The NewSchools Leadership Council is a dedicated and accomplished cohort of investors that provides strategic guidance to NewSchools’ leadership and portfolio ventures. The Council convenes formally twice a year, and works closely with NewSchools staff and our entrepreneurs throughout the year.
Allison Thoreson Bhusri
Cecily Cameron
Adam Cioth
Steve Dostart
Lance Fors
Cynthia King Vance
Ann Mathieson
Lenny T. Mendonca
Brian T. Olson
Tim Ranzetta
Andrea Rice
Joe Wolf
Allison Thoreson Bhusri
Allison Thoreson Bhusri graduated from Dartmouth College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She has over 15 years of business experience, and is currently consulting as a product lead in the Business Incubation Group at eBay. Prior to joining eBay, she spent four years in brand management at the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company. She started her career in finance, first at Morgan Stanley & Co., and then in private equity. She serves as a trustee of Gateway Public Schools. Allison and her husband Aneel have one child.
Cecily Cameron
Cecily Cameron graduated from Princeton University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She has 15 years of business experience in the financial services, high tech, nonprofit and retail industries. She worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company for 5 years, and her last position was Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Old Navy. She serves as a trustee of Marin Country Day School, Leadership Public Schools, Gateway High School and Peer Health Exchange. Cecily and her husband Derek Schrier have three children.
Adam Cioth
Adam Cioth worked as in investment banker for ten years at Goldman Sachs in New York and for five years for Volpe Brown Whelan in San Francisco, where he served as Head of the Investment Banking Division before launching his own advisory firm, Rolling Hills Capital, serving early-stage technology companies. For the past ten years Adam has served on the board of directors of the French American International School and International High School, including two years as Chair of the Finance Committee and six years as Chair of the Board. Since 2003 Adam has served on the Advisory Board of the California HealthCare Foundation’s Leadership Program involved with curriculum development, program marketing and selection of program fellows. Since June 2011 Adam has served on the board of Leadership Public Schools, a charter school management organization headquartered in Oakland, CA. Adam received a B.A. from Princeton University, studied graduate-level International Economics at the Université François Rabelais in Tours, France, and received an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Steve Dostart
Steve Dostart is the President and Founder of the Dostart Development Company, LLC (DDC). Prior to founding DDC, he was a Partner at the Mozart Development Company. Steve is a leader in Transit-Oriented Design and in utilizing the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for efficient and sustainable design. Earlier in his career, Steve worked in the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs in New York, for the Trammell Crow family at the Trammell Crow Company in Dallas and for the Centre City Development Corporation in San Diego. Steve currently is the President of NAIOP Silicon Valley, a trade association for the real estate industry, Vice Chairman of Reading Partners, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering students through literacy and investing community members in underserved public schools, and a member of the Grand Boulevard Initiative and the Town Center Task Force in Atherton, CA. He previously served on the Management Board at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College.
Lance Fors
Lance Fors received his BA from UC-Berkeley and his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in molecular biology. Lance was then Founder and CEO of Third Wave Technologies, which he built into a leading biotechnology company. Since selling Third Wave, Lance has focused on social change and entrepreneurship. Lance focuses on empowering high-potential social entrepreneurs by acting as a thought partner and mentor. Lance has also been the long-term board chair of New Teacher Center, Reading Partners and Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2), helping them achieve up to 100% compound annual growth and become leaders in their fields. In addition, Lance is chair-elect of the International Association of Social Venture Partnerships, a board member of Growth Philanthropy Network and Jumpstart, and lectures on the potential for nonprofit governance to provide transformational leadership. Lance is the Founder and CEO of a provider of housing for individuals with disabilities. Lance is also lead director and co-owner of Lance Construction Supplies, an inventor on dozens of patents, and an Ernst and Young entrepreneur of the year award recipient.
Cynthia King Vance
Cynthia has extensive experience in the for-profit and non-profit worlds as a consultant, executive and board leader. Current non-profit board service includes SCO Family of Services (chair), New York Public Radio (vice chair) and Montefiore Medical Center. She was a consultant with McKinsey and launched TV channels UK Gold and UK Living in London as CFO and Commercial Director. Cynthia has led education reform work including restructuring, human capital and teaching/learning projects for the New York City Department of Education, transition management for Newark Public Schools, student success initiatives for Hunter College, and education technology strategy for Classroom Inc. Cynthia graduated from Princeton University with a BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and received an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Ann Mathieson
Ann Mathieson has a background in marketing, education and philanthropy. She is a trustee and former Board Chair of the Marin Community Foundation, which oversees the billion dollar Buck Trust and over 300 donor advised funds. She is also a trustee at Marin Academy, an independent high school and on the Bay Area Board for Peer Health Exchange, a nonprofit supporting health education for underserved high schools. Previously, she was a co-founder and President of the Bay Area “I Have a Dream” Foundation, a college access program for at-risk students. She was elected to the Kentfield School Board for two terms and served as its President. Ann worked for 15 years as a marketing executive, first at Hallmark Cards and then with Collagen Corporation, a bio-medical start-up. Ann graduated with a BS from Indiana University and an MBA from Stanford University. She and her husband, Andy, have four children and live in Marin County, CA.
Lenny T. Mendonca
Lenny Mendonca is a Director in the Washington D.C. and San Francisco offices of McKinsey & Company. Lenny has for many years led the firm’s knowledge development efforts overseeing the McKinsey Global Institute and the firm’s communications, which includes the McKinsey Quarterly. His client work is focused on service to public sector organizations, and over the course of his career he has helped dozens of government, corporate, and nonprofit clients solve their most difficult management challenges. Lenny is the Chairman Emeritus of the Bay Area Council, Chairman of the Economic Institute of the Bay Area, and vice-chair of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council. He serves on the boards of The New America Foundation, Common Cause, California Forward, the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium, ChildrenNow, and The California Business for Educational Excellence Foundation. He is also a Trustee for the Committee for Economic Development. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Founder and Chairman of Presidential Citizens Fellows. He received his MBA and certificate in public management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He holds an AB, magna cum laude, in economics from Harvard College. Lenny lives on the Half Moon Bay coast, south of San Francisco, with his wife and two daughters, where he is the founder and owner of the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company.
Brian T. Olson
Brian Olson graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1988 with a BS in Mathematics and Computing. From 1988 until 1995 he worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley & Co. From 1995 until 1998, Mr. Olson was an investment analyst at Tiger Management. In 1999, he co-founded Viking Global Investors, a hedge fund which currently manages over $10 billion of capital from individual and institutional investors from around the world. Mr. Olson was with Viking until the fall of 2005. Since then he has devoted his time to various philanthropic and personal endeavors. Mr. Olson is the chairman of Civic Builders, a not-for-profit company which constructs schools in New York City and makes those schools available for use by charter schools at affordable rents. He is chairman of the board of Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), an advocacy group who mission is to ensure that every child in Connecticut, regardless of race, ethnicity, or family circumstance, receives a world-class K-12 education. Mr. Olson and his wife, Jill, live in Greenwich, Connecticut with their two sons.
Tim Ranzetta
Tim Ranzetta is the President of the Innovate Foundation, a family foundation that supports education entrepreneurs seeking to close the achievement gap. Tim currently serves as an advisor and/or board member at BASIC Fund, Strive for College, Rocketship Education, Equal Opportunity Schools, Eastside College Preparatory School and JobTrain. He also currently serves on the Site Council at Addison Elementary School in Palo Alto. Previously, Tim was founder and president of Student Lending Analytics (SLA), an independent research and advisory firm focused on finding the best private loans for students. Previous to starting Student Lending Analytics, Tim served in leadership roles with fast growing businesses. As President and Chief Operating Officer of Equilar, a leading compensation research and consulting firm, he led the corporate sales efforts and started up a successful consulting practice as the company grew from five to forty employees during his tenure. As co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at U.S. Shred (later InstaShred), Tim played a pivotal role in the roll-up and eventual sale of the leading provider of document destruction services to Recall, an Australian firm. Tim began his career as a management consultant with Bain & Company and later worked as an equity research analyst at Massachusetts Financial Services. Tim earned his M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.S. in Commerce with Distinction from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia.
Andrea Rice
Andrea Rice is the President and Co-Founder of CareerCore, an early stage technology company that drives better career outcomes for individuals at every stage of their career. Prior to CareerCore, Andrea spent several years as a senior Wall Street executive. She was a Managing Director in equity research at Deutsche Bank, E*Offering, and Volpe Brown Whelan (acquired by Prudential) and was one of the first Wall Street analysts to cover the consumer Internet companies including Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, CNET, and AOL. Andrea was a frequent contributor on CNBC, CNN and in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, and Fortune. Andrea also advised technology-focused hedge fund Camelot Capital on their Internet investments, and drove key elements of Stanford University’s MediaX initiative that fosters collaborative research between multinational corporations and Stanford professors. Early in her career, she worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company and Theodore Barry & Associates in Los Angeles. Andrea received her MBA from Stanford Business School and her bachelor’s degree with honors from Yale University, where she was an All-Ivy tennis player. She serves on the Leadership Council of NewSchools Venture Fund, a leader in the transformation of public schools, and on the board of Reading Partners, a national nonprofit focused on improving literacy among low income K-5 students. A native of Los Angeles, she currently lives in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband and two children.
Joe Wolf
Joe Wolf is a venture investor and entrepreneur focused on providing deserving kids with superior educational and life opportunities. In addition to his work on the New Schools Leadership Council, Joe is the co-founder and Chairman of The Learning Accelerator- a not for profit organization focused on accelerating the implementation of blended learning in district schools. Joe is also on the board of New Classrooms (formerly School of One), is on the board of Innosight Institute (Clay Christensen and Michael Horn’s think tank focused on disruptive innovation with an emphasis on education), and is on the National Board and head of the Innovation Committee for Summer Search (a leadership development program focused on low income kids). Joe was previously a Partner at RS Investments (formerly Robertson Stephens Asset Management) from 2001-2012. At RS, Joe co-managed a team that grew from 100MM in assets to over 12B. His responsibilities included investment and portfolio management, strategic development, sales and marketing, and business management. Prior to RS, he worked at Goldman Sachs & Company in both the equities division and the strategic consulting group. Joe holds a B.A. from Vanderbilt University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Joe lives in Mill Valley, California with his wife Malin and 3 kids Ava, Tatum, and Tomas. In his free time, Joe is an avid outdoorsman enjoying trail running, mountain biking and skiing.