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meet our BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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TRACY LEMMON
President
Tracy has been a certified mediator since 1992. Tracy has taught several mediation classes, including “Effective Strategies for Lawyers in Mediation” and "Handling Third Parties in Mediations." Tracy regularly teaches at Community Boards' Basics of Mediation and Advanced Mediation trainings. Tracy serves pro bono as a panel mediator for the San Francisco District Court, San Francisco Superior Court, and San Francisco Bar Association, directing 100% of her fees to Community Boards.
Tracy is House Counsel in Chubb’s San Francisco office of Bragg & Kuluva. She has extensive litigation experience both representing employees and defending employers in employment-related disputes, as well as general and insurance coverage litigation. Prior to joining Chubb, Tracy worked as an associate at prominent San Francisco and Los Angeles law firms, including Howrey & Simon and Morgenstein & Jubilirer. Tracy earned her JD at UCLA School of Law in 1997 and her BA at Duke University in 1994.
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PAULA LAWHON
Secretary
Paula works as a family law mediator and collaborative attorney in San Francisco. She has been practicing law for nine years, mediating for four. She received her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, graduating as a Public Interest Scholar and with a Public Interest Concentration. Paula serves as a Settlement Conference Master for the San Francisco Unified Family Court and is a panel mediator for the Mediation Services of the Bar Association of San Francisco, Community Boards and for the City and County of San Francisco's Office of Citizen Complaints. She is a volunteer family law attorney with the Bar Association of San Francisco's Volunteer Legal Services Program and a volunteer arbitrator for the California State Bar and the San Francisco Bar Association to resolve fee disputes between attorneys and clients.
"I decided to join the Community Boards Board of Directors after completing the recent Basics of Mediation-my third 40-hour mediation course. I was so inspired by the engaging trainers with their passion for conflict resolution, as well as the philosophy of the organization, that I couldn't resist becoming more involved. Because I believe so strongly in the role of peaceful (non-litigious) conflict resolution in the community, I joined the Board to help increase the community's awareness of the services provided by this fantastic organization. My personal goals include improving outreach, developing new training programs and serving as one more passionate trainer who believes in the Community Boards' model and philosophy of conflict resolution."
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CATHERINE ROTH
Catherine is a senior executive with 25 years of successful experience starting and building visionary healthcare software companies. Her experience spans general management, strategy, sales, product management, and business development. She founded and was CEO of Topline Solutions, which she sold in 2008 to NaviNet, Inc., a medical provider portal company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is currently Executive Vice President of Health Education Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nelnet, Inc.
In addition to her board position with Community Boards, Catherine is a trustee of Freedom From Hunger, a pioneer and leader in micro-credit with education programs in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. She lives in Oakland, California.
Catherine served as Board President from 2006-09.
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ODILLA SIDIME
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MARION STANDISH
Marion works as director of Healthy Environments for The California Endowment. As director, she leads the foundation’s efforts to develop initiatives to address the health disparities and environmental factors that contribute to the poor health of underserved communities. Currently these initiatives include: Healthy Eating Active Communities, which supports community coalitions to develop and implement policies and programs to reduce obesity; Community Action To Fight Asthma, which focuses on reducing environmental triggers for asthma among school-aged children; and, The Partnership for the Public’s Health, a five-year program designed to build strong, effective partnerships between local public health departments and the communities they serve. She also designed The Endowment’s California Works for Better Health, a partnership project with The Rockefeller Foundation, to build the capacity of community-based organizations to improve neighborhood health status through regional employment strategies.
Marion was founder and director of California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA), a statewide nutrition and health research and advocacy organization focusing on access to nutritious food for low-income families. Before launching CFPA, she served as director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a statewide advocacy organization focusing on health, education and labor issues facing farmworkers and the rural poor. She was appointed by California’s Chief Justice to the Judicial Council’s Legal Services Trust Fund Commission and by Mayor Gavin Newsom to San Francisco’s Children Youth and Families Commission.
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FRED D. BUTLER, Esq.
Fred is a full-time arbitrator and mediator of disputes, as well as a licensed attorney with over sixteen year’s experience representing parties before civil matters and in administrative courts in employment and insurance matters. Mr. Butler also served as executive director of a municipal housing authority, an associate in two major law firms and senior legal counsel at the California Department of Insurance. His current practice is devoted entirely to Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). He has trained internal mediators for several large organizations and has written several articles on mediation techniques and ADR policy matters.
In addition, Mr. Butler also serves as volunteer for a number of organizations. He is a past co-chair of the Bar Association of San Francisco Arbitration Committee; past president of the Board of Trustees of the Mediation Society; past president of the Northern California Mediation Association (NCA); a former appointed member of the California State Bar ADR Committee and Northern California SPIDR (now ADR-NC); past chair of the Board of Directors of Community Boards, San Francisco; pro-bono hearing officer and mediator for the San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints and a volunteer mediator for the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center in San Mateo, CA. He is also the past president of the Hastings College of the Law Alumni Association.
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KATHLEEN COOGAN
Kathleen works as a conflict resolution practitioner in the international development field. She is the chairperson of the Association for Conflict Resolution’s International Section and previously founding chairperson of the Section’s International Development Committee. She is currently based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She serves as a Board member, mediator, trainer and coach for Community Boards, San Francisco. Previously, she worked as a project director in the International Programs Division of the National Center for State Courts, and has completed several overseas assignments for American Bar Association international programs.
Kathleen honed her conflict resolution skills while serving as legislative counsel to the Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the US Senate, in which capacity she helped broker successful compromises on several politically-sensitive issues. She has taught university and graduate-level courses in the United States and abroad, including community organizing and law and policy courses with alternative dispute resolution components. She has served as a litigation attorney for Sidley & Austin in Chicago and as a counselor at Chrysalis Shelter for victims of domestic violence in Phoenix. Her work has brought her to twenty countries.
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DAVID KIRP
David Kirp is a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. A former newspaper editor as well as an academic, his interests range widely across social policy. Throughout his career, he has written about the biggest issues of the day—gender, race, education, affirmative action, housing and AIDS among them--linking careful analysis with narratives that signify beyond their particulars. Much of his work addresses the question of justice, not as theory but in practice, as well as the contours of community.
As acting dean of the Goldman School in the late 1990s, and earlier as a trustee of Amherst College, his alma mater, he saw how colleges and universities are being run. Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education, published in 2003 by Harvard University Press, offers an engrossing account of the power of the market in shaping university ethos and policy. The book was praised in publications ranging from the New York Times and the New York Review of Books to the Journal of Policy and Management and the Review of Economic Literature. It received the 2005 “best book” award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. His latest book, The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First Politics, published in 2007 by Harvard University Press, won the 2007 Association of American Publishers Award for Excellence in the Education category and was named a San Francisco Chronicle notable book for 2007.
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BILL HAFFERTY
Bill is president of Saber Publishing, Inc. whose instructional, multilingual booklets on career guidance, financial literacy, entrepreneurship and a host of other topics are part of the curricula in schools, colleges, Job Corps Centers and social service programs throughout the U.S. Bill has a long history of active community involvement in Santa Cruz County organizations. Among them, Bill chaired the Santa Cruz County Drug Abuse Commission, Child Abuse Prevention Council, Your Future Is Our Business, Monterey Bay Regional Business-Education Partnership and, most notably, the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union, the nation's third largest community development credit union.
"When I moved to San Francisco four years ago I wanted to continue my civic involvement and be part of a non-profit organization that not only provided immediate situational assistance, but ideally offered ongoing tools people could use to make their lives better and more manageable. Community Boards has it all! I'm delighted to be member of the Board. My goal is simply to get the word out and explore new ways for us to contribute and partner with SF’s many communities.”
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EILEEN HANSEN
Eileen was trained as a community and labor mediator in Boston. She helped initiate the joint community mediation program sponsored by the Boston Mayor’s Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Public Protection Bureau. She then served as a mediator and trainer with San Francisco Community Boards for ten years.
Eileen holds a degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco, and has been an Organization Development Consultant and Executive Coach for nearly ten years. She specializes in organizational sustainability – helping nonprofits maintain an alignment of values, vision, and purpose with organizational integrity – and guides them to work better so they can realize the ideals that inspired their creation. Grounded in a history of community organizing, and positioning organization development within the context of social change, Eileen partners with individuals and organizations building communities, confronting systemic injustice, and transforming societal structures.
Long involved in local, state, national, and international politics and public policy, Eileen currently serves the City of San Francisco as a Commissioner on the San Francisco Ethics Commission.
“Community Boards is an inspirational model for building community and developing peaceable urban environments. I am honored to serve on the Advisory Board as Community Boards continues its ground-breaking and vital work for our City and indeed, for our global community.”
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JOSEPH RAGAZZO
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DONNA SALAZAR
Donna brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our Advisory Board. She has worked as a small business operator and restaurateur, realtor and attorney. Donna began practicing mediation since 1994. Currently she is a panelist for the San Francisco Superior Court, the San Mateo Multi-Option Dispute Resolution Program, the First District Court of Appeals, the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Attorney Client Fee Dispute Program.
Donna became a Community Boards mediator in 1997 and joined the staff in 1999 serving in numerous capacities, most recently as Director of Specialized Services. In 2007, Donna joined the staff of the Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC) as an attorney managing their Mediation Program. The OCC investigates and mediates complaints against sworn members of the SFPD. Through her endeavors, the numbers of successful mediations between citizens and police officers have reached their highest numbers on record.
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JULIA SALINAS
Julia worked at the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center (PCRC) as their Public Participation Specialist. At PCRC and as a consultant, Julia designs and facilitates cross-sector collaboration and civic engagement efforts in San Mateo County and beyond. Julia formerly worked at CirclePoint, a Bay Area consulting firm specializing in public involvement for urban planning projects. Julia is originally from Austin, TX, graduated from Oberlin College, and currently lives in the Mission District of San Francisco.
Julia is excited to join the Board, using her expertise and experiences in community engagement to help "re-launch" Community Boards' facilitation programs and services. One of her primary goals is to see Community Boards become known in San Francisco as the primary “go to” organization for resolving complex community-level conflicts, of which there are many.
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RAYMOND SHONHOLTZ
Founder of Community Boards
In 1976, Ray established and served as president of the Community Boards Program, one of the first community and school mediation initiatives that brought conflict resolution skills and processes into neighborhoods and schools throughout the U.S. and internationally. Ray then founded Partners for Democratic Change in 1989, establishing the first of Partners national Centers for Change and Conflict Management. In fall 2008, he served as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C., working on foreign assistance recommendations for the incoming Obama administration.
Ray is educated as a lawyer and has an extensive background in legal practice, education, and policy. He serves on several boards of directors and editorial boards, and has written and lectured extensively on the subject of mediating systems, conflict resolution models, and the positive function of conflict in democratic society.
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TERI SKLAR
Teri currently focuses on mediation of litigated cases and community disputes based on her 30 years of litigation experience. Her mediation style varies with the needs and desires of the parties. Her strengths as a mediator include patience, creativity, energy, persistence, strong people skills and excellent client rapport, based on years of intensive work with challenging clients. She is conversant in Spanish and has multi-cultural sensitivity. She has extensive criminal and civil jury and court trial experience and has practiced in State and Federal Court. After working in the San Francisco Public Defender's Office for six years, including criminal defense and mental health work, she has maintained her own private legal practice in San Francisco.
Beginning in 1994, Teri Sklar began her move to mediation at Stanford Law School and The Center for Mediation in Law. She has continued her mediation training through Pepperdine University (Straus Institute), San Francisco Community Boards, Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center, Bar Association of San Francisco, the U.S. District Court--Northern District of California, the Court of Appeal, First and Third Appellate Districts and the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR). She is a panelist with the U.S. District Court-Northern District of California, California Court of Appeal, First and Third Appellate Districts, Mediation Services of BASF, the Early Settlement Program of BASF, the San Francisco Superior Court's Civil Mediation Panel, the San Francisco Superior Court Pre-Arbitration Settlement Conference Panel, the San Mateo Multi-Option ADR Project and many others.
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SUSIE WYSHAK
A longtime Bay Area resident and experienced Internet marketing professional, Susie Wyshak is helping Community Boards with its efforts to use the Internet to effectively spread the word about its programs. |
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