Chevron Corporation recently announced the California Partnership, an initiative to invest in education and economic development in its home state. Chevron will expand and deepen its partnerships with nonprofits focused on supporting underserved communities, including relationships with 18 new nonprofit partners providing programs for education, entrepreneurs and job training.
Chevron announced the California Partnership at an event in San Francisco. As part of the event, Chevron hosted a panel discussing innovative approaches to public-private partnerships featuring Chevron nonprofit partners Kiva.org, DonorsChoose.org, Project Lead the Way and Teach for America.
Bio
Charles Best
Charles Best founded DonorsChoose.org at Wings Academy, a public high school in the Bronx where he was a social studies teacher for five years.
He thought up DonorsChoose.org during a lunch conversation with colleagues, and his students volunteered to help start the organization. DonorsChoose.org has been growing since.
Emily Bobel
Emily Bobel is the Executive Director of Teach For America Bay Area, where she is responsible for maximizing Teach For America's impact in the Bay Area by working to establish our presence in the community, ensuring the effectiveness of over 430 corps members, building a broad and sustainable base of financial support, and overseeing a regional team of 36 staff members. Prior to this, Emily was the Managing Director of Program on the Bay Area team, helping to lead the region's largest ever corps to success in the classroom. Since joining Teach For America, Emily has also served as a Recruitment Director for the Ivy League cohort, as well as a Corps Member Advisor and School Director for the New York City training institutes. Emily taught middle school math and science as a 2003 corps member in New York City, where she coached 32 students to compete and win the 2004 & 2005 New York City Federal Reserve Econ Bowl. Emily is a proud Bay Area native and Stanford alumna, with strong ties to the local community.
John Lock
John Lock is CEO and President of Project Lead the Way.
Matt Lonner
Matt Lonner is Chevron's Manager of Global Partnerships and Programs, leading the company's global social investment strategy, including development of Chevron's major programs around the world. He also serves as President of Chevron's foundations.
In 2010, Chevron's social investments exceeded $180 million, with primary focus in health, education and economic development. Among his accomplishments, Matt has spearheaded Chevron's global health efforts in the area of HIV/AIDS and Maternal & Child Health – including a major partnership with the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria – and led Chevron's California Partnership, a significant investment to support science, technology, engineering and math education.
In addition, Matt has directed Chevron through a number of disaster relief efforts in Myanmar, China, Gulf Coast, Haiti and elsewhere, and oversees the company's employee community involvement programs.
Matt has been a featured speaker on the subject of corporate philanthropy and is a recognized as an expert in the area of public-private partnerships and social investment & development. Formerly a practicing attorney, Matt is a graduate of San Francisco State University and earned a law degree from the University Of San Francisco School Of Law.
Premal Shah
Premal Shah serves as the President of Kiva Microfunds. Prior to Kiva.org, Mr. Shah served as a Principal Product Manager at PayPal, an eBay company. Prior to PayPal, Mr. Shah was a Strategy Consultant at Mercer Management Consulting in New York. Mr. Shah co-founded the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network and spent two months in India working to refine validate Kiva.org's model. Mr. Shah serves as a Director of Kiva Microfunds. He serves as a Member of Technology Advisory Board of RelayRides.
Nicole Taylor
Nicole Taylor is President and Chief Executive Officer of the East Bay Community Foundation. Taylor, a veteran executive with 14 years of experience in the Bay Area non-profit community, is the first African-American to lead the Foundation in its 79-year history.
In 2009, she was named by the San Francisco Business Times to its list of "East Bay Women of Distinction" and as one of the "Most Influential Women in Business in the Bay Area."
Before coming to the Foundation in September 2007, she was Managing Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University, one of the nation's premier institutions developing leaders capable of making social change.
Prior to her service at Stanford, she was the CEO of College Track, a nonprofit organization that works to get underrepresented students in the San Francisco Bay Area successfully through high school and college. And prior to College Track, she was the director of Oakland's Fund for Children and Youth, which distributes over $7million per year to youth serving organizations in Oakland, California.
Taylor began her career as a teacher and also worked on school-reform efforts within urban school districts. For most of the 1990s, she worked at the East Bay Community Foundation where her work focused on education, children and youth services, nonprofit management and fund raising.
She holds a B.A. in Human Biology and a M.A. in Education – both from Stanford.
Russell Yarrow
Russell Yarrow is General Manager for California Corporate Affairs at Chevron Corporation. He is responsible for external relations with a variety of stakeholders in Chevron's home state. Prior to joining Chevron in 2004, Mr. Yarrow was Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Relations at Visa International for five years. Prior to that, Mr. Yarrow managed the Corporate Practice in Ketchum's San Francisco office. He began his corporate public relations career at Bank of America.
Mr. Yarrow is an award-winning former journalist who worked in a variety of editorial positions at several San Francisco Bay Area newspapers between 1976 and 1988. He majored in journalism at San Diego State University and is a fellow of the San Francisco Academy, a senior-level public relations seminar. He has been a guest lecturer at a variety of professional functions and has served in senior positions at several nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area.
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