Founder: Marcia Pagels
BoardChair: Ruth Peterson
Vice Chair: Patrick Burt
Secretary: Beth Bhatnagar
Treasurer: Tom Rounds
Board members: Ward Danner, Gladwyn d’Souza, Rosalyn Koo, Colleen McAvoy, Jeannene Minnix, Rafael Reyes, William R. Schulte, Stephani Scott, Steve Slomka

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.

Ward Danner
Ward Danner is currently a Recycling Coordinator with Allied Waste Services and covers the Redwood City area. He was an environmental intern with the City of Cupertino prior to employment with Allied, and has worked with the San Clara County Center for the Development of Recycling. He is a member of the Redwood City Chamber and its Economic Development Committee.
Ward received his BS degree from San Jose State University with a major in Environmental Studies and a minor in Economics. He keeps himself busy with mountain bike riding in the Santa Cruz mountains and an occasional triathlon.

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.

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.

Colleen McAvoy
Colleen McAvoy is a partner and attorney with the firm of McGlashan & Sarrail. She is a Certified Estate Planner and also practices real estate and business transactional work. Colleen has held an impressive array of positions with the San Mateo County Bar Association, and graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Public Policy and from Hastings College of the Law.
She has been active in her children’s schools and in the San Mateo-Foster City School District. Social equity has always been of concern to her as well as the environment. She plays with two indoor soccer teams and is enjoying the Scottish game of shinty. She is a graduate of the Leadership Class put on by the San Mateo Chamber.

Jeannene Minnix
Jeannene Minnix is a Bank Officer and Marketing Coordinator for First National Bank of Northern California, a community bank based in San Mateo County. Her specialty is in community outreach and event coordinating. Prior to this, she was CEO of the Daly City-Colma Chamber of Commerce where she promoted economic growth and vitality in Daly City, Colma and the surrounding areas for seven years.
Jeannene is a graduate of San Francisco State University with a degree in Liberal Studies and a minor in Theater Arts. She is a graduate of the North San Mateo County Leadership Forum, a member of the Skyline College President’s Council, the South San Francisco Kiwanis Club, and the SSMC Awards Committee. Her passion for being green and helping people green their lives has given her the nickname, “Green Jeannene.”

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.

Rafael Reyes
Rafael Reyes is a member of the Sierra Club board of directors and Program Manager for ecoAmerica. At ecoAmerica Rafael leads large scale for-profit and non-profit partnership projects to reach mainstream Americans on the benefits of environmental progress. Rafael’s projects with ecoAmerica include the collaboration with Monster.com to create GreenCareers. As an award-winning volunteer leader with the Sierra Club he has led numerous initiatives, most recently the Cool Cities 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 his blog on Northern California climate crisis topics is www.ClimateAtBay.net.

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.

Stephani Scott
Stephani Scott is Executive Director of the San Mateo County Community Colleges Foundation. She was previously CEO of Sequoia Health care District. Prior to her role as CEO, Ms. Scott was the Operations Coordinator at Sequoia. She is responsible for contributing to the development of the nursing education partnership between the District, Sequoia Hospital, San Francisco State University and Canada College. She was previously Executive Director of Sustainable San Mateo County.

Ms. Scott has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and is a graduate of the Redwood City/San Carlos/Belmont Leadership Program. While in college Ms. Scott was a member of the Pacific Sociological Association and participated in an international studies program in Central America with a focus on indigenous history and contemporary issues concerning economics and politics.

Steve Slomka
Steven Slomka is a retired high tech marketing executive with over 30 years experience developing and executing comunications plans for startups like Zebra Technologies and System Software Associates and industry behemoths like IBM. Growing up on the East Coast, Steve spent summers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and currently is a resident of the San Mateo County coast. As such, he’s very aware of sustainability issues, understanding the need to balance environmental concerns with economic prosperity. Steve has led teams on many projects for the Taproot Foundation, a pro-bono supplier of marketing expertise to non profits and he sits on the board of River of Words, sponsor of the world’s largest free creativity contest that connects kids to their watersheds and imaginations through poetry & art.