previously served in leadership roles at Uber and Glassdoor. Over the course of her career she has worked in Finance, Management Consulting and Strategy/Operations across three continents, and speaks fluent French and Spanish. She has a bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, and an M.B.A with honors from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In her free time, she enjoys mentoring high school students, practicing yoga, training on circus apparatus and hiking around the Bay Area.
Marria Rhodriquez
Marria is Vice President and focuses on innovation strategy at Wells Fargo Bank. Marria has worked in Financial Services for nearly 20 years in areas including technology, marketing, strategy, and digital product management. She holds a degree in Technical Communication from the University of Washington and an MBA in Marketing from Golden Gate University. She and her husband, Justin, have a son attending San Francisco Day School.
Josephine Saunders
Josephine has over 25 years of experience as an educator working in schools in the UK, Boston, Washington DC, Maryland and now San Francisco. She is passionate about working and developing educators and has worn many hats over the years. Her previous roles have included preschool to 8th grade teacher, Lower School Director, New Service Teacher Coach, supporting teachers through the BATTI (Bay Area Teacher Training Institute) program as a supervisor, an Equity and Inclusion Coach and currently she is the DEI Director at SF Day School. She and her husband Nick have two children at SF Day School.
Beth Shapiro Schulte
Beth is a partner and equity investor for The Capital Group. Prior to joining Capital in 2003, Beth was an investment banker and served in business development for a number of technology companies. Beth holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor’s degree in romance languages from the University of Pennsylvania. Beth lives in San Francisco with her husband, David Schulte, and their two children.
Amrita Sehgal
Amrita leads Business Development at Brightline, a behavioral health provider for kids. Her background is in healthcare consulting and technology, and she received her MBA in healthcare management from Wharton. Amrita was first introduced to Breakthrough via a non-profit consulting project many years ago, and fell in love with the people and mission! She’s been volunteering with the program ever since and is thrilled to be on the Advisory Board.