Staff and Board

Hannah Evans
Before joining Mount Tamalpais College, Hannah taught English as a foreign language in elementary and middle schools in Nagasaki, Japan. Hannah previously worked for Mount Tamalpais College between 2015 and 2017, and co-taught a college preparatory English course for the program in 2017. Her experiences working alongside educators and students at Mount Tamalpais College inspired her to explore a career in teaching, and she went on to teach in a variety of educational settings, including ESL classes for adults, children’s day camps, and tutoring centers for teens. Through teaching, she gained a greater understanding of the value of student-centered education and is excited to rejoin the Mount Tamalpais College team in its effort to expand access to high-quality, inclusive education for incarcerated people. Hannah earned her BA from UC Berkeley in Latin American Studies.

Lauren Hall
Before joining the staff at Mount Tamalpais College, Lauren worked for 11 years at a youth literacy and creative writing nonprofit in San Francisco called 826 Valencia, where she held positions in both educational programming and development. For the last four years she served as the director of grants and evaluation.
She earned an interdisciplinary BA in American Studies from Hendrix College, where she received the Hendrix Care Award for her dedication to social justice work. Her writing about women’s leadership and activism in Arkansas was published in the Journal of Social Policy and Lessons from the Field: Organizing in Rural Communities. Lauren supports the important work of the Teacher Salary Project as a board member.

Reed Goertler
Reed has been committed to working in organizations that address the needs of underserved populations throughout his career and takes pride in assisting Mount Tamalpais College in its important mission. In 1998 he began working in 501(c)3 institutions affiliated with UCSF and Stanford University that addressed inequities in alcoholism and addiction, and cancer research and funding. Reed oversaw administration, assuming the positions of chief financial officer, chief operating officer and legal and regulatory affairs officer. His early professional career spans work in the nascent biotech industry in finance and business development. Reed lives in Lafayette with his partner and the youngest of their five children. When not working Reed enjoys kayaking, hiking and is pursuing a master’s degree in counseling psychology in his spare time.

Corey McNeil
Corey has been a student since 2011 and joined the staff of Mount Tamalpais College as a program clerk in 2017. He graduated in 2019. He enjoys studying languages, theology, and history.

David Cowan
David began working for Mount Tamalpais College in May 2009 as the program clerk and is a graduate of the AA program. As the director of operations, David is responsible for ensuring that Mount Tamalpais College is prepared for annual audits and key systems management.
David is a co-founder and former director of reintegration of the Alliance for Change. He serves as director of Bonafide on a volunteer basis and serves on the board of the California Reentry Program. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University with a BA in Criminal Justice Studies.

Makenzie Means
Makenzie brings over seven years of experience in nonprofit fundraising to Mount Tamalpais College. Prior to joining the team, she worked in development operations and management at several organizations around the Bay Area. Most recently, she was director of development operations at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, and many of her previous roles were similarly focused on education and community-building. Makenzie holds a BS in Business Administration from California State University, San Marcos and MA’s in Public Administration and Nonprofit Management from the University of Southern California and Hebrew Union College.

Arthur Jackson
Arthur has been a student with Mount Tamalpais College since 2016 and joined the staff as a clerk in 2019. He served as a teaching assistant for English 99A and currently serves on the student-led academic conference committee. Arthur presented a paper at the 2018 conference at San Quentin, “Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reform: 21st Century Solutions for 20th Century Problems”. Outside of academics, Arthur is training to become a yoga instructor and working to develop a peer mentorship program for incarcerated youth.

Jody Lewen
Jody Lewen is the founder and President of Mount Tamalpais College.
Jody’s involvement dates back to 1999, when she started working as a volunteer. Over the years, she has served as a thought leader in the field of prison education, advocating for the values of high academic quality and inclusivity, as well as serving as a resource to policymakers, practitioners, academics, and the administrations at San Quentin State Prison and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She was the 2006 recipient of the Peter E. Haas Public Service Award from the University of California, Berkeley, and a 2015 recipient of the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award in recognition of her work to support higher education for incarcerated people in California. In 2016, the organization received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.
Jody received her BA from Wesleyan University in Modern European History; her MA from the Freie Universität, Berlin in Comparative Literature and Philosophy; and her PhD in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. Her publications include “Punishing Evil: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on the Spectre of Inmates in the Public Imagination” (in Evil, Truth, and Reconciliation, Rodopi, 2004) and “’So eine Gemeinheit’: On the Use of Irony in Hugo Bettauer’s Die Stadt Ohne Juden” (in Austria and Austrians: Images in World Literature. Stauffenburg Verlag, 2003).

Jared Rothenberg
Before joining Mount Tamalpais College, Jared worked as an educator for The Mosaic Project in Oakland, CA and taught at a bilingual public school in Madrid, Spain. Committed to radically inclusive, student-centered learning, he brings a passion for teaching and learning, program coordination, and nonprofit communications to this role. Jared earned a BA in History and Environmental Studies from Brown University.

David Durand
David is a staunch believer in the notion that everyone deserves a quality education. Since 2004, David has involved himself in professional roles across the U.S. and abroad that aim to provide meaningful education for students whose life experiences moved them away from traditional academic advancement. Before joining Mount Tamalpais College, David supported collegiate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives regionally with the California College Guidance Initiative and nationally with the Posse Foundation. The majority of David’s work experience involved spearheading educational leadership programming within the YouthBuild and John Muir Charter School networks reengaging young people under 25 with their academic pathways. David holds a BA in French from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an MA in Education, Leadership, and Change from Antioch University, Los Angeles.

Wendy Quezada
Prior to joining Mount Tamalpais College, Wendy worked in higher education and nonprofits in the Bay Area. As the first in her family to obtain a college degree, she is passionate about access to quality education for all. In her spare time, she loves taking her two dogs on long hikes, and spending time with her husband and two young daughters. Wendy holds a BA in Anthropology and an MA in Public Administration.

Amy Jamgochian
Amy Jamgochian is the Chief Academic Officer and Accreditation Liaison Officer of Mount Tamalpais College. She received her BA in English from Mills College, her MA in English from Auckland University in New Zealand, and her PhD in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley. She taught in the Rhetoric Department at UC Berkeley for almost 15 years, first as a graduate student and then as a lecturer. As a lecturer in the Rhetoric Department, she ran the pedagogy seminar for graduate student instructors, and taught all levels of courses, with topics ranging from freshman composition to introductory rhetorical theory to hermeneutics. Amy’s research interests include the 19th and 20th century British and American novel, ethics, political theory, and pedagogy.

Sharyl McGrew
Sharyl brings her extensive experience in nonprofit fundraising and higher education administration to the Mount Tamalpais College development team. Prior to joining Mount Tamalpais College, she worked as a grant writing and project management consultant for a range of education and social service clients, raising over $40 million. She also worked for seven years at the WASC Senior College and University Commission, overseeing several key accreditation processes and making policy recommendations related to innovation and change in higher education. From 2009-2016, she taught English and communications classes for Mount Tamalpais College and also volunteered with San Quentin’s Alliance for Change. Sharyl earned a BA in English Literature from UC Santa Cruz and an MS in Community and Regional Development from UC Davis.

Denisse Manrique
Before joining Mount Tamalpais College, Denisse worked as the Development Coordinator for the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco for five years. She has been involved with several organizations, including WashPIRG, La Voz Latina, and Glide. She brings with her a passion for equity and creating community. She graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in Sociology and Philosophy.

Dmitriy Orlov
Dmitriy started taking classes with Mount Tamalpais College in the fall of 2013. Encouraged by the teachers and tutors who volunteered to at San Quentin, Dmitriy wanted to find a way to give back to the program and was hired on as a program clerk 2015, helping to manage supplies and the library inside San Quentin. Prior to his current position as office manager, he served as program assistant coordinating class registration, credit requirement analyses (CRAs), and grades. He is currently taking classes at the local community college and plans to continue his pursuit of a higher education.

Marcus Williams
Marcus Williams is a former student of Mount Tamalpais College and proud to continue his involvement as a returned citizen.

Marvin Mutch
Marvin Mutch is a formerly incarcerated prison reform activist and co-founder of the Men’s Advisory Council, a prisoner advocacy group first established inside San Quentin to represent the collective needs and grievances of California’s prisoners. Mr. Mutch served 41 years of an indeterminate seven year to life sentence for a wrongful conviction suffered in 1975. He was freed in 2016 due wholly to the tireless efforts of Professor Heidi Rummel of the USC Post Conviction Justice Project, Professor Emerita Susan Rutberg from the Golden Gate University Innocence Project, and attorney Michael Snedeker of Snedeker & Short.
After a lifetime of experience in this work, Marvin is now set to apply his deep understanding towards advancing the rights and needs of underserved populations everywhere.
Working with San Quentin students who are eagerly engaging in their education is inspiring and humbling because it demonstrates what is possible when the rehabilitation part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is taken seriously.”
Attorney
Board of Parole Hearings Attorney Panel for San Quentin
Mount Tamalpais College takes the simple proposition that all students deserve a quality education and extends it to those most overlooked. Creating an environment that challenges students to make connections to the world outside the classroom, the program provides space for dynamic conversations, while building students’ confidence in their own abilities.”
Director of College and Career Pathways
Five Keys Schools and Programs
What I love about Mount Tamalpais College is that it increases the number of people in the world who approach life with curiosity, confidence, and ambition, rather than with trepidation, resentment, or helplessness.”
Freelance Education Consultant
Anyone who meets the students of Mount Tamalpais College is inspired by their commitment to using education to improve themselves and their community. They are the leaders of the criminal justice reform movement. Come see for yourself!”
Head of Product Sales and Payments Optimization
Stripe
To instructors at Mount Tamalpais College, it becomes abundantly clear that our incarcerated students have vast potential and deep passion for their education. It is my hope and belief that the college courses offered enable our students to become change-agents for their communities and for our society more broadly.”
Chief Financial Officer
Castlight Health
Mount Tamalpais College changed my life. I have witnessed how education brings hope to the hopeless, a voice to the voiceless and opportunity to those who seek it out.”
Prison University Project Alumnus, Manager of Technology and Program Delivery
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
I am drawn to Mount Tamalpais College because it resists the notion that some of us don’t deserve the transformative power of education and learning. I want nothing more than for our graduates to continue disrupting the status quo in criminal justice from within the walls of San Quentin, and beyond them.”
FUSE Corps Executive Advisor
Office of Mayor Libby Schaaf, City of Oakland
We’ve become adept at throwing certain people away, depriving society of their unique gifts and wisdom. Mount Tamalpais College reaffirms the humanity and incredible potential of hundreds of ‘thrown away’ students.”
Senior Program Specialist
Impact Justice
Mount Tamalpais College students are humbling with their thirst for learning. Society has left so many of them behind, but education is transforming them, helping them to realize their potential!”
Professor of Decision Sciences
San Francisco State University
I’m honored to share in Mount Tamalpais College’s work. I have witnessed our program offering hope and possibility, along with dignity and respect, and often new ideas for incarcerated people.”
Professor of Education (Retired)
I support Mount Tamalpais College because its work is life-affirming, liberatory, and engenders dignity. I’m motivated to see this model expand beyond San Quentin.”
Vice President of Partnerships
Springboard Collaborative
Education opens a path for incarcerated people to move forward to self-respect, opportunity and fulfillment. Beyond that, education is proven to be the single most effective means of reducing recidivism. Thus, Mount Tamalpais College changes lives and is helping to change the world. Who would not support this work?”
Trustee Emeritus
California State University System
Mount Tamalpais College breathes hope into a system where many have unfairly labeled people as hopeless. As someone who has experienced first-hand the negative effects of having a father incarcerated, I know that giving someone the resources and support they need to be successful can make all of the difference.”
Founder and CEO
Leoni Consulting Group LLC
My experience working with graduates of the program has completely changed my perception of the talent, drive, and potential of incarcerated students.”
Senior Director of Finance and Administration
The George Lucas Education Foundation
Timothy White
Dr. Timothy P. White is chancellor of the California State University, one of the largest and most diverse systems of higher education in the United States. As chancellor, White leads a university of 23 campuses and a global community of 479,000 students, 50,000 faculty and staff and more than 3.3 million alumni.
As the seventh chancellor to lead the CSU, White is a champion of inclusive excellence and student success, and a proponent of bringing individualized education to scale through the expansion of proven best practices. The CSU is also positioned as a state and national leader in promoting and protecting federal Title IX rights, environmental sustainability and diversity, which is reflected in the CSU’s diverse campus leadership.
White also leads the CSU as it embarks on an ambitious systemwide plan–Graduation Initiative 2025–to increase graduation rates, decrease time to degree and eliminate achievement gaps for all students by recruiting more faculty, hiring more advisors and student-support staff, providing new tools and adding thousands of more classes over the next decade.
Prior to joining the CSU, White held senior academic and administrative positions at the University of Michigan, Oregon State University, University of Idaho, and at University of California campuses in Berkeley and Riverside.
White deeply believes in and is a product of California’s Master Plan for Higher Education, having pursued his higher education from Diablo Valley Community College, Fresno State, California State University, East Bay and the University of California, Berkeley. Like many CSU students and alumni, White was the first in his family to attend college and earn a degree.
California State University System
David Stiepleman
David Stiepleman is co-President and co-founding partner of Sixth Street Partners, the global finance and investment business with over $47 billion in assets under management. He has been a cross-border corporate lawyer, senior executive, and business builder for over 20 years, starting and running businesses, and representing clients in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Stiepleman received his BA in French and Political Science from Amherst College, and his law degree from Columbia Law School.
Sixth Street Partners
Loni Hancock
Loni Hancock has spent nearly four decades as a forceful advocate for open government, educational reform, environmental protection, economic development, and social justice. Prior to her election to the California State Senate in 2008, she served three terms in the California State Assembly (14th District). She also was the first woman elected mayor of the City of Berkeley (1986-1994), the Executive Director of the Shalan Foundation, and served in both the Carter and Clinton Administrations. From 2008 to 2016, Hancock represented the 9th District in the California State Senate. The 9th District includes the cities of Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Emeryville, El Sobrante, Hercules, Kensington, Oakland, Piedmont, Pinole, Richmond, Rodeo, San Leandro and San Pablo.
California State Assembly
Jennifer Lyons
Jennifer Lyons has more than 25 years of finance and investments, teaching, and education administration experience. Her professional background includes money management, investment banking, equity research, real estate finance and public accounting. She has an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and a BA in Business/Economics from UC Santa Barbara, a teaching credential in Mathematics and a CPA. At UC Berkeley Extension, she served as program director and oversaw curriculum and online course development for the math and statistics courses. She has taught mathematics and finance to high school and adult college learners in a variety of settings and currently teaches an applied finance/MBA prep class at UC Berkeley Extension and a similar course for UC Berkeley’s Academic Talent Development Program (ATDP) for accelerated high school students, where she also serves on the advisory board. She volunteers actively, teaching for Mount Tamalpais College, and co-developed a financial literacy and job skills series of workshops at the prison. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Cal Performances, a judge and mentor for UC Berkeley’s Big Ideas social entrepreneurship competition, and has served as a team liaison for UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Social Sector Solutions program. She is passionate about criminal justice reform and support of the arts. She lives in Berkeley.
UC Berkeley
Scott Kernan
Scott Kernan served as secretary of the California Department of Corrections (CDCR) and Rehabilitation from December 2015 to August 2018 and currently serves as CEO of LEO Technologies. Kernan began his career with CDCR as a correctional officer in 1983 at San Quentin State Prison. He went on to serve as warden at California State Prison-Sacramento and Mule Creek State Prison, and became deputy director of adult institutions in 2006 and chief deputy secretary of adult operations in 2007. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Kernan as undersecretary of operations for CDCR in 2009. After retiring in 2011 and pursuing consultant opportunities, he was called back to public service in 2016 and appointed secretary of CDCR by Governor Jerry Brown. In this role, Secretary Kernan was responsible for more than 200,000 inmates, 69,000 employees, and a $12.5 billion budget. He retired in 2018 and joined LEO Technologies in 2019.
LEO Technologies, former California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary
Jennifer Eberhardt
A social psychologist at Stanford University, Jennifer Eberhardt investigates the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime. Through interdisciplinary collaborations and a wide ranging array of methods—from laboratory studies to novel field experiments—Eberhardt has revealed the startling, and often dispiriting, extent to which racial imagery and judgments suffuse our culture and society, and in particular shape actions and outcomes within the domain of criminal justice.
Jennifer Eberhardt received a BA (1987) from the University of Cincinnati, an MA (1990) and PhD (1993) from Harvard University. From 1995 to 1998 she taught at Yale University in the Departments of Psychology and African and African American Studies. She joined the Stanford faculty in 1998, and is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology and co-director of SPARQ, a university initiative to use social psychological research to address pressing social problems.
Stanford University
Rich Lyons
Rich Lyons was recently appointed chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer for the Berkeley campus. In 2018 he concluded eleven years as dean of Berkeley’s Haas School. His early research was in international finance; recent work explores how leaders drive innovation and set culture. From 2006-08 he was Goldman Sachs’ chief learning officer. Changes at Haas under his deanship include a new building, a suite of dual degrees with STEM fields, and a focus on culture. Haas drove a set of Defining Principles – Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, Beyond Yourself – deeply into admissions and other processes.
Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
Sean Mendy
Sean Mendy is an entrepreneur In residence at Sixth Street Partners and the founder of Concrete Rose Capital, an investment platform closing the financial and social capital gap for underrepresented entrepreneurs. He previously worked to close the opportunity gap for low income students of color in Silicon Valley at the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula (BGCP). At BGCP, he led fundraising initiatives generating $50 million to grow the organization into the largest youth serving education nonprofit in Silicon Valley.
Mendy has additional experience in the technology and philanthropy sectors through roles at Causes and as an advisor to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. He earned his BA from Cornell University, then advanced degrees in education policy and business from Stanford and the University of Southern California. He sits on the Board of Directors of StreetCode Academy, the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, and the University of Southern California’s Masters of Science in Social Entrepreneurship graduate program.
Sixth Street Partners, Founder of Concrete Rose Capital