Mary Adams-O'Connell, Board of Trustees

Childrens Hospital Los Angeles

Mary Adams-O'Connell, Chairperson of Healthy City, is President and CEO of Adams O'Connell, Inc., an asset management business she started with her daughter. The company specializes in managing real property, security portfolios and private equity investments for a small group of investors. In 2000 Ms. Adams-O'Connell helped form Healthy City to create a county-wide web-accessible information system for the 2001 Centennial of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. Ms. Adams-O'Connell currently serves on the Board of Trustees of CHLA, on its Investment Committee, Government Relations Committee, and the Saban Research Foundation Board. She is a former Treasurer of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. As a Board Member of the LAPD Reserves Foundation, she supports Reserves volunteering their time for LAPD duties. Ms. Adams-O'Connell received her BA in Latin American Studies from Smith College and completed her MBA from the University of Missouri in 1988 at UCLA.

Molly Munger, Co-Director

Advancement Project LA

Molly Munger brings an extensive background of legal expertise to the Advancement Project, including twenty years as a federal prosecutor and business litigator. Before becoming a staff attorney with the Los Angeles office of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1994, she was a partner in the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, served as President of the Los Angeles chapter of the Federal Bar Association and participated actively in many bar committees and task forces. She received the Women Lawyers of Los Angeles Ernestine Stahlhut Award in 1996 and, with Co-Director Steve English, the ACLU of Southern California's Equal Justice Advocacy Award in 2002. Munger is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She serves on the boards of the James Irvine Foundation, Occidental College and Children Now.

Maribel Marin, Executive Director

211 LA County

Maribel Marin was appointed by the Board of Directors of 211 LA County (formerly, INFO LINE of Los Angeles) as its Executive Director in April of 2002. Marin is an active board member of the California Alliance of Information and Referral Systems (CAIRS), serving as it's current President. Under Maribel's leadership, 211 LA County implemented the 2-1-1 dialing code in Los Angeles County on July 1, 2005. A graduate of the University of California - Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Marin brings more than ten years of policy and management experience working for the City of Los Angeles and the non-profit sector.

Peter Manzo, Director of Strategic Initiatives

Advancement Project LA

Peter Manzo is the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Advancement Project. In addition to his work at the Advancement Project, he is a Senior Research Fellow at the UCLA Center for Civil Society, and is the author of numerous articles and reports on legal, management and policy issues affecting nonprofits and philanthropy. Previously, Mr. Manzo was the Executive Director and General Counsel of the Center for Nonprofit Management, where he directed the expansion of the Center's information, training, consulting, technology and search and compensation services to nonprofits. Prior to leading the Center, Mr. Manzo was Directing Attorney of Community Development Programs for Public Counsel, the nation's largest pro bono law firm and the Los Angeles affiliate of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where he represented nonprofit charitable organizations in a broad range of real property, corporate, tax and other transactional matters. Before moving into the nonprofit sector, Mr. Manzo practiced real estate and corporate law in the private sector, first at the law firm of Riordan & McKinzie, then at Tuttle & Taylor in Los Angeles.

Mr. Manzo is a graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley; he also attended the London School of Economics, where he received a Master's degree in Political Sociology, and the University of Notre Dame, where he received a Bachelor's degree in Government.

He is a member of the boards of directors of: National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; PacAdvantage, a nonprofit alliance whose mission is to enable small employers throughout California to provide excellent, affordable health coverage to their employees; 211 Los Angeles, the information and referral provider for the Los Angeles region; United Friends of the Children, which provides transitional living assistance and job training to emancipated foster youth in Los Angeles County; Los Angeles Education Corps, an affiliate of the LA Conservation Corps that operates three charter schools; and the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, which provides free legal representation to low income residents of East LA.

Bill Pitkin, Research Director

United Way of Greater Los Angeles

Bill Pitkin is Research Director at United Way of Greater Los Angeles, where he oversees all research and evaluation activities related to United Way's Community Investment portfolio. Previously, he was Executive Director at the Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation, which works to build the capacity of faith-based and community organizations in low-income areas of Los Angeles County. Bill worked for several years as Research Director at the Advanced Policy Institute (since renamed the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge) in the UCLA School of Public Affairs, where he played a lead role in the technical development of several community technology projects, such as Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles (NKLA), Neighborhood Knowledge California (NKCA), and Healthy City. Bill has published research articles and reports in areas such as community and nonprofit technology, housing affordability, mortgage lending discrimination, participatory planning in Latin America, and urban planning history and has taught in the UCLA Urban Planning Department and CSUN Urban Studies and Planning Program. Bill has B.A. and M.A. degrees in Theological Studies from Wheaton College (IL) and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Urban Planning from UCLA.

Dr. Jacquelyn McCroskey, Professor

USC School of Social Work

Jacquelyn McCroskey, who holds the John Milner Professorship in Child Welfare, was named California Social Worker of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers in 2003. She is an active advocate for children and families in Los Angeles County, advising policy makers, administrators and philanthropists on using data to improve program planning and track results. She was one of the founders of the Children's Planning Council, which has been called the "strongest and most influential cross-system vehicle advocating for reform of children's services system in a major U.S. metropolitan area." She is a commissioner of the First 5 LA Commission, which has allocated almost $1 billion for services and research for young children and their families since its inception in 1999. She also serves on the County's Child Care Policy Roundtable. McCroskey has led all of these entities using data to inform planning, analyze the distribution of resources and assess the impact on the lives of children and families.

Her research focuses on the financing and organization of services for children and families, utilization of results and performance measurement in the social services, the effectiveness of child welfare services and impact of inter-professional training on professional development.

Recent publications include a summary of the evidence-based family and community-centered supports and services in a book edited by McAuley, Pecora & Rose, entitled Enhancing the Well-Being of Children and Families Through Effective Interventions: UK and USA Evidence for Practice (2006); an article in Social Indicators Research Journal on using child and family indicators to influence communities and policy-making in Los Angeles County (2006); and an article in Children and Schools estimating public expenditures on education and social services in the USC neighborhood (2004).

John Kim, Director

Healthy City Project

Mr. Kim has been working on social justice and community development issues for the past 10 years in both Oakland and Los Angeles. As an organizer for Oakland's Kid First! Coalition, he mediated racial tensions among students of color and helped to organize a student-driven proposal to offer Ethnic Studies in all Oakland Public High Schools. As the Executive Director of the Korean Community Center of the East Bay, John significantly expanded the agency's financial base and programmatic capacity through the development of new programs in the areas of domestic abuse, immigrant senior support, and community development. Mr. Kim's work in the Bay Area has been recognized by KQED/Channel 9 as the 2001 Local Hero of the Year Award and by Oakland's Mayor Jerry Brown with the proclamation of a "John K. Kim Day" in the City of Oakland. In Los Angeles, Mr. Kim has worked as an independent consultant with nonprofit organizations around program development/planning and grant writing. Mr. Kim previously worked with the Center for Nonprofit Management to oversee and facilitate the strategic planning for the newly established NPower Los Angeles. Mr. Kim also managed the planning and implementation of the Healthy City Project and currently serves as its Director.