Anne Campbell, San Mateo County Superintendent of Schools

Anne has been an educator for 35 years; most recently as the Superintendent in the Portola Valley Elementary School District. Ms. Campbell has also served as Superintendent in the Belmont‐Redwood Shores Elementary District, Principal at Ralston Middle School, Assistant Principal, Counselor and Middle School Teacher in San Mateo/Foster City. She holds a Master’s Degree in education from Stanford University, a B.A. from Scripps College and a counseling credential and administrative credential from California State University East Bay.

Ms. Campbell is currently serving as President of the San Mateo County Superintendents Association and is just finishing up her term as Chair of the San Mateo County Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) Governing Board. In 2008, the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) honored Anne's accomplishments as an educational leader by naming her Superintendent of the Year for Region 5, which spans both San Francisco and San Mateo Counties.

Dale Jones, Executive Director/Superintendent, Discovery Charter School

Dale Jones has been a professional educator for over 23 years, serving most recently as the principal of Nimitz School, a Title One school and an English Language Development Center in the Cupertino Union School District. Prior to working at Nimitz, he was the principal of McAuliffe School, a parent participation, child-centered alternative school. He’s also been a middle school Assistant Principal, a classroom teacher, and a special education teacher.

Dale is a hands-on administrator who believes in leading by example and through the creation of collaborative learning communities, where students, staff, and parents all share the joy of learning together and from each other.He believes that learning to ask the right questions is just as important as finding the right answers, and that when children are given real choice in what and how they learn they not only maintain their intrinsic motivation to learn, they are also develop the skills and aptitudes to be life-long learners.

Michael Matsuda, Co-Chair, California Coalition for Partnership 21 Century, Coordinator for Quality Teacher Programs with the Anaheim Union High School District, and President of the North Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees

As state co-chair of the California Coalition for P21, a broad consortium of educators and business and labor leaders, Mr. Matsuda has helped to forge a unified vision for education encompassing a whole curriculum that includes STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and CTE (Career Tech Education) pathways focusing on critical thinking and applied learning.He works as a coordinator for Quality Teacher Programs with the Anaheim Union High School District,

He has been a leader for English Learners, serving as a past member of the English Learner Advisory Committee to the State Board of Education. He has also co-authored curriculum on the Mendez v. Westminster civil rights case, as well as curriculum on the Vietnamese American Refugee Experience. Mr. Matsuda currently serves as vice president for Californians Together, an advocacy network for English Learners throughout the state.  In that capacity, he has helped developed policy and recommendations furthering the interests of English Learners through curriculum, instruction, and assessment analysis and recommendations.

Bernie Trilling, 21st Century Learning Expert, Advisor, Author, former Global Director of the Oracle Education Foundation

As the global director of the Oracle Education Foundation, Mr. Trilling directed the development of education strategies, partnerships, and services for the Foundation and its ThinkQuest programs. He has served as Board Member of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and co-chaired the committee that developed the highly regarded “rainbow” learning framework.

Prior to joining the Oracle Education Foundation, Bernie was Director of the Technology In Education group at WestEd, a U.S. national educational laboratory, where he led a team of educational technologists in integrating technology into both the instructional and administrative realms of education. He has also served in a variety of roles in both education and industry, including Executive Producer for instruction at Hewlett-Packard Company, where he helped lead a state-of-the-art global interactive distance learning network. Bernie co-authored the widely acclaimed book, 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times, published by Wiley. He has also written dozens of articles for educational journals and magazines and is a featured speaker at numerous educational conferences.

Joseph Di Salvo, President, Santa Clara County Board of Education (Moderator)

Joseph Di Salvo began his 33-year career in education as a teacher at Osborne School in Juvenile Hall. He serves on the Joint Committee on Child Care, Joint Legislative Advisory Committee and the Juvenile Justice Systems Collaborative. He has been a teacher, director, elementary and middle school principal, union president for Santa Clara County teachers, and administrative president for multiple school districts. He also served for three years as a personnel commissioner for the SCCOE. In 2001, he was recognized as the ACSA Region 8 Administrator of the Year.

He also has written columns on education that have been published in Media News’ Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, and has worked as an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University and National University’s Graduate School of Education. He also writes a blog on San Jose Inside.

Cindy Chavez, Executive Director of Working Partnerships USA

Chavez’ work as an elected official and community and labor leader in San Jose has been marked by her ability to build new collaborations to create innovative policy. She served for eight years as a member of the San José City Council, the last two as Vice Mayor. As a full time elected representative, she maintained a reputation as an advocate for improving the quality of life in neighborhoods throughout San Jose. She was a leader in developing cutting-edge community based programs to address crime, education, small business development and neighborhood revitalization. Chavez has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including Leader in Residence at her alma mater, San Jose State University; a research fellowship with the University of California, Santa Cruz's Center for Global International & Regional Studies; Silicon Valley Business Journal's Influential Women in Business, 2004 to name a few.

Lenny Goldberg, Executive Director of the California Tax Reform Association and Owner of Lenny Goldberg and Associates, a public interest consulting and lobbying firm in Sacramento. 

Mr. Goldberg has been involved with major tax legislation and tax initiative campaigns in California for the past 25 years.  He is on the board of Citizens for Tax Justice in Washington, D.C. and is on the advisory committee of the Franchise Tax Board. He has written for a national tax publication and has written extensively on reforming Proposition 13.   He also advocates on energy, consumer, privacy and housing issues for non-profit/public interest groups.  He was named in a recent poll of legislators and staff as “the most effective liberal crusader” in the legislature,  He has degrees in economics from Williams College and UC Berkeley. 

Fred Silva, Senior Fiscal Policy Advisor, California Forward. 

Having spent 40 years in the development of public policy in state and local government, Fred is an expert in state and local finance, government operations, and the history of the state and local fiscal relationship in California. Prior to working with California Forward, Fred was a fiscal policy advisor to New California Network and previously senior advisor on governmental relations for the Public Policy Institute of California. From 1994 to 1996, Fred was executive secretary to the California Constitution Revision Commission, where he directed the staff work and wrote the final report of the Commission. He was chief fiscal advisor to the President Pro Tempore of the California State Senate from 1981 to 1994. He also was chief consultant to the Senate Local Government Committee from 1975 to 1981.He has authored nearly two dozen publications and commentaries regarding government fiscal issues in California.

Phil Ting, Assessor-Recorder, San Francisco.

Mr. Ting is a solutions-focused, innovative reformer whose efforts have enabled him to generate over $245 million in new revenue for San Francisco and make sure everyone pays their fair share in property taxes. Ting began his career as a real estate financial advisor, gaining practical and hands-on experience in fiscal management and property assessments while working at Arthur Andersen and CB Richard Ellis. Prior to serving as the Assessor-Recorder, Ting also had a long history of civil rights advocacy - he was the Executive Director of the Asian Law Caucus, an organization founded in 1972 to advance and promote the legal and civil rights of the Asian Pacific Islander community. He is past president of the Bay Area Assessors Association and has served on the board of Equality California Institute. He currently serves on numerous boards including the California Alumni Association (Go Bears!). Ting is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

John Fensterwald, editor and co-writer, Educated Guess (Moderator),

Mr. Fensterwald is a journalist at the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, which he joined in September 2009. For 11 years before that, he wrote editorials at the Mercury News in San Jose, with a focus on education. A native of Baltimore and graduate of Tufts University, John worked as a reporter, news editor and opinion editor for three newspapers in New Hampshire for two decades before discovering the wonders of California through a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 1997 and heading West shortly thereafter. His wife is an elementary school teacher and his daughter attends the University California at Davis.