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Speakers 2010–11

Date	Speaker, Organization, Topic
July 19, 2011	Victor Tam, principal of the Chinese Education Center (CEC), a public elementary school in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). This year will be his second year serving as principal at CEC. The school is in Chinatown and is dedicated to meeting the needs of newly-arriving Chinese-speaking immigrant children. Its program gives the students and their families one year to transition to regular SFUSD school programs. Victor has served SFUSD for the last 20 years as teacher and principal. He is married to another long-time SFUSD employee, Rosina Tong, who is currently the principal of the Chinese Immersion School at deAvila. Together, they have three children, all attending SFUSD schools. Topic: problems facing the school district with funding and support.
August 9, 2011	David Chiu, president, San Francisco Board of Supervisors and candidate for mayor of San Francisco. David Chiu was elected in November 2008 to represent San Francisco's District 3, which is mainly east of Van Ness and north of the Tenderloin and Market Street. In January 2009, David was elected president of the Board of Supervisors. Before joining the Board, David was a founder and CEO of Grassroots Enterprise, an online communications technology company. Prior to Grassroots, he worked as a criminal prosecutor at the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and as a civil rights attorney at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. In the mid-1990s, David served as Democratic Counsel to the U.S. Senate Constitution Subcommittee and as Senator Paul Simon's aide to the Senate Budget Committee. The eldest child of immigrant parents, David Chiu grew up in Boston and received his undergraduate degree, law degree, and master's degree in public policy from Harvard University. Before taking office, David servd as a Small Business Commissioner, chair of Lower Polk Neighbors, board president of the Youth Leadership Institute, board chair of the Chinatown Community Development Center, judge-arbitrator for the Polk Street Community Court, and president of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area. David was previously elected to the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee and chaired California's 13th Assembly District Democratic Committee.
August 16, 2011	Leland Yee, state senator and candidate for mayor of san Francisco. Leland Yee emigrated at the age of 3 to San Francisco from China. His father served in the U.S. Army and the Merchant Marine. Yee received his bachelor’s degree from Berkeley and his master’s degree from San Francisco State University. After earning his doctorate in Child Psychology at the University of Hawaii, Dr. Yee worked in various mental health and school settings. In 1996, Yee was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. In 2002, he was electe to the California Assembly and in 2006, he was elected to the California Senate. During his tenure in the state legislature, Yee has fought for children, mental health services, working families, seniors, education, open government, consumer protection, civil rights, and the environment. He has consistently voted against budget cuts to education, social services, and health care.
August 23, 2011	Joanna Rees, venture capitalist and candidate for mayor of San Francisco. Joanna grew up in a boisterous Italian-American family in Montclair, New Jersey. She was a competitive gymnast in high school and at Duke University, where she earned a BS in psychology. In 1993, following the loss of her father and the birth of her daughter, she came to San Francisco. In 1996 she took the risk of a lifetime, plunging headlong into the traditionally male-dominated world of venture capital and formed Venture Strategy Group together with a partner (later renamed VSP Capital). VSP helped build more than 60 Bay Area companies, moving innovative concepts from the drawing board, through the research, planning, and financing stages, and establishing dozens of solid, sustainable companies with long-term value. VSP companies have created thousands of jobs across the Bay Area. An active teacher, mentor and education reform advocate, Joanna believes passionately in the need for greater innovation in the arena of public education. She teaches at Santa Clara University and has served for eight years on the Bay Area Board of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, which brings business-building skills to students in low-income communities. Joanna is an advisory board member of the San Francisco School Alliance and serves on the board of the New Schools Venture Fund, which helps education entrepreneurs scale their enterprises to effect systems change in San Francisco and across the country. Joanna also serves on the Global Board of Directors of Endeavor, a non-profit that assists high-impact entrepreneurs in developing nations.
August 30, 2011	Alliance for Smiles, and president 2006–2007, Rotary Club of San Francisco. Alliance for Smiles organizes and sends surgical teams for two-week missions to repair children’s broken smiles by providing free comprehensive treatment for cleft lip and palate deformities in under-served areas of the world. During a mission, 80 to 120 children receive surgery for cleft lip and palate anomalies. Alliance for Smiles works side-by-side with local medical practitioners to exchange ideas on proper medical techniques and procedures and provide follow-up care. Alliance for Smiles has focused primarily but not exclusively on China, where the need is great.
October 4, 2011	Curtis Lum, San Francisco Police Department, Taraval Station
October 11, 2011	Nicol Juratovac, Captain, Fire Station 19 (Stonestown), San Francisco Fire Department.
November 8, 2011	Stephanie Herrin, New Generations Chair, Rotary District 5150
January 17, 2012	Alanna Ford, Rotary ambassadorial scholar to Scotland, 2012–13. Alanna Ford recently graduated Magna Cum Laude from Davidson College in North Carolina, where she studied art and international studies. She currently works in marketing and communications at Women's Funding Network, a nonprofit that connects women's foundations around the world. In August, she will begin studies in international business at the University of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, as a Rotary ambassadorial scholar.