Foundation advisors bring knowledge, expertise, and experience to the issue areas addressed by Columbia Foundation. They serve in an advisory capacity to the foundation's board of directors and staff through participation on the foundation's program and investment committees as volunteers.

Current advisors include:

Arts and Culture

Frances Phillips

Frances Phillips is Senior Program Officer for Arts and Humanities at the Walter and Elise Haas Fund in San Francisco, and director of the Creative Work Fund, a collaborative funding initiative supporting new works by San Francisco and Alameda county-based artists. Previously, Frances was executive director of Intersection for the Arts – San Francisco’s oldest alternative-arts organization – from 1988 to 1994; director of The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University from 1985 to 1988; and assistant director of The Poetry Center (overseeing California Poets in the Schools) between 1982 and 1985. From 1977 to 1984, she was an associate and partner in Horne, McClatchy & Associates, a public-relations firm that specialized in fundraising for nonprofit organizations.

Tom Price

Tom Price studied economics and history of art at Gonville & Cauis College, Cambridge (UK). He is now an investment banker for Westhouse Securities, based in London. He advises entrepreneurial and growth companies, helping them design and execute strategies for growth, principally using the equity capital markets.

He has a particular specialisation in U.K. media and leisure companies, and has also advised Chinese and Indian enterprises in various sectors in recent years. Companies he has advised range from Bloomsbury Publishing, the publisher of Harry Potter, through online portals and T.V.-production companies, chains of pizza/pasta and dim sum restaurants, to Eros International, the world's largest distributor of Bollywood movies. He sits on various industry committees and regularly speaks at financial seminars and conferences. He maintains an interest and active involvement in design and architecture as well as the performing and visual arts.

Stephen Taylor

After studying literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, Stephen Taylor worked as an assistant director at the Geneva Grand Théâtre, working with directors such as Nicholas Hytner, Matthias Langhoff, and Benno Besson. For over ten years, he has regularly collaborated with Pierre Strosser in Geneva, Strasbourg, Lyon, and Paris. In September 1997, he revived Pierre Strosser’s production of Der Fliegende Holländer at the San Francisco Opera. Since 1998, he has regularly worked with the young singers at the Centre de Formation Lyrique of the Paris Opera, directing semi-stagings of La Traviata, Faust, Werther, Les Pêcheurs de Perles, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Don Pasquale and Roméo et Juliette. He recently directed Idomeneo at the Opéra National de Lyon, and The Rape of Lucretia in Colmar, Mulhouse and Strasbourg, and Don Pasquale in Aix-les-Bains.

Gary Thorne

Gary Thorne studied with Motley Theatre Design (1983-84) after completing fine-art study with Byam Shaw at the School of Fine Art, both in London, U.K. His theatre-design work includes residencies in U.K. repertory theatres, Canada's Stratford Festival Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, along with various productions in the U.K., France, and London, Ontario, Canada, as well as many productions with several London, U.K. drama colleges. He completed an M.A. in Art in Architecture in 1999, which led to various publicly sited temporary and permanent works in London and Gloucester. Since 1997, Gary has been a regular tutor at select London colleges, including Central St. Martins College of Art and Design (now the University of the Arts); Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA); Central School of Speech and Drama; and Motley Theatre Design. Gary is the author of three books for Crowood Press, U.K.: (1) Stage Design: A Practical Guide, (2) Designing Stage Costumes: A Practical Guide, and (3) Technical Drawing for Stage Design. In September 2004, Gary was appointed head of design at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London.

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Food and Farming

Ignacio Chapela

Chapela is a scientist by conviction and aspiring biologist by craft. He is Associate Professor of Microbial Ecology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a Senior Researcher at GenØk, the National Center for Biosafety, Norway. Born as first-generation Mexico Cityan from the mix, common to that country, of indigenous, indigenized and immigrant stocks. Not a science-fiction buff, Ignacio belongs to the group of practicing scientist who find more wonderment in what exists than in what someone can write onto a page. This can create some trouble, since it tends to make people like him acutely sensitive to the loss of diverse biologies, ideologies, imaginations. They are also prone to stare at things beyond polite limits, and to have an affinity for complexity and non-linear storylines, the stuff of real ecology.

Chapela has worked as a biologist at various levels of commitment with a large range of institutions including: indigenous communities in Latin America, public education and public research institutions (in Mexico, Wales, the US, Norway, costa Rica and Venezuela), private industry (in Switzerland), public policy national and multinational bodies (UNDP, Panamerican Health Organization, World Bank), and multiple foundations and think-tanks.

In ecology, he is committed to the synecological approach to story-telling, just as he is committed to the local approach to ecological policy-making. How to perform synecological research on microbes seems to have been his life-long occupation.

Claire Cummings

Claire Cummings is a lawyer and journalist. She was an attorney for the United States Department of Agriculture during the 1980s and then practiced environmental and native land-rights law for over twenty years. She has farmed in California and in Vietnam, where she had an organic farm along the Mekong River in the early 1990s. Claire has served on the board or as general counsel for environmental organizations, including The Cultural Conservancy (which she also founded), Earth Island Institute, The Elmwood Institute, Food First, and the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. As a print and broadcast journalist, she covers stories about the health, environmental, and political implications of how we eat. She has been reporting on agricultural biotechnology for over ten years, including three cover-feature articles for the international environmental journal WorldWatch as well as A Farmer's Guide to GMOs for Farm Aid and The National Family Farm Coalition, and the Environmental Media Service's Reporter's and Editor's Guide to Genetic Engineering in Agriculture. For six years Claire produced and hosted a popular weekly radio show in Northern California, including a news segment called Eater’s Digest. She regularly reports on agriculture and the environment for public television in San Francisco. In 2001, she was awarded a 2001 Food and Society Policy Fellowship, sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation. Her latest book is the critically acclaimed Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, a book that has been compared to Rachel Caron's Silent Spring.

Desmond Jolly

Desmond Jolly was raised on a family farm in Jamaica. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Utah State in 1965, and a master’s degree in economics and a doctorate from the University of Oregon. After teaching experiences at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., and at Harvard University, in 1971, he became an extension specialist in consumer economics at UC Davis. Jolly served on the California Department Food and Agriculture consumer advisory committee and, in 1980, was appointed by Governor Edmund Brown, Jr. to the California State Board of Food and Agriculture, the highest public advisory board on agriculture in the state. Four years later, he was appointed to the California Export Market Incentive Program Advisory Board. In 1995, he was named director of the UC Small Farm Program, which was created by the California Legislature to enhance the viability of small- and moderate-scale agricultural producers by stimulating research and extension education in production systems, marketing, and farm management. The program includes six county-based farm advisors who interact directly with small-scale producers and the Small Farm Workgroup, which pools the research and extension expertise of a wide variety of academic and industry professionals. In 1997, Jolly was appointed Vice Chair of the National Commission on Small Farms by then Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman. The commission conducted hearings around the country to learn about the state of small farming in America and how the USDA was serving needs of this segment of the ag industry. The commission issued a report, “A Time to Act,” in 1998 with 146 recommendations, many of which were accepted and acted upon by the USDA. In 2003, Jolly was a founding member of the Roots of Change Council, (promotes California as the first sustainable-agriculture- and food-system state in the nation) and co-chaired the Council in 2005-2007. Jolly’s distinguished career has been recognized with numerous awards, most recently the “Hero of the Valley” award from the Great Valley Center. Following his retirement, he is continuing his public service work. He currently sits on two boards: the Center for Urban Education on Sustainable Agriculture, which operates the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market in San Francisco and offers educational programs about sustainable agriculture; and California FarmLink, a non-profit organization promoting techniques and information that preserve family farming and farmland conservation in California.

David Mas Masumoto

David Mas Masumoto is an organic peach and grape farmer and the author of Letters to the Valley, A Harvest of Memories (2004). His previous books include Four Seasons in Five Senses, Things Worth Savoring (2003), Harvest Son, Planting Roots in American Soil (1998) and Epitaph For A Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm (1995). A third generation farmer, Masumoto grows certified-organic peaches, nectarines, grapes, and raisins. He works with his family on their organic 80-acre farm south of Fresno, California, and also helps care for his parents who still live on the family farm. Masumoto is currently a columnist for The Fresno Bee and has written for USA Today and The Los Angeles Times. His other books include Silent Strength (1984), Home Bound (1989), and Country Voices, The Oral History of a Japanese American Family Farm Community (1987). He received the James Clavell Japanese-American National Literacy Award in 1986. Epitaph for a Peach won the 1995 Julia Child Cookbook Award in the Literary Food Writing category and was a finalist for the 1996 James Beard Foundation Food Writing Award. It was also received the San Francisco Review of Books Critics' Choice Award 1995-96. A German translation edition of Epitaph for a Peach was published in 1997. Harvest Son won a Commonwealth Club of California silver medal for the California Book Awards in 1999 and was a finalist for the Asian American Writers' Workshop award in New York. In 2002, Masumoto was appointed to the James Irvine Foundation Board of Directors. He also serves on the board of the Campaign for College Opportunity. Previously, he was appointed to the California Council for the Humanities board in 1994, and served as Co-Chair from 1998 to 2001. He wrote, designed, and curated the museum exhibition, "Country Voices, Three Generations of Family Farmers", which appeared at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum (1992), and the Japanese American National Museum (1993) in Los Angeles. He has a bachelors degree in sociology from U.C. Berkeley and a masters degree in community development from U.C. Davis, and attended International University in Tokyo, Japan. Masumoto has been the keynote speaker at many diverse conferences, including International Association of Culinary Professionals, Culinary Institute of America, American Association of Museums, American Institute of Wine and Food, Dance USA, Ag. in the Classroom National Conference, Chamber Music Society of America, Calif. Teachers of English and Japanese-American National Museum. He also was awarded a Breadloaf Writers Conference fellowship in 1996. He has also visited numerous schools, delivering presentations and teaching in classes, and was a writer-in-residence at Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2004. Masumoto won the University of California, Davis “Award of Distinction” from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences in 2003. He was a founding member of California Association of Family Farmers. He has served on the California Tree Fruit Agreement research board and has been a member of the Raisin Advisory Committee research board. Masumoto and his wife, Marcy Masumoto, Ed.D., (50), have two children, Nikiko (20) and Korio (14). They reside in an 90-year-old farmhouse surrounded by their vineyards and orchards just outside of Del Rey, California, which is 20 miles south of Fresno.

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Human Rights

Michael Hennessey

A native of Iowa, Michael Hennessey graduated from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, in 1970 with a B.A. degree in History. That same year, he continued his education by entering the University of San Francisco School of Law. After graduating and becoming a member of the state bar, he accepted an assignment as Legal Counsel to then-Sheriff Richard Hongisto.

In 1975 he founded the San Francisco Jail Project, a legal-assistance program for indigent prisoners with civil legal problems and provided training for law students and new lawyers while offering technical assistance to the Sheriff's Department. He managed the Jail Project until May 1979, when friends in the Department and civic-minded San Franciscans encouraged him to seek election as Sheriff.

Hennessey has served as San Francisco Sheriff for 30 years (retiring 2012). As Sheriff, he has won nationwide recognition for the outstanding success of his recruitment program for women and minorities, including gay men and lesbians. His staff reflects the diversity of San Francisco's population. He has increased employee training more than 500% and has received 15 consecutive annual awards from the state for "Excellence in Training." He is one of the nation's pioneers in establishing "new generation/direct supervision" jails that have proven to be safer and more cost effective than traditional facilities, typically designed around linear cell blocks. Hennessey's pioneering efforts to rehabilitate prisoners include a wide range of prisoner education and substance-abuse-recovery programs such as SISTER, Acupuncture, and G.E.D. classes that emphasize the continuation of school and living chemical-free. Other programs include horticulture, an organic-gardening therapy project, and Tree Corps, which offer ex-offenders employment by planting and caring for trees in major thoroughfares in San Francisco. Most recently Hennessey has worked with victim rights advocates to create Resolve to Stop the Violence (RSVP), an anti-violence curriculum for prisoners who have been convicted of violent crimes. He has been the only sheriff in California who is also a lawyer.

Kevin Jennings

Kevin Jennings is the CEO of Be the Change, a nonprofit that creates national issue-based campaigns on pressing problems in American society. ServiceNation, the first campaign launched from Be the Change, Inc.’s, platform, helped to achieve the strongly bi-partisan Kennedy Serve America Act, the greatest expansion of national service in the country in 60 years. OpportunityNation, the second campaign launched in 2011, promotes thoughtful, practical, and bi-partisan solutions to increase opportunity and economic mobility in America.

From 2009 to 2011 Jennings served as Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education, heading the department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools (OSDFS). In this role, Mr. Jennings led federal efforts to promote the safety, health and well-being of America’s students. Jennings led the Obama Administration’s anti-bullying initiative, which culminated in March 2011 in the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention keynoted by President Obama.

Jennings began his career as a high-school history teacher and coach, first at Moses Brown School in Providence, R.I., from 1985 to 1987, and then at Concord Academy in Concord, Mass., from 1987 to 1995. At Concord, he served as the faculty advisor to the nation’s first Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), leading him in 1990 to found the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a national education organization bringing together lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), and straight teachers, parents, students, and community members who wanted to end anti-LGBT bias in schools. Jennings left teaching in 1995 to build the all-volunteer GLSEN organization into a national force, serving as its founding Executive Director until 2008. Under his leadership, GLSEN programs such as Gay-Straight Alliance, the Day of Silence, and No Name-Calling Week became commonplace in America’s schools. GLSEN’s advocacy was key in passing comprehensive safe schools laws in eleven states, increasing the number of students protected from anti-LGBT discrimination from less than 900,000 in 1993 (less than 2% of the national student body) to 14.3 million by 2008 (nearly 30%).

Jennings became the first member of his family to graduate from college when he received his B.A. Magna Cum Laude in history from Harvard University in 1985. He also holds an M.A. in education from Columbia University’s Teachers College and an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business. He has received the Human and Civil Rights Award of the National Education Association, the Distinguished Service Award of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and the Diversity Leadership Award of the National Association of Independent Schools, and was elected Chief Marshal of the 2010 Harvard Commencement as the member of his class who has had the greatest positive impact on the world since graduating. He is a board member of the Harvard Alumni Association and Union Theological Seminary. He is also board chair for the Tectonic Theater Project, which created The Laramie Project.

Jennings has authored six books, with his latest, Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir, being named a Book of Honor by the American Library Association in 2006. He also helped write and produce the documentary Out of the Past, which won the 1998 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary.

Rod Seymore

Rod Seymore, an attorney, currently works for Levi Straus in the legal department on ethics and compliance. Before joining LS&Co, Rod worked in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office (where his mentor was Kamala Harris) and then with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice as Director of Policy and Planning. In this role, he convened and led a network of multiple departments (human services, police, public health, education), and San Francisco community NGOs working to protect children, to work together to develop new city-wide programs to prevent child sexual abuse. This work was never fully implemented after he left for Levi’s. He continues to have knowledge about CSA prevention, passion for preventing CSA and compassion for the survivors, and an interest in working on this issue as a volunteer.

Seymore received a J.D. from the New England School of Law in 1998 and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Arkansas in 1992. He has also worked in Washington, D.C.: in 1997, as a Government Affairs and Public Policy Fellow for the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD); as a Legislative Fellow in the office of Senator David Pryor in 1992; and for both the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) from 1993-1995.

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Audit Committee

George Vera

George Vera recently retired from the Packard Foundation, where he worked since 1997, as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In Finance and Administration, he was responsible for the investment, accounting and finance, information technology, and facilities (including the Taaffe House), and as the primary staff liaison with the Board of Trustees Finance and Audit Committees and with external service providers including auditors, bankers, and investment managers and consultants. He also supported foundation-wide activities as a management-committee and program-executives team member. Before joining Packard Foundation, Vera was partner at Arthur Andersen. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College and a master's in business administration from Harvard Business School. He is a certified public accountant, Canadian chartered accountant, and certified fraud examiner, and holds the chartered-financial-analyst designation. Vera was appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury to serve a three-year term on the Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities, a committee that provides a venue for public input into critical tax-administration issues. He is a member of the audit committee of the Board of the Northern California Grantmakers, audit-committee chairman and board member of the California Water Service Company, and was former board member, now member, of the Foundation Financial Officers Group.

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Investment Committee

Greg Ostroff

Greg Ostroff, CFA, is a former co-director of Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs, where he had also been head of the firms U.S. Stock Selection Committee, Director of U.S. Equity Research, Director of Asian Investment Research, a consumer-products/services-sector analyst and a development-team member for the Research Select Mutual Fund, and Managing Director of the Investment Fund for the Goldman Sachs Foundation. His prior Wall Street experience includes research positions in equities at Smith Barney and economics at Chase Manhattan Bank. Greg earned a B.A., Summa Cum Laude, in Economics at Rutgers University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He is currently a director/advisor to several Bay Area foundations and non-profits. At home, he is a devoted husband and father of four as well as an avid cyclist and backyard farmer.

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