Horizons at SFFS 2023-2024 board

Aaron Whitmore (he/him) comes from a family of educators. His mother was an 8th-grade science teacher at the local public school, and his father was a college basketball coach before becoming a public high school athletic director. 

Aaron attended Colby College and got his B.A. in Human Development, then went on to get his M.A. in Educational Leadership from the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. 

Aaron is a passionate educator who loves working with school-age children. His educational career began at Camp Belknap, Kent School, and Milton Academy, where he served as an advisory board member at Upward Bound before moving to the Bay Area to run the Admission and Financial Aid Office at Crystal Springs Uplands School. At Crystal, Aaron was a member of the Multicultural Leadership Team and, during his tenure, partnered closely with Peninsula Bridge as well as A Better Chance and the SMART program to support students from traditionally underrepresented communities and enable better access to independent school education. 

Recently, Aaron transitioned to become the CEO of Little, Molligan & Whitmore, an educational consulting organization that helps students and families determine which schools are a great match for them based on family values and academic and extracurricular interests. Aaron works to support families through the school application process as well. 

Aaron is on the board of Sierra STEM, a non-profit aimed to cultivate scientists and citizens who are more critical, resilient, and humane.

Aaron and his wife, Carrie, have two children who currently attend San Francisco Friends School. For fun, Aaron loves to play basketball, explore other cultures through travel, and spend time with his family.

Andrea Ruiz De Bustamante (she/her) is a Horizons parent who is also very involved at Mission Prep as a parent of current 8th and 7th graders.  She currently serves on the parent advisory committee at Mission Prep and is also great at relationship building.  Her family moved from Colima, Mexico, to Tijuana, then to San Francisco, CA, in the Mission District, where they continue to live, to get medical assistance for her aunt. Andrea was born to a single mother who raised her along with her family and grew up in a bilingual home.

Andrea struggled throughout her school years with a learning disability and made it to San Francisco State to earn a BA in Psychology. While in school, she interned at Oakes Children Center for SED kids when it was in the avenues, and a year later, she was hired as an afterschool counselor and worked there for ten years. In those last two years, Andrea earned an MA in Social Work. After earning her MSW in 2007, she dedicated her focus to raising two wonderful children, a 14-year-old girl, and a 12-year-old boy, with her husband, her childhood friend, and their 5-year-old dog, Jack Sparrow. In 2020, in the heart of the pandemic, Andrea was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and is happy to say she is doing well. Andrea loved volunteering during her schooling. Her family loves hanging out with other family and friends, traveling, dancing, and being at home. They enjoy movies and playing board games and are huge Disney and 49ers fans. Andrea enjoys reading murder mystery novel series and watching paranormal shows.

Aneesha Capur is an investor, consultant, and writer. She is an angel and venture investor in social impact areas in climate change, legal tech, and education, and she is interested in supporting women (of color) and other underrepresented founders. Aneesha is a consultant and advisor for organizations with a social impact mission. She was nominated to join a consulting network for grantees of the Haas, Jr. Fund and Packard Foundation and other programs; she was also a Director of Strategic Initiatives at a nonprofit that provides education, jobs, and training for Bay Area youth. She is a Limited Partner at How Women Invest and a Global Advisor at How Women Lead. Her prior work experience includes ten years in university education content development and publication at Stanford and Wharton and eight years in corporate strategy and consulting at JPMorgan and Booz-Allen, as well as economic and international development consulting. Aneesha’s previous board and committee tenures include serving on the Boards of Voice of Witness and the Homeless Prenatal Program as Governance Chair for both and on the San Francisco Committee/ Global Council of Human Rights Watch. Aneesha has published a novel and several articles, most recently on scaling for nonprofits for Stanford Social Innovation Review. Aneesha has an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College and an MBA from The Wharton School. 

Aneesha was born in India and spent most of her childhood in Kenya. She now lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children (Eila, SFFS ’28, and Kian, SFFS ’31). They love spending time together in nature, outdoor recreational and cultural activities, and cooking.

Benjamin Ibarra (he/him) is a San Francisco native through and through. A child of Mexican immigrants, Benjamin is no stranger to The Mission and its population. A graduate of UC Davis and the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs, Benjamin has worked diligently as a public servant for almost two decades with UC Admissions, the Office of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, The San Francisco Public Library, and currently, San Francisco Public Works where he is a Public Information Officer, working on quality of life-related matters within the Mission. A father of three, including a 5th grader at Friends School. When not working or driving his kids around, he likes to watch baseball, play soccer, and try to finish the day’s crossword puzzle.

Charlie L. Morales is an equity-minded counselor who strives to master the tools that identify resources, provide academic support, and offer guidance that is essential in developing each student’s skill base for success in higher education and beyond. He is a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategist who provides innovative solutions to confront the most pressing issues in urban education. In addition, he specializes in working with young men of color, students on probation, student-athletes, STEM, formerly incarcerated, first-generation, and students with disabilities.

Chris Rupright moved to San Francisco from the Midwest in 1986 and had his first apartment at 23rd and Guerrero Streets.  He practiced law in the City for 26 years, specializing in representing investment advisers and private investment funds, until retiring in 2017.  He spends time volunteering, cooking, and enjoying the outdoors.  He is a graduate of the College at University of Chicago and Northwestern University Law School.

He has been a longtime supporter of Horizons at SFFS, and his son worked for two summers as the swimming pool and lunch helper.  He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Pam, a college admissions counselor.  They have two children: David (SFFS 2012), a high school history teacher in Chicago, and Emily (SFFS 2014), an Architecture student at Washington University in St. Louis.

Eddie Kaufman has dedicated his professional career to supporting youth and families to achieve their potential. A San Francisco resident for three decades, he has found his home with Mission Graduates.  Under 12 years of Eddie’s leadership, the organization has grown eight times to over 150 staff serving 5,500 youth and families on a $14 Million annual budget.  As the son of a first-generation college student, he knows personally the importance of building college-going aspirations within families. 

Before joining Mission Graduates, Eddie spent eight years leading Big Brothers Big Sisters of the North Bay. During his tenure, the agency expanded from two to four counties, increased its revenue threefold, and expanded the number of youth served in the organization from 225 to over 1,500. In 2010, he was recognized with the Heart of Marin Excellence in Leadership Award – awarded to an Executive Director demonstrating exceptional leadership and vision within his nonprofit organization and to the general Marin community.

Eddie has spent the majority of his professional life working with organizations that educate and empower youth. Organizations that he has been a part of include Youth Leadership Institute, Spectrum LGBT Center, YWCA of Oakland, San Francisco Council on Homelessness, and the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. He is a recognized trainer in the areas of youth development, youth-adult partnerships, and environmental prevention.

Eddie has a demonstrated passion and commitment to education; he is a faculty member of City College of San Francisco where he has been teaching for the last 20 years. One of his great joys has been to support LGBTQ individuals in developing their intimacy skills by teaching the Male Intimacy and Relationships Course for the LGBT Studies Department.   He received his undergraduate degrees in Genetics and Psychology at U.C. Davis and his Masters in Social Work at San Francisco State University.  He is also an avid snowboarder, scuba diver, and knitter.

Guybe Slangen comes from an international family of educators—his dad (from Belgium) was a professor for nearly three decades, and his mom (from the Philippines) taught in public schools for many years. He joined SFFS in 2009 from the Head-Royce School, where he was the Dean of Students. Prior to that, he worked at independent schools in both Colorado and New York. Whether it is leading students on backpacking trips in the Sierras or taking them to serve meals at homeless shelters, Guybe believes strongly that learning has the greatest impact through experience. At Friends, his work centers around building and sustaining strong relationships between the school and the greater community, be it in the Mission or across the country. He also manages all grade-level trips and co-clerks the school’s Quaker Life Committee. Guybe is a graduate of Dickinson College and completed his Master’s in Educational Leadership at Columbia University’s Teachers College. He is on the Advisory Board for the National Network for Schools in Partnership (NNSP), and has presented workshops nationally on the topics of leadership, diversity, and community engagement. An avid surfer, biker, and skier, Guybe lives in Oakland with his partner Susan and their daughter Livi.

Jacqueline (she/her) is a development and marketing consultant, dynamic leader, and community-centric fundraiser who leverages her commitment to social justice and educational equity in her fundraising style. As an avid learner – constantly implementing a growth mindset – she has explored several fundraising specialties throughout her career, including individual giving, special events, foundation and corporate giving, volunteer and board management, communications and marketing, donor database implementation and optimization, and staff and team management.   

Jacqueline Smith is most inspired by fostering relationships and building connections between people and incredible organizations that move work and society forward. She leverages her love of community building, strategic thinking, attention to detail, and data- and process-driven skillset to scale an organization’s impact and reach. She has a strong track record of success, with a 180% increase in funding reserves, a 300% increase in revenue, and event revenue growth from $999k to $4.1 million during her tenure with a college access organization.

In addition to her professional efforts, Jacqueline loves traveling to try new foods and learn languages, starting DIY household projects, and exploring the outdoors with her Boston Terrier, Pipoca. She is a proud Santa Fe New Mexican and has called San Francisco home since 2014. 

Jim Hansen was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.  His father's family settled in the Mission District in the 1870s. He received a BA in Economics from Santa Clara University and has spent most of his career in the financial markets, building and running proprietary market-making firms.  Jim currently serves on the board of the Urban School of San Francisco and is a past member of the board at the SF Friends School.  In his free time, Jim enjoys tutoring K-8 students at the Tenderloin Afterschool Program.  Jim and his wife, Katie, live in San Francisco with their children, Jack (SFFS class of 2016) and Delia (SFFS class of 2019).

Joel Lacayo immigrated to San Francisco with his family from Nicaragua at 5 years old. In his 20+ years in the Financial Services Industry, he has supported entrepreneurs to start their businesses with sound financial structures towards financing/lending solutions, created strategic marketing plans, and coached them through their growth evolution. His current role is as the Lead Channel Account Executive with Rippling, a modern employee management platform for Payroll, HR, and IT. During his time as a Xero Regional Sales Director, he supported accounting/bookkeeping owners in growing their services and revenue lines. He has served as a board member of La Cocina, a local not-for-profit focused on low-income female food entrepreneurs looking to formalize their businesses, and a Business Consultant with Working Solutions, a CDFI supporting underserved SF Bay Area entrepreneurs. Currently, he is a member of Accounting Salon, supporting the Nominations Committee and Diversity Initiative to steer the accounting industry's modernization. Joel received his B.S. in Business with a concentration in Marketing from San Francisco State University. Joel loves playing and coaching all sports with his boys, trying new eateries with his wife, and leveraging social capital with like-minded people. 

Katie Eller (she/her) has worked as an elementary school educator in the San Francisco Unified School District for over 20 years.  Over those years, she has been a teacher and a site-based literacy coach and is now a program administrator leading all of the site-based literacy coaches in SFUSD.  In her role, she provides professional development and one-on-one support in both literacy and coaching content for the network of literacy coaches.  She also provides guidance on the literacy curriculum for kindergarten through 5th grade and leads district professional development for teachers and principals regarding curriculum and instruction.  The majority of her work is focused on schools in the Mission and Bayview, and she has worked closely with both BVHM and Marshall for the past five years.  To further her own professional development, she spends two weeks each year attending the Reading and Writing Coaching Institutes through Teachers College at Columbia University.  Prior to working in education, Katie worked for ten years in merchandise planning with Esprit and the Gap and was on the founding management team for Old Navy.  

Katie is originally from Yakima, Washington, and received her B.S. in Finance from Santa Clara University and her teaching credential from the intensive MATE program through SF State.  She received her Literacy Specialist Certificate through California Early Literacy Learning (CELL/ExLL). She lives in San Francisco with her husband John, who is a community organizer, and their two children, Lilli (17) and Miles (15).

Katina Papson-Rigby has over 20 years of experience in the field of K-12 education, community activism, and DEIB (Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging) focused efforts in public, charter, nonprofit, and private spaces. She is drawn to opportunities for systems change through creative collaboration across differences. As a practiced communicator, facilitator, and co-conspirator with diverse constituencies, her work as an interdisciplinary artist and teacher is an expression of many voices. She has authored and published social justice, ethnic studies, arts-integrated, place-based, and interdisciplinary curricula, and has experience as a teacher coach and administrator of distinct educational youth programming. She is a trained professional artist whose artwork has been shown in galleries and museums across the country. She identifies as a Queer, ethnically mixed Latina mother, and partner who has experienced white citizenship and cisgender privilege. The pronouns she uses are she/her/ella. She strongly identifies as a lifelong learner.

Ken Jones moved with his family to San Francisco from Chicago in 1997 to work as an operations manager at the San Francisco Zoo. Ken then focused on financial accounting and worked with several nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area before eventually joining the partnership Metis Partner Solutions in 2013 to provide finance consulting to Bay Area nonprofits. He is a graduate of the College at University of Chicago.

Ken has served on several nonprofit Boards and is currently the Board Chair for the Pomeroy Center in the southwest corner of the City. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Wendy, a business systems analyst for a biotech firm. They have two children, Rosa, a nursing assistant in Denver, and Katy, an elementary school teacher in the Mission.

Lynda Sullivan has spent more than 20 years in the financial services industry. Most recently, Sullivan served as investment director at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, where she was responsible for investing the foundation’s endowment in the public equity and fixed-income sectors. Sullivan began her career in the Corporate Finance department at Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York and, prior to joining the Moore Foundation, held senior positions at Gap, Inc., and Montgomery Securities in San Francisco. Sullivan earned bachelor’s degrees in both business and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and her master’s in business administration from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Sullivan serves on the Board of Directors for Save The Bay in addition to being a long-time Food Bank volunteer and donor.

Monica Zamudio (she/her) immigrated to the United States with her parents at six, lived and raised in the Central Valley, and relocated to San Francisco in the past five years. Monica enjoys supporting the community; she has volunteered in Schools as a PTA leader, PAC vice president, Girl Scout leader, and baseball coach, to name a few. Additionally, she has experience working with children in special education and is passionate about working with and supporting underprivileged communities. Currently, she holds a few volunteer leadership positions at Saint Mary’s College of California, where she is pursuing her degree in counseling with a specialization in School Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy. When she is not volunteering, organizing events, or completing assignments in her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family, friends, and the outdoors.

Morgen Humes started her career in the organizational psychology department of an international technology company. Later, she became a founding employee for a small management consulting start-up. In keeping with her abiding passion for supporting organizations that make a positive social impact, she left the for-profit world to go back to school to earn her Master’s in Social Welfare, Management and Planning from UC Berkeley (2000). She then worked as an independent nonprofit consultant and, later, project coordinator for a federal wraparound demonstration project. During the following seven years, Morgen was part of the executive leadership team of Seneca Family of Agencies, which serves vulnerable children and families. As the director of Training and Research and the Co-Director of Strategic Initiatives at Seneca, she managed several large training contracts, helped write successful grants, and developed collaborative relationships with community, county, and state partners.

In 2015, Morgen started working for herself. Her consulting and grant writing services are grounded in over 20 years of professional experience, which includes for-profit and nonprofit consulting as well as executive leadership of a large nonprofit. In addition to bringing excellent experience to any endeavor, she brings a positive attitude as well as a natural inclination to accomplish goals and solve problems creatively.

She currently writes and submits grants and reports primarily for Safe & Sound and Berkeley Food & Housing Project, with approximately 90% of grants submitted being awarded. Other clients include Chabot-Las Positas Community College District, the San Francisco Unified School District, Seneca Family of Agencies, and other Bay Area organizations. She has authored a number of successful large federal grants for California and Iowa clients. 

Throughout her working life, Morgen always found time to volunteer. In addition to serving on the Horizons at SFFS board, she is currently a member of the President’s Advisory Council Alameda County Crisis Support Services, where she volunteered and served on their board for many years. She is an active volunteer in her children’s schools and her community.

Nelly Sapinski (she/her) is the parent of an SFFS alum and currently serves as Executive Director of the Jamestown Community Center. Nelly has a strong background in education and youth development, extensive experience in the education non-profit world, and is closely connected to the Mission community.

Samara Jaffe (she/her) is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of HR Transform, the leading event in the new work ecosystem bringing together business and people leaders from rapidly growing VC-backed companies, HR executives from the Fortune 1000, investors, and entrepreneurs building solutions for the workplace of the future. She is also EVP & Managing Director of Connectiv, a live events studio creating summits for brands and professionals across high-growth industries and at-scale sectors undergoing rapid change. Prior to finding her way to the world of events, she held various executive roles at both startup and enterprise organizations, including as General Manager and President of businesses, which exceeded $50M in annual revenue. Samara is a bridge builder and a thoughtful connector, moving seamlessly from building strategy to turning vision into business growth. She lives in San Francisco and enjoys spending time with family and friends.

Sangita Forth (she/her) is a seasoned marketer and entrepreneur at heart whose passion is building mission-driven lifestyle brands.  Her brand experience spans from managing world-class brands at Kraft Foods & General Mills to growing early-stage challenger brands, Method Products, Plum Organics and most recently Revolution Foods.  Sangita has also advised high-growth food brands, including Somersault Snacks, Dang Foods, A2 Milk Company, and Pique Tea. Sangita is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Whole Biome, leading the marketing, commercialization, and consumer launch of microbiome-focused medical foods.  She is a faculty member of the Food Business School and an active member of National Charity League, and she recently served on non-profit boards, Lava Mae and Pacific Primary School. Sangita received her BS from Carnegie Mellon University and MBA from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. In her free time, she loves exploring the Bay Area with her husband and three children (Ashna SFFS '21, Kiran '23 & Anjali '27).

Saraí Chicas is a proud San Franciscan born in the heart of the Mission to Salvadorean parents. Growing up, she formed close connections to the Latino Mission community by attending and being involved in her church Templo de La Fe on 24th and Valencia, and has continued to stay involved in local Mission nonprofit organizations throughout her life. She is Bilingual in Spanish and English and volunteers her time with the Immigration Justice Campaign as an Interpreter. Saraí Chicas is a first-generation college graduate, having earned both a Bachelor's degree in Child Development and a Master's degree in Elementary Education from San Francisco State University. Her education has provided her with a strong foundation in child development and teaching methods, which she has utilized throughout her career to make a positive impact on the lives of children and their families.

Her passion for equity and education started when she volunteered for Jumpstart, an Americorp Program, which led her to a career as a Preschool Teacher. She worked as a preschool teacher for 10+ years in the Bayview Hunter’s Point, Mission, and Noe Valley. She has also been a drug and alcohol Counselor at Mission Council, working with families dealing with Substance Abuse. In 2018, she switched careers to the legal professional field and currently works as a senior paralegal at a boutique law firm specializing in Medical Malpractice, Personal Injury, and Fertility Cases. Her passion for equity and education has been a driving force throughout her career, and she has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of children and families in her community. In her free time, you can find her trying a new Restaurant during SF Restaurant Week or discovering a new trail with views of San Francisco.

Sofia Ortega has worked in different non-profit organizations and office roles for over a decade (including Mission Prep). Her pronouns are she/her, and she is a third-generation Mission native. She is also the proud mother of 5 children, soon to be 6, loves living in San Francisco and participating in community events, a fan of the 49ers and Giants! In her free time, she loves lowrider cruises and taking her beloved father’s old schools out with my children.