Board of Directors
Philip Atkinson
Elizabeth Brown, PhD
Roger Chan
James Cioppa
Aaron Heinrich (president)
Nayantara Mehta
Wendy Muse Sinek (vice president)
Gabriela Perez
Amy Smith, JD, PhD
Philip Atkinson is a board member. Mr. Atkinson a San Francisco native and was selected to be a board member through his long standing work and association with Youth Justice Institute and San Francisco Juvenile Hall. He has been a dedicated volunteer with YJI since 2005 and has mentored numerous young men who have taken part in the program. Mr. Atkinson supplements his work at YJI with his annual participation in the summer camp program of Project AVARY (Alternative Ventures for At-Risk Youth), an organization which seeks to empower Bay Area children of incarcerated parents ages 8 to 18 to make smart life choices and stay out of trouble. He holds a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State University in child and adolescent development. Mr. Atkinson has been able to build strong relationships with many of his clients due to his first-hand experience within the juvenile justice system and the credibility which that imparts.
Elizabeth Brown, PhD is a board member. Dr. Brown is an assistant professor at San Francisco State University in the department of criminal justice studies and co-editor of Justice Policy Journal, published by the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice. She holds a PhD in geography with a certificate in law, societies, and justice from the University of Washington, a master’s degree in cultural studies from Claremont Graduate University, and a bachelor of art’s degree in women’s studies from the University of California, Davis. Her research interests examine the cultural and geographical representations of juvenile delinquency and criminality in urban areas and the transition towards mass incarceration. View Dr. Brown's faculty profile here.
Roger Chan is a board member. Mr. Chan is the co-founder and Executive Director of East Bay Children's Law Offices, which is the primary provider of legal representation to youth in the Alameda County Juvenile Dependency Court. Mr. Chan is an experienced trial attorney and advocate for youth in juvenile court as a former public defender in San Francisco and Alameda Counties. He has helped to implement practices that improve the delivery of services to youth in the juvenile court system through collaboration with other government and community agencies, including the San Francisco Task Force on Residential Treatment for Youth in Foster Care and the Interagency Children's Policy Council of Alameda County. Mr. Chan is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Hastings College of the Law. He is an Advisory Board Member of the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center and a member of the National Association for the Counsel of Children and the California Public Defender's Association.
Aaron Heinrich is the board president. Mr. Heinrich is a marketing communications professional with an extensive background in helping organizations achieve brand awareness and leadership by integrating traditional and social media. He has worked with such well-known companies as T-Mobile, Microsoft, FedEx, Amazon and Kodak, as well as small-to-medium sized organizations and start-ups. He holds a masters of fine arts in screenwriting from the University of Southern California, a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism from Arizona State University, and an executive certificate in global brand strategy from Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Nayantara Mehta is a board member. Ms. Mehta is currently Board Secretary with Alliance for Justice in Oakland, CA. She works through Alliance for Justice's Nonprofit Advocacy Project and Foundation Advocacy Initiative to help strengthen the capacity of the public interest community to influence public policy. She has conducted trainings throughout the country on the rules governing advocacy and lobbying by public charities and private foundations. She is also on the board of the American Constitution Society Bay Area lawyer chapter. Ms. Mehta holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), a master's degree from the University of Chicago, and a bachelor's degree from the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
Wendy Muse Sinek is the board vice president. Ms. Sinek is a consultant specializing in business process management and strategic planning. She enjoys the challenge of helping organizations find solutions to their most pressing problems in a way that capitalizes on their existing strengths and resources. Her particular skills include designing and running focus groups, meeting facilitation, survey development, and qualitative interviewing.
Recently, she has applied her experience working with large organizations--including SBC Communications (now AT&T), Kaiser Permanente and UC Berkeley--to offer planning and evaluation services to small community-based groups within the slums of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The challenges these community groups face are, in some ways, no different from those faced by organizations anywhere. They struggle to do more with less, they want to understand what works and what doesn't, and they want to use their resources most effectively. However, strategic planning guidance is often beyond their financial reach. For this reason, Ms. Sinek is committed to helping grassroots community organizations access strategic planning and evaluation tools in order to achieve long-lasting social change.
Ms. Sinek is currently a Visiting Professor in the National Security Affairs department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, as well as an Instructor at UC-Berkeley Extension. She holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from Mercer University in Macon, GA, a master's degree in international public policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, CA, and is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at UC Berkeley. In addition to English, she is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish.
Gabriela Perez is a board member. Ms. Perez has worked in the nonprofit sector with at-risk youth since 2008. She currently works at Larkin Street Youth Services as a bilingual residential mental health counselor for runaway and homeless youth. Through her work, Ms. Perez has been able to refer youth to services that meet their needs and move them through the agency’s continuum of services in order to take them off the streets for good. Ms. Perez has a background in case management for youth who suffer from mental health illness and sexual exploitation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in criminal justice from San Francisco State University, and is currently pursuing her master's in counseling with an emphasis on marriage and family therapy. Ms. Perez became involved with YJI in 2008 when she became a mentor for incarcerated youth.
Amy Smith, JD, PhD is a board member. Dr. Smith is an assistant professor at San Francisco State University in the psychology department. She holds a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a bachelor’s degree in classics and psychology from Grinnell College. Her research explores issues relating to capital punishment, the impacts of incarceration, legal decision-making, and the intersections of psychology and law generally.