BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Wendy Horng Brawer, M.P.A. – C.E.O of the Board of Trustees

Director of Advancement and Partnership, Prospect Sierra School, El Cerrito, CA.
Oversee fundraising, community partnerships and outreach, communications, marketing, alumni relations, and special events for K-8 independent school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Wendy held the NAIS Fellowship for Aspiring School Heads 2013-2014 and produced TEDxGoldenGate: Teach Compassion.

 

 

 

Alison Pennington, J.D. – Secretary of the Board of Trustees
Alison holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She was a Staff Attorney, Immigrant Rights Program of the Asian Law Caucus, was a Partner, Arya & Pennington, Full-service immigration law firm. She was also a Staff Attorney, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She was the Executive Director, Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center. She is the Founder, Bay Area Playgroup of gender creative children, 2014. She is also a blogger for Huffington Post on Immigration Issues.

 

 

Danielle Gladd, Trustee of the Board
Danielle comes to enGender with more than twenty-five years experience in the non-profit management arena.
As Executive Director of The First Tee of Southern Nevada (TFTSN), Danielle ran the day-to-day operations for a model chapter that achieved ACE level status five of the six years under her direction. In 2012, after ending her tenure at TFTSN, where she achieved Master Executive Status, Danielle began working as a consultant for non-profits and small businesses. Prior to TFTSN, Danielle was with WestCare Foundation, Inc., a family of non-profit organizations in nine states, Pacific Islands and Puerto Rico, first as a Grant Development Specialist and then Special Projects Officer.
Danielle has a long history of Youth Development and Educational work. In her career, she has gravitated toward programs focused on Youth. Whether working as a summer camp counselor since 1985, her rotation in the Pediatric Burn Center at Tampa General Hospital during her Clinical Chaplaincy Residency, serving as Regional Director of Grant Services for non-profit private schools, managing after school educational and enrichment programs to running TFTSN, she has always understood the importance of providing positive opportunities, mentors and educational programs for children.
In addition to Youth Development, Social Justice work was instilled in Danielle by her family and her faith community. From a young age, fighting the injustices present in not just her Southern city, but being involved with movements both nationally and internationally, was part of her every day life. As a teen, Danielle worked at the Highlander Center as a Camp Counselor and was actively involved in Anti-Racism work being implemented by her Unitarian Universalist Church and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Danielle eventually became a workshop facilitator and dedicated her time to meeting people where they are and helping build bridges.

In every position Danielle has held, whether in employment or volunteer associations, grant writing, fund development and special events have been a major parts of her responsibilities. She has extensive experience with private, municipal, state and federal granting requirements.
Danielle received her Bachelor of Science in Education from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Master of Arts in Religion from Meadville/Lombard Theological School at The University of Chicago and completed her Pastoral Care/Counseling Clinical Residency at Tampa General Hospital focusing on CISD, Pediatrics and end of life transitions.

She is a proud parent, loving daughter, doting sister and loyal friend to others within her community.

 

Karisa Barrow, Psy.D., Trustee of the Board
Dr. Karisa Barrow, a licensed clinical psychologist, is the founder and clinical director of inMind, which provides psychotherapy, assessment, and consultation for adults and children in the Bay Area and surrounding communities. Dr. Barrow also is an adjunct faculty member at The Wright Institute and Argosy University and is in private practice in Oakland and San Francisco, where she specializes in working with gender nonconforming, transgender, and GLBQ adults, children, and their families. Dr. Barrow provides psychoeducation and consultation to lay and professional audiences about the mental health needs for gender nonconforming and transgender children. She authored Psychotherapy with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Clients, which was published in the July 2014 issue of psychotherapy.net. She actively participates in the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, and she also lends her support to the Mind the Gap collaborative in the Bay Area. Currently, she is President-Elect of Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP) and Chair-Elect of Division 1 of California Psychological Association (CPA). She also has served as Past-President for Alameda County Psychological Association (ACPA) and Chair of the Educational Committee for NCSPP.
Dr. Barrow has worked in community mental health since 1996. She provided Case Management with impoverished youth and their children for several years before her doctoral studies. She graduated with a Psy.D. from The Wright Institute in June of 2008. During her scholastic pursuits, she received clinical training at St. Luke’s Hospital, an in-patient psychiatric unit, The Wright Institute Clinic, and the Family Mosaic Project. She provided psychological assessments and individual psychotherapy for children, adolescents, and adults, as well as family and parenting work in the context of the clinic and public school sector at the Ann Martin Center and WestCoast Children’s Clinic.

 

Kathryn Lee, Trustee of the Board
Kathryn Lee is director of RULER for Families at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. RULER is an evidence-based approach to building the skills of emotional intelligence, — and for families — strengthening relationships and the protective factors needed in the home and community to bolster emotional resilience for children. She develops resources for schools to help build a shared language about social and emotional development with parents, leads workshops, coaches school leaders and collaborates with organizations such as GreatSchools, HopeLab, and Ashoka for movement building.
Before her work at Yale University, Kathryn was the director of Innovation, Partnerships, and Service at Prospect Sierra School, where she led the design of a fully integrated K-8 service learning program, along with leading the efforts to instill responsible stewardship and become a green school. In partnership with the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, her projects there included curating a TEDx event in 2011 centered on compassion and education. Kathryn was a dedicated kindergarten and preschool teacher for many years.
Native to California, Kathryn raised her 25-year-old son, Chase, in the Bay Area. She graduated from Raymond-Callison College at the University of the Pacific with a B.A. in Human Development, then attended graduate school at Mills College in Early Childhood Development. In addition to exploring emotions and human potential, Kathryn loves to hike and garden and create beautiful, unusual spaces for living and learning.

Molly Maxwell, Trustee of the Board
Vivienne L’Ecuyer Ming, Ph.D., Trustee of the Board
Vivienne is the Chief Scientist at Gild, leading development of technologies that promote meritocracy in job markets by predicting  talent free of traditional biases. A belief in “maximizing human potential” drives all of Vivienne’s work as a scientist, technologist, and entrepreneur. She co-founded and leads the educational research and technology company Socos, who’s unique cognitive modeling technology unobtrusively supports adaptive and personalized student learning. As a Visiting Scholar at the Redwood Center for Theoretical neuroscience, her research focuses on the emerging fields of neuroprosthetics and augmented cognition. She also contributes her machine learning expertise to projects ranging from diabetes to Google Glass.
Vivienne is also on the board of Our Family Coalition. Previously, she was a member of the board of East Bay PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). She was a fellow at the Center for Mind, Brain and Computation at Stanford University after earning her PhD in Psychology and Computational Neuroscience from Carnegie Mellon University and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition in 2006 and her BS in cognitive neuroscience from UC San Diego in 2000. In 2013, Vivienne was named one of the 10 women to watch in Technology by Inc. magazine and one of the “Most Influential Women in the Bay Area” by the San Francisco Business Times. She and her research have been profiled by the New York Times, Forbes and MarketWatch. She lives in Berkeley with her wife, Norma and their two young children.

Elissa Moriarty, Trusee of the Board

Elissa Moriarty is an experienced educator with over ten years of teaching experience. She has a
deep passion for diversity and is committed to developing children’s capacity for self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and empathy for others. She is curious about the ways in which we are all different and seeks to understand others’ experiences. She brought this to her teaching by celebrating each child’s uniqueness and facilitating conversations that allowed her students to better understand each other.

Elissa’s work has always gone beyond the classroom, supporting other teachers in their own professional growth. As a leader at Prospect Sierra School in El Cerrito, CA for ten years, she was a member of the 21st Century Skills Team, served as the elementary division Diversity and Inclusion Teacher Leader, and was a RULER Trainer for her colleagues. Elissa is currently a trainer for TOOLBOX, an award winning social emotional learning program, and she is a supervisor of student teachers.

Elissa received a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Lewis and Clark College and completed her California Multiple Subject Teaching Credential through the Bay Area Teacher Training Institute. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, Brendan, and 1 year old son, Avery.

 

Mrinalini Rao, Trustee of the Board
Mrinalini is a researcher at Facebook where she leads projects related to gender and safety issues. Previously she was a postdoctoral research associate at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence where she conducted research and developed interventions to integrate social and emotional skills training in online spaces, particularly around experiences of cyberbullying and online harassment among adolescents.
Mrinalini holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She completed an APA-accredited predoctoral internship at the University of Maryland.
Mrinalini has published extensively on gender and peer relations in the United States and India, and her work has garnered numerous research awards for her approach to peer victimization, resilience, gender and cyber bullying.
Mrinalini has published extensively on gender and peer related issues, and her work has garnered numerous research awards for her approach to peer victimization, resilience, gender and cyber bullying.

Advisory Trustees
Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, Advisory Trustee of the Board
Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan is the author of thirteen books. Her 2003 memoir, She’s Not There: a Life in Two Genders (Broadway/Doubleday/Random House) was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. A novelist, memoirist, and short story writer, she is also a nationally known advocate for civil rights. Jenny has appeared on the Oprah Winfrjenniferboylaney Show on four occasions; Live with Larry King twice; the Today Show, the Barbara Walters Special, NPR’s Marketplace and Talk of the Nation; she has also been the subject of documentaries on CBS News’ 48 Hours and The History Channel. She is a Contributing Opinion Writer for the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. Her latest project is the memoir, Stuck in the Middle with You: Parenthood in Three Genders, published by Random House.
Jenny is the Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University. Before coming to Barnard, she was Professor of English for twenty-five years at Colby College in Maine. As an advocate for transgender equality she has given addresses at the National Press Club, been the keynote or plenary speaker at gender conventions nationwide, and spoken on hundreds of college campuses including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, Barnard, Wesleyan, Amherst, Duke and Dartmouth. In addition to serving as the co-chair of GLAAD’s board of directors, she also is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Kinsey Institute for Research on Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.
She lives in New York City, and in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, with her wife, Deedie, and her two sons, Zach and Sean.
Debra Chasnoff, Advisory Trustee of the Board
Academc Award–winning documentary filmmaker Debra Chasnoff is a nationally recognized champion of using film as an organizing tool for social justice campaigns, and a pioneering leader in the international movement working to create safe and welcoming schools and communities. Debra’s highly acclaimed documentaries addressing youth and bias issues are widely hailed by educators and advocates as among the best tools available today to help open up dialogue and activism around many of the most challenging issues affecting young people’s lives and school environments.
Her films include Straightlaced—How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up, about the gender and sexuality pressures that teens and young adults face today. Her other award-winning films include It’s Elementary—Talking About Gay Issues in School, Let’s Get Real (about bias and bullying) That’s a Family! (supporting youth growing up in diverse family structures) and the Academy Award-winning Deadly Deception—General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment. Her first film, Choosing Children, explored the once unheard of idea that lesbians and gay men could become parents after coming out.
In addition to dozens of film festival awards, Debra is the recipient of the Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation Fellowship for outstanding non-profit leadership, the Pathfinder Award from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and the first-ever alumnae achievement award in documentary filmmaking from Wellesley College. Debra has been a featured speaker at dozens of colleges and conferences, and was recently named a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. She is the founder of GroundSpark and co-creator of our renowned Respect For All Project. She has served the organization in a directing capacity since 1982. See www.groundspark.org

Becki Cohn-Vargas, Advisory Trustee of the Board

Dr. Becki Cohn-Vargas is the Director of Not In Our School (NIOS). She has spoken on the subject of how to combat bullying at conferences,schools, and universities across the United States. Becki’s newbook,“Identity Safe Classrooms: Places to Belong and Learn,” co-authored with Dr. Dorothy Steele was published by Corwin Press. Prior to working at The Working Group, she spent over 35 years in public education in California. She was a preschool director in Healdsburg, teacher and principal in the Oakland Unified School District, Elementary Curriculum Director for the Palo Alto Unified School District and Superintendent of the Luther Burbank School District. While serving in Palo Alto in 2003, Becki initiated Not In Our School: Palo Alto, one of the first NIOS initiatives featured on KQED public television.

 

Yohance Edwards, Advisory Trustee of the Board
Yohance Edwards is a Civil Rights Attorney in the San Francisco office of the United States Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR). At OCR, he enforces federal civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal financial assistance from the Department of Education.
Immediately before joining OCR, Yohance was a staff attorney at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals where he specialized in criminal and habeas corpus appeals. The staff attorney position was Yohance’s second stint at the Ninth Circuit. Previously, he clerked for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown upon graduation from law school. Yohance also has extensive civil litigation experience having spent over six years as a litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, where he represented individual and corporate clients in federal and state court cases as well as in government and internal corporate investigations.
Yohance was a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholar at New York University School of Law, and graduated magna cum laude in 2003. While he was a law student, Yohance and his wife co-authored an article on education finance reform litigation, Unequal Treatment in State Supreme Courts: Minority and City Schools in Education Finance Reform Litigation, 79 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 326 (2004). In 1996, he received his undergraduate degree in Latin American Studies from Brown University, where he was a Minority Peer Counselor and a varsity soccer player.
Yohance is also a board member of the Berkeley Law Foundation, and the American Constitution Society Bay Area Lawyer Chapter.

 

Jazz Jennings, Advisory Trustee of the Board
Jazz Jennings was assigned male at birth, but before she was two years old she was expressing herself as a girl. Her family accepted and supported her in her social transition when she was five. When she was six, Jazz appeared on 20/20 with Barbara Walters. Now 16, she has been featured on a variety of major programs and news outlets, including a 20/20 update with Barbara Walters when she was 11, Katie Couric, Dr. Drew, 60 Minutes, the Rosie Show, an Oprah Winfrey Network documentary, “I am Jazz: A family in Transition” and many others. Jazz speaks at colleges, conferences,symposiums, and medical schools all over the country. She’s been recognized at the GLAAD Media Awards, is the youngest recipient of the Colin Higgins Youth Courage Award, the youngest person selected to be in The Advocate Magazine’s, “Top 40 Under 40” list, Out Magazine’s OUT 100 list and the 2014 Trans 100 list. Jazz is the recipient of LogoTV’s 2014 youth Trailblazer Award. She is listed on TIME Magazine’s Top 25 Most Influential Teens for 2014. Jazz is also the youngest recipient of the 2014 Equality Florida’s, “Voice for Equality” Award. Jazz is also a youth ambassador for the Human Rights Campaign. For two and one-half years Jazz was banned from girls’ soccer, and fought this discrimination. As a result, the USSF created a trans-inclusive policy nationwide. Jazz is the co-author of the book, “I am Jazz.” which was released this year. She is the honorary co-founder of the Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation, which assists transgender youth. Jazz is also the founder of Purple Rainbow Tails where she creates her own mermaid tails and donates proceeds to help transgender youth.
Rachel Pepper, Advisory Trustee of the Board
Rachel Pepper is a therapist specializing in gender identity development, serious mental illness, and family systems work. Rachel has extensive therapeutic experience with transgender youth and adults, having run groups for trans youth and adults at agencies such as San Francisco’s Dimensions Youth Clinic and UCSF’s Alliance for Health. Currently, she works professionally with young people recovering from psychiatric disorders and with foster youth in supervised clinical settings. She also has experience in the field of eating disorders and is keenly aware of the intersection between body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria. Rachel is the co-author of The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals (with Stephanie Brill) and is the editor of the award-winning Transitions of the Heart: Stories of Love, Struggle and Acceptance by Mothers of Transgender and Gender Variant Children, both published by Cleis Press.

Kellen Grayson, Advisory Trustee of the Board

Kellen R. Grayson LMFT Psy.D. is a Doctor of Psychology and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist LMFT. He has been a practicing psychotherapist since 2003 working with youth and adults. He is a dedicated practitioner serving multicultural populations with trauma related disorders. His scholarly work includes work with social justice, psychoanalytic modalities, and developmental processes. He also works with Alameda County Foster Care Youth providing therapeutic services and has his own private practice at www.graysonpsychservices.com