Meet the Black Pine Circle Board of Directors
Eric Sullivan – Chairman of the Board
Eric Sullivan is Principal and Chief Strategic Officer of PCG Equity, a commercial real estate and private equity fund. Mr. Sullivan is also President of Quantum Technology, a private venture capital fund focused on early stage technology companies.
Over the past decade Mr. Sullivan has been an investment banker and investor in a variety of entrepreneurial enterprises. His specialty is leveraged buyouts of undervalued companies and assets. With Intercontinental Pacific Group, Mr. Sullivan managed approximately $10 billion in acquisitions, including companies involved in technology, media, finance, leasing, commercial real estate, energy and industrial companies. With the InvestTec companies, he formed several venture
capital funds that provided early stage venture financing to a number of successful technology companies. Mr. Sullivan is a member of the Urban Land Institute. In addition, he sits on the Board of Directors of several technology companies. He is also a part-time Professor of Capital Markets and Corporate Finance in the MBA program at Mills College. Mr. Sullivan is the Commissioner of Pony league baseball in Piedmont, California.
Mr. Sullivan received his graduate degree from Harvard in 1988 (J.D.). He received his undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley in 1984 (B.S., highest honors). He lives with his wife and three children, in Piedmont, California. All three of Eric and Teri’s children have attended or are currently enrolled at Black Pine Circle School.
Marc Derewetzky
Marc Derewetzky is a partner in the Walnut Creek law firm Morison Holden Derewetzky & Prough, LLP, specializing in litigation of complex business disputes. Mr. Derewetzky’s current focus is on insurance coverage and bad faith claims for both insurers and policy holders, and he has handled cases in this area throughout the western United States. Mr. Derewetzky also has considerable experience in admiralty law and has litigated commercial landlord tenant disputes, product liability and Bankruptcy cases.
Mr. Derewetzky received his law degree from Hastings College of the Law in 1987 and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton, with honors, in 1980. He has lived in the Bay Area since 1987, with the exception of a six-year tour of duty in Los Angeles. Mr. Derewetzky is a member of the Board of Directors of Congregation Beth El, Berkeley and he and his wife Jennifer Kawar have two children who have attended Black Pine Circle since kindergarten. Mr. Derewetzky enjoys basketball, photography, world travel and eating.
Jackiel W. Joseph
Jack is the parent of a Black Pine Circle School upper school graduate and current upper school student. He is a biotech consultant managing drug development projects for small biotech companies. Jack received his B.S. from Stanford and his PhD (Biochemistry) from Harvard. Jack has special interests in science and math education.
Nancy Kehoe
Nancy is the Director of Development at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco. She has more than 20 years of alumni and development experience in education, including working as a major gifts officer at the University of Virginia and Director of Alumnae and Development at The Hamlin School in San Francisco. A native New Yorker, Nancy began her career on the East Coast. She holds a BA from the College of Wooster.
Adrienne La Pierre
Ms. LaPierre is a Principal and the President of Iris Environmental, a multidisciplinary environmental consulting firm focused on finding creative solutions to environmental issues at the intersection of science, policy, and business.
Ms. LaPierre has over twenty years of experience in environmental consulting, with an emphasis on toxicology, human health risk assessment and risk communication. She provides strategic scientific guidance to help clients manage their various environmental liabilities in a manner that is both health protective and cost effective. Her projects vary in scope and range from appearing as an expert at public hearings to explain how chemical exposures can adversely affect human health, to helping disparate parties find common ground in solving complex technical environmental problems. Ms. LaPierre received her M.S. from Harvard and her B.Sc. at UC Davis. She has a daughter who currently attends Black Pine Circle School.
Randi R. Lee
Randi Lee is a strategy consultant and marketing contractor. She also works as a part-time CFO in a family business, Supply Chain Strategies International. Randi began her professional career as an equity analyst with John S. Herold, Inc.
Her prior experience includes leadership roles at e-Rewards, Inc. including VP of Business Development, Finance and Research. For five years, Randi was a strategy consultant to Fortune 100 companies at Booz, Allen & Hamilton. During and following her time there she also worked a variety of pro bono projects with The Dallas Opera, a nonprofit organization. Randi received her MBA at Columbia Business School and her B.A. at Duke University. She and her husband, Mike Lee, are parents of two children who attend Black Pine Circle School.
Liz McBee
Liz McBee has been working in film production for 25 years. She received a film degree from the University of Texas—Austin, where she grew up. Liz began her career in New York City, where she produced a wide variety of short films, commercials, independent features and documentaries. After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1991, she continued to sharpen her producing skills by freelancing as a Producer & Production Manager, working as Head of Production at San Francisco- based Red Sky Films and, later, by co-creating the Berkeley-based Casa Madre Films. In 2012, she opened loop360films, a start-to-finish film production company dedicated to showcasing individuals and organizations that make a difference in their communities—both local and worldwide. Alongside her commercial work, Liz writes, produces and directs documentary films. In 2000, her documentary short “Javelina, A Desert Stew” won in its category at the San Francisco Film Festival. She is currently in post-production on a documentary film about “the darkest side of motherhood”, postpartum depression, and the need for support for new mothers and families. This film, “Burning The Village” is scheduled for release in the summer of 2013. Her goal with “Burning The Village”, with her company, loop360films, and with her life is to build bridges of support in and around the communities we live, work and play in. She, and her husband, James Horner are the parents of two children who attend Black Pine Circle School.
Linda Mehren
Linda has spent her personal and professional career in education. She holds a B.A. in English and Teacher’s Credential from California State University, Hayward. She was a junior high teacher and has worked in fundraising for Ecole Bilingue and Girls, Inc. She currently works as a tutor at Diablo Valley College.
Linda and her husband, Roger, are parents of a Black Pine Circle School alum, who is now attending college. Linda was and continues to be an extensive volunteer at Black Pine Circle School and her son’s High School, which included many years as a room parent. Since 2004, Linda has been a Board member and has led the Black Pine Circle School parent volunteer Development Committee .
Mary Paci
Mary Paci has for the last twenty years focused her interest and passion in the areas of education and public health. She has served since 1997 on the Board of Trustees of Commonwealth School, an independent high school in downtown Boston founded in 1957, which two of her three children attended. She has been a member of the Leadership Council at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) since 2005, and of the Partners Council for the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies since 1993, as well as the HSPH AIDS Initiative International Advisory Council. A native of La Jolla, California, she received her B.A. in Art History from Pomona College and completed the coursework and exams toward an M.A. in Art History at Boston University. Mary met her husband Piero Paci, a pathologist from Assisi, Italy, when she went to study at the University of Florence during a year abroad, and they were married for thirty-three years until he died in 1989. Mary’s father, Roger Revelle, was the Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the 1950′s and was among the first scientists to conduct research leading to the recognition of global warming and its consequences. Mary’s mother, Ellen Revelle, was in the first graduating class (in 1931) of Scripps College, founded by her great-aunt, Ellen Browning Scripps. Mary is the devoted mother of three children and grandmother of six grandchildren, including two granddaughters who are currently students at Black Pine Circle School.
Eric Price
A native of Berkeley, California, Erik graduated from Columbia University with a B.S. in Economics and a Masters degree in Journalism from UC Berkeley in 1991. Eric currently works with the Pac-12 Athletic Conference. After spending seven years in the Office of the Faculty Athletics Representative at the University of California, where he served as Senior Administrative Analyst (1994-2000), Erik was promoted to Pac-12 Assistant Commissioner in 2006. His responsibilities include assisting the twelve member universities in monitoring and applying NCAA and Conference legislation. He also coordinates the Pac-12 Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC).
Erik Price attended Black Pine Circle School from 1972 to 1981 and both of his children attended Black Pine Circle. Erik served as Co-chairman of the school’s Library capital campaign, and he has served as Co-Chairman of our Development Committee since 2008.
Rigoberto Caloca-Rivas, OFM, Ph.D.
Father Rigo’s diverse career includes being a professor, pastor, strategic planner, administrator and community organizer; he begun his graduate studies at the GTU in Berkeley and pursued his doctoral studies, in Social and Political Science. His topics of research interest are racial identity development; enhancing diversity and cultural pluralism in education; issues of power, privilege and politics in academia; theoretical models of inculturation; migration patterns; and the relationship between faith and health. Father Rigo is both a distinguished community member and a visionary for creatively addressing community issues in an integrated manner. His work has targeted the changing of community structures to combat inequities, building relationships between sectors in society, while recognizing the very concrete needs experienced by some categories of persons—among them the monolingual and disadvantaged Mexican and Central Americans who are recent immigrants working as day laborers, offering their physical labor to the local economy. Fr. Rigo’s own broad background (anthropology, philosophy, multicultural ministries in the church, and direct social service work) leads him to see innovative ways forward and stir others from complacency and rigidity. He has a keen sense of anticipating policy trends and how to take advantage of windows of opportunity.
Personal Quote:
“We live in a multicultural society requiring church and community leadership capable of serving and working with diversity. I am committed to develop, through the courses I teach, awareness, understanding, and the skills necessary for the students to function effectively in multicultural settings.”
Gary Wong
Gary Wong is the parent of two children currently attending Black Pine Circle School. Gary has over 20 years of acquisitions and finance experience in the commercial real estate industry. To date, he has completed well over $2 billion in transactions throughout the country for various insurance and pension fund advisory companies. Gary has a B.A. from Claremont McKenna College.
Peter Wong
Peter Wong is the Chief Operating Officer of TruTag Technologies, Inc., a product authentication technology company. He is also Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and General Counsel of SKAI Ventures, a technology incubator, of which TruTag is a portfolio company.
Mr. Wong has 20 years of experience working with start-up and emerging businesses. Previously, Mr. Wong spent over eight years at Emeryville-based LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc., an educational technology products maker, where he most recently served as its Senior Vice President, General Counsel. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley and his law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. He is currently a member of the Board of Trustees for the UC Hastings Foundation. A native of Hawaii, Peter and his wife Yoona live in Berkeley and their two sons are current Black Pine Circle School students.