Ilana DeBare (President) is a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. One of the founders of the Julia Morgan School, she is author of Where Girls Come First: The Rise, Fall, and Surprising Revival of Girls' Schools, the first comprehensive history of American girls’ schools, published by Tarcher/Penguin in 2004.  Previously Ms. DeBare spent nine years at the Sacramento Bee, where she wrote a series of stories on women in the computer industry that won the 1996 Jane Cunningham Croly Award from the General Federation of Women's Clubs for reporting on women's issues. She  received a B.A. in English from Harvard College and a Master's degree in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. Her daughter Rebecca graduated from JMSG in 2008.

Mike Volk (Vice President) has had his own independent consulting business since 1982, specializing in technical and marketing consulting related to pumps and other industrial equipment.  He teaches short courses on pumps, and has authored a 500-page handbook on pumps, published by CRC Press. Mr. Volk has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in business.  His daughters Sarah and Monica are both Julia Morgan alumnae.

Myrt Whitcomb (Secretary) was an administrator at Mills College from 1991 until 2004, serving as dean of students and then for a year as acting dean of admissions. Prior to that, she worked in administration at several other universities including associate dean of students at Princeton and assistant dean of students at Lehigh. She received her B.A. from Stanford and her Master’s from Cornell in social psychology and student personnel administration. Ms. Whitcomb also serves as a docent at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers.

Mike Barbee (Treasurer) is the president of Carlson, Barbee & Gibson, a Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Planning firm that he founded in 1989. The firm specializes in land development engineering, including boundary and top surveys, planning and feasibility studies, design of grading and improvements, mapping, construction staking, and related services. Mike attended the University of Utah and U.C. Berkeley. He currently serves on the board of the California and Nevada Civil Engineers and Land Surveyors Association. In the past, he was on the board of Redwood Day School. His daughter Alison graduated from JMSG in 2007.

Ann Clarke (ex officio board member) is the founding Director of the Julia Morgan School for Girls. She has over 30 years of experience in teaching and educational administration. Ms. Clarke has served as director of the lower school at the Hamlin School; head at Marin Horizon School in Corte Madera; assistant head at St. Paul’s Episcopal Day School in Oakland; and director of the middle school at Woodmere Academy in New York. She has served as chair of the California steering committee of the Multicultural Alliance and also as co-chair of Project Discover, an organization that provides academic and personal enrichment for children of limited means. She is a member of the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools and has been a member of the National Association of Principals of Schools for Girls.

Murray Cohen has served as Head of School of The College Preparatory School since 1999. He joined the school in 1977 as an English teacher and became Assistant Head in 1992. He has Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate Degrees from The Johns Hopkins University and taught English as an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley from 1968 to 1976. He has served on the board of Redwood Day School in Oakland and Ecole Bilingue in Berkeley.

Jody Brunk Knowlton is Principal and Co-founder of Artsource Consulting of San Francisco, a firm specializing in the development of fine art collections for private, corporate, and institutional collectors world-wide. Prior to co-founding Artsource Consulting in 1994, Ms. Knowlton worked with Roselyne C. Swig Artsource, where she managed multiple corporate and private fine art collections, and developed ArtReach, a rotating exhibition program that partnered non-profit arts institutions with businesses. Ms. Knowlton has helped found nonprofits working on domestic violence and arts in education, and has served on the parent board of Thornhill Elementary School for the past five years. Her daughter Sarah graduated from JMSG in 2008 and her younger daughter Olivia is in the 7th grade.

Jolie Krakauer is an attorney who has spent the past decade raising her three girls and providing volunteer leadership for their schools. She has served as board chair at the Berkwood Hedge School and at the Childrens Community Center, a parent coop where the board effectively ran the school. She is a founding board member of Los Mapaches Project, a group that educates children and adults about Latin American music and culture. As an attorney, she worked at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in San Francisco and later for Martin, Ryan & Andrada, where her focus was medical malpractice defense. Ms. Krakauer graduated from U.C. Santa Cruz and Hastings College of the Law. Her two older daughters Zoe and Greer are JMSG alumnae and her youngest daughter Lila is in 6th grade at JMSG.

Pamela Organista is Professor and Chair of Psychology at the University of San Francisco. Prior to joining the faculty at USF, she was an Assistant Clinical Professor providing psychotherapy, consultation, and supervision in the Department of General Internal Medicine at UCSF. Her research interests include community-based prevention interventions and ethnic minority health issues. Publications include Readings in Ethnic Psychology: African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanics/Latinos (Routledge, 1998), and Acculturation: Advances in Theory, Measurement, and Applied Research (American Psychological Association, 2003) which she co-edited. She is the founding and present Director of the Ethnic Studies Program at the University of San Francisco and from 1998-2000 served as the Director of Academic Advising in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Organista completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology and Black studies at Washington University in St. Louis, doctorate in clinical psychology at Arizona State University, and clinical psychology post-doctorate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco. Her daughter Zena is in 7th grade at JMSG.

Walter Patrick has worked as special assistant to the S.F. Unified School Districts’ superintendent since 1998, overseeing facilities projects for the school district. Before that, he had his own business for five years as a consultant in administration, human resources and facilities. Prior to that, Mr. Patrick worked in a series of human resources positions including a vice president of human resources at Crocker Bank, and human resource positions at Ford Aerospace and AircoTemescal Co., a metallurgy firm. He received his Master's in business administration and labor relations from California State University Hayward. Mr. Patrick has served on the boards of the I Have a Dream organization and of Oakland YouthWorks. His daughter Kayla was in JMSG’s founding class. 

Kaveh Rad runs a structural engineering practice in Oakland. Born and raised in Iran, he graduated from Cornell University in engineering. His work won an Oakland Firestorm Design Award. Mr. Rad also has an M.F.A. in creative writing from Mills College. His older daughter Naseem graduated from JMSG in 2006 and his younger daughter Leila is in 8th grade at JMSG. 

Jonathan Rivin is a commercial real estate transactions lawyer in private practice in the San Francisco firm of Dudnick Detwiler Rivin & Stikker LLP, where his clients include institutions, investors, entrepreneurs, small to medium-sized companies and non-profit organizations. He served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the California State Bar Real Property Section in 2000-01 and has held leadership positions for a number of other bar and civic organizations, including the American Bar Association, the Easter Seal Society, the Down Syndrome League and the Camphill Foundation. Mr. Rivin is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School. His daughter Sarah was a member of JMSG’s first graduating class in 2002.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Strode is an attorney with a private practice in licensing, intellectual property and high technology/business law. She currently serves on the City of Berkeley Homeless Commission, to which she was appointed to by Mayor Bates in 2006. From 2002-04, she worked as Director of Development at Jewish Family & Children’s Services of the East Bay, where she oversaw a $300,000 annual fund, initiated a major gifts program, and created the first large-scale annual donor and volunteer recognition event. Ms. Strode is a graduate of Harvard College and UCLA Law School. Her daughter Kate graduated from JMSG in 2008.

Lisa Urry is an Associate Professor of Biology at Mills College and Chair of the Biology Department, with a specialty in developmental biology. She was a contributing author on the seventh edition of the largest-selling college-level general biology textbook in the world (Biology, by Campbell and Reece), which has sold about 6 million copies in total, and will be one of the co-authors on the forthcoming eighth edition. She received her B.A. from Tufts University in Biology and French, worked as a research biologist at the New England Aquarium, and then obtained her Ph.D. at MIT from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography. She did post-doctoral work at Tufts University, Harvard Medical School, and UC Berkeley prior to beginning her current position at Mills in 1995. Her daughter, Lily Dobberteen, graduated from JMSG in 2005.

Victoria Jew Wong is a self-employed architect in Oakland who develops her own projects, both residential and commercial. A third generation Chinese-American and a native San Franciscan, Ms. Wong is a member of the Jack London Aquatic Center Masters Rowing Team. She received her bachelor’s degree in architecture from UC Berkeley. Ms. Wong’s two oldest daughters Rachel and Stacey are JMSG alumnae and her youngest daughter Jodie is in 7th grade at JMSG.