Gesher Calmenson is Founding Director of Remember Us: The Holocaust Bnai Mitzvah Project, and a recent UpStart Bay Area alumnus. He is a Jewish Family Education Fellow, Director Emeritus of a synagogue school, past chairman of the Educators Council at BJE, and was a schools assessment specialist for the NESS Bay Area Initiative. Gesher retired in 1997 from a career in printing and publishing. He was the owner of an editorial production company specializing in college textbooks, and vice-president/graphics division manager of a major San Francisco printing company. In the 1970s he was Director of Esalen San Francisco and a Board member of Esalen Institute. He earned a second-degree black belt in Aikido at age 64. His social service work includes acting as founding facilitator for the Pioneer Network, a national organization that has shifted the paradigm of long-term care of the elderly.
Debbie Findling has served for the past nine years as philanthropic advisor to Richard N. Goldman in her capacity as deputy director of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman fund. Dr. Findling holds a doctorate in education, summa cum laude, from the University of San Francisco; a master’s in education and bachelor of literature in Hebrew letters from the University of Judaism, where she was valedictorian; a bachelor of arts in women’s studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder; and was a visiting graduate student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She was a fellow in the Wexner Heritage Foundation and the Mandel Teacher Educator Institute and a nominee for the prestigious Covenant Award for innovation in Jewish education. Her book, Teaching the Holocaust is based on her doctoral dissertation, and she has contributed chapters to several anthologies. Her work has also appeared in The Sun, and Journal of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, among other publications. Dr. Findling co-founded Di Yunge- a national consultation of new thinkers; co-chaired an international conference on alternatives in education at Stanford University; and founded Kavod Caterers, which has been feeding over 100 homeless people in Denver, Colorado each week for more than 25 years.
Seth Leslie is a National Board Certified teacher, was most recently an assistant principal at Los Altos High School, as well as the vice principal and founding educator of East Palo Alto Academy High School in Menlo Park. Seth served as a mentor teacher as part of San Jose State University’s Teacher Education Program and for Stanford’s Teacher Education Program. He earned a bachelor’s degree in communication from UC San Diego, a master’s degree in education, a Math Credential and Supplementary Authorization in English Composition from Stanford University and a master’s degree in educational administration and urban leadership from San Jose State University. Seth has volunteered with numerous non-profits, and has sat on the boards for Meira Academy, the Glow Foundation, Educators for Fair Consideration, the South Peninsula Jewish Community Teen Foundation, the John Gardner Center at Stanford University, and San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation, where he served on the Learning Advisory Committee and Tech Challenge Committee.
Tara Mohr, UpStart’s chair of the Board of Directors, is a life and executive coach, working with nonprofit leaders and social entrepreneurs. Over the past ten years she has worked in diverse roles in the nonprofit sector, with a focus on organizational change, strategic planning and program design in the Jewish community. Tara is the co-author of The Women’s Passover Companion and The Women’s Seder Sourcebook (Jewish Lights Publishing 2003) and is currently at work on a third book on personal growth. She received a BA in English Literature from Yale University and an MBA from Stanford University. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and loves to spend time seeing art, reading poetry, cooking for friends, and writing.
Carol Saal passionately believes that an integral part of community leadership is a willingness to fundraise and has been instrumental in helping raise millions of dollars for the Jewish Community Federation, the Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Stanford Hillel’s Ziff Center and many other non-profits, both in the Jewish and general community, going back 35 years. In 2001, as president of the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center, she initiated and led the effort to build the Taube Koret Campus. In addition, Saal was a founder of Hatikvah, a Jewish community residential facility serving the needs of developmentally disabled adults, developed the concept of the Palo Alto “To Life! Jewish Street Festival” that is in its tenth year, drawing over 7,000 attendees, and was a founder of New Bridges – a South Peninsula Jewish community outreach organization designed to bring the unaffiliated into the Jewish mainstream. In the non-Jewish community, Carol helped found the Center for Clinical Immunology at Stanford and was one of three parent-founders of the country’s fifth Ronald McDonald House in Palo Alto, in 1978.She has helped her husband Harry launch two high-tech companies, among them Network Associates (originally Network General Corp.), working as a marketing manager until her retirement in 1992. She currently manages Saal Family Partners L.P., an investment partnership and serves as president of the Saal Family Foundation. She is a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College and attended the Centro di Cultura per Stranieri in Florence, Italy.
David Steirman is a member of UpStart's Advisory Board and is the Chair of the Board of the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA). He previously served as President of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma counties, the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Bureau of Jewish Education. He serves as an officer of the United Jewish Communities and the Jewish Senior Living Group and is a board member of the North Peninsula Jewish Campus, TKCJL (Palo Alto based Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life), and the Jewish Home & Senior Living Foundation. He also previously served on the boards of the JCPA (the national public affairs arm of the organized Jewish community) and Peninsula Sinai Congregation. Professionally, he is President of Kestrel Investment Management Corporation in San Mateo. David, his wife, Anne, and two children live in Hillsborough where David serves on the town’s Financial Advisory Committee.
