Founder: Marcia Pagels
Board Chair Emeritus: Ruth Peterson
Board Chair: William Schulte
Vice Chair: Beth Bhatnagar
Secretary:
Treasurer: Tom Rounds
Board Members: Patrick Burt, Gladwyn d’Souza, Ted Huang, Rosalyn Koo, Jeannene Minnix Kingston, Mike Pacelli, Ruth Peterson, Rafael Reyes, Patrick Wooliever
Beth Bhatnagar
Beth Bhatnagar has retired from practicing law and teaching law at College of San Mateo. She earned her B.A. at Duke University, and M.A. in Linguistics at Northwestern University and a J.D. at San Mateo Law School. Beth is an active member of the League of Woman Voters. She has participated in various League projects, including a trip to Russia to set up workshops on democracy for Russian women to advice them on working together to making their government more responsive to their needs. With the League she has organized community dialogues to encourage civic engagement and dialogues to focus on educating students with limited English proficiency. Beth has been a long time volunteer of SSMC.
Patrick Burt
A native of our region, Pat is President of Acteron Corporation, an electro-plating manufacturing company in San Carlos. Under Pat’s leadership, Acteron has emerged as a leading company in waste and pollution prevention and has received numerous awards for its environmental efforts from a broad range of groups including SSMC, Acterra, SAMCEDA, and Cal Water Pollution Control Association among others. In addition to his business experience, Pat’s past 12 years have been devoted to grass roots community involvement as well as city-wide policies and initiatives. Pat is currently a council member in Palo Alto.
Gladwyn d’Souza
Gladwyn d’Souza is former chair of the San Jose Bicycle Advisory Committee, Los Gatos Trails and Bike-ways Committee, and Santa Clara Valley Traffic Safe Communities Network bike pedestrian work group. He was past president of Walk San Jose and served on the board of Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. He is VP of the Peninsula Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition and on the board of California Walks. d’Souza served on the Downtown Access Task Force and Pedestrian Component of the General Plan for the City of San Jose. He is presently on the Coyote Valley Task Force. Gladwyn is an electrical engineer. In 2004 he built a sustainable house in Belmont, CA that was recognized for its use of recycling, low energy, sustainable energy, and low toxicity design elements in the construction. He is a regular commuter by transit and bicycle.
Ted Huang
Ted has been with Webcor Builders for six years and is a founding member of Webcor’s Sustainability Department since its inception three years ago. Ted is responsible for Webcor’s internal sustainability efforts from the office to the jobsite, and for creating sustainability-focused opportunities for Webcor’s partners, vendors, as well as the local community. Ted also ensures that Webcor leads and transparently shares what it learns in the sustainability arena. A Stanford graduate who had a focus in organizational behavior, Ted has a passion for driving the change that is taking place at Webcor, and is pushing it across the entire construction industry.
A little known fact is Ted’s involvement with Webcor’s numerous cycling programs aimed at promoting cycling as a viable form of alternative transportation. This includes managing the top world ranked Webcor Women’s Professional Cycling Team which sent four of its riders to the Beijing Olympics last summer. Undoubtedly, Ted’s experience managing his own Olympic aspirations (he is a 2x Olympian in the sport of windsurfing) has helped him lead this team effort.
Rosalyn Koo
Rosalyn (Roz) Koo was born and raised in Shanghai, China. She attended Mills College and received her B.A. degree (with honors) in Economics from U.C. Berkeley. A business executive, she retired as the Executive Vice-President of a major architectural firm in San Francisco.
Roz has been a volunteer and a social activist since 1977. She takes particular pride in being a Board member of Self-Help for the Elderly for the last 21 years. She was instrumental in helping to shepherd this eldercare agency into a $22 million operation. Additionally, she has central responsibility for managing Self-Help’s facilities in San Mateo County. When asked by the San Mateo Library Foundation, she formed the Asian American Committee to raise funds and improve the Asian collection for the new main library. Roz is also currently working with women in China to send 1,000 young girls from rural areas in China to urban areas to be educated. This project is now in its 5th year and is meeting great success.
Jeannene Minnix Kingston
Jeannene recently joined the South Bayside Waste Management Authority (SBWMA), a joint powers authority that provides waste reduction, recycling, and solid waste programs to it’s twelve member agencies in San Mateo County (10 cities, a sanitation district and the County). The agency also owns and operates the Shoreway Recycling and Disposal Center in San Carlos. Jeannene’s primary role at SBWMA is to manage the office and provide support to the management team. Prior to entering the waste management industry, Jeannene was in marketing, specializing in promotions and outreach for a community bank. Jeannene’s experience also includes 3 years as the Chief Executive Officer for the Daly City-Colma Chamber of Commerce where her main focus was economic development and member services. Jeannene is a graduate of San Francisco State University with a degree in Liberal Studies and a minor in Theater Arts. She is the chair of SSMC’s Awards Event Committee. Her passion for being green has given her the nickname, “Green Jeannene.”
Mike Pacelli
Michael Pacelli is President of Bay Relations and has been involved in public relations and community organizations in San Mateo County and San Francisco for over 25 years. Mike currently serves on the Board of FNB Bancorp and First National Bank of Northern California, the Board of Trustees of the Seton Foundation as well as a member of other Boards and organizations. Mike is also a spokesman for the Serra Monte Shopping Center and Universal Paragon Corporation. He has extensive community experience and held many leadership roles in San Mateo County.
Marcia Pagels
Marcia Pagels is the founder and first Chair of Sustainable San Mateo County. She was Editor-in-Chief of the 2002 edition of the Indicators for a Sustainable San Mateo County; A Yearly Report of Our County’s Quality of Life. Before retiring, Marcia is a graduate of Stanford University and worked there as a Library Specialist for many years. Marcia also volunteered with the Foundation for Global Community. She is a landscape painter and has been a bio-intensive gardener for many years.
Ruth M. Peterson
Ruth is the owner and manager of Bovet Professional Center, a business that she started in 1981. The business is an executive suite designed primarily for attorneys and other professionals. She has been involved with SSMC for 12 years and was Chair of the Business Task Force prior to becoming Chair of the Steering committee. She led the effort for SSMC to become a stand-alone nonprofit in the fall of 2002 and has been the Chair of the Board since then. She has been recognized on many occasions for her community involvement which included six years on the Board of Shelter Network. In 2002 she was inducted into the San Mateo County Women’s Hall of Fame. Ruth attended USC for 3 years, moved to San Francisco and graduated from San Francisco State with a secondary teaching major. She decided to forego teaching when she decided she had an affinity for the business world.
Rafael Reyes
Rafael Reyes is a member of the Sierra Club board of directors and Director of the Bay Area Climate Collaborative (www.baclimate.org). Launched by the mayors of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the Climate Collaborative is accelerating the regional clean energy economy and response to climate change to make the Bay Area a national model. Prior to joining the Climate Collaborative, Rafael was at ecoAmerica where his work included research on energy and climate communications, green jobs workforce development and higher education sustainability. As an award-winning volunteer leader with the Sierra Club he has led numerous initiatives there, including the national Cool Cities initiative which encourages local innovation to reduce climate impacts and spur the green economy. Rafael was born in Peru, is a graduate from UC Berkeley and his career includes 15 years of high tech project management, software architecture and business consulting. He lives in San Mateo and plays rollerhockey.
Tom Rounds
Tom Rounds is Treasurer of SSMC. He was in education for 20 years, beginning as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines. Upon return, Tom started teaching in San Francisco. Leaving education, he joined the CPA firm, Touche Ross, becoming a Senior Manager in the successor firm, Deloitte & Touche. He was also the Manager of Financial Planning at a major freight forwarder and Director of Finance at a start up. For six years Tom served as Treasurer of the California Youth Symphony, one of the country’s leading youth orchestras. Currently, he is Treasurer of another non-profit, Music at Kohl Mansion and cares for his orchard and garden. Tom has a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from Berkeley.
William Schulte
Bill Schulte devoted 29 years to the California Public Utilities Commission, retiring in 2000 after heading its Consumer Services Division. After “retirement” he has been engaged as a regulatory and consumer affairs consultant for a number of public agencies and private industry. In addition to his own practice, he is a partner in Training Partners LLC, which provides consumer affairs and call center training to governmental agencies.
Bill has also conducted a number of poverty-reduction missions for the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Eastern Europe and West and South Africa. He is a member of the Board of Self Help for the Elderly, the Institute of Environmental Entrepreneurs (which created the Green MBA program at Dominican University), and a large private transportation company in California. He is also associated with the Center for Sustainability at Dominican. He holds a BS in Management Engineering from UOP and a MS in Civil Engineering from Stanford. Bill is a registered Civil Engineer in California.
Patrick Wooliever
Patrick has worked as an environmental engineer for 20 years with small companies, multinational manufacturers, governments, and the United Nations helping organizations reduce their environmental impact, improve worker conditions and productivity, and reduce operating costs. He’s worked in California, across the United States, and internationally in Mexico, Japan, China, and Micronesia. Locally, he helped the City of San Francisco develop and implement policies for environmentally preferable purchasing, works with the U.S. EPA to advance sustainability initiatives, serves on the City of Half Moon Bay ’s Sustainability Task Force, and advises the California Regional Progress Report in assessing sustainability issues across the state.
Patrick was born in Japan, grew up in the Bay Area, graduated from U.C. Davis, and has lived with his family on the San Mateo County Coastside for more than 15 years raising his children, traversing Montara Mountain and Tunitas Creek Road on various bicycles, and enjoying the natural beauty of the coastal region.