Board of directors
Candace Bond McKeever (Chair), CEO of Strategic Solutions Group Inc., a small, diversified organization specializing in a full array of government and community relations, project management services, marketing and strategic management consulting. With over 20 years of experience as a business development specialist, Ms. Bond McKeever has been retained by leading corporations and non-profits to assist in their overall strategic development. She serves on the board of CDU, the Alliance for Veterans, Children’s Institute Inc. in Los Angeles and the Advisory Committee on the Arts for the Kennedy Center. She served as Co-Chair for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Diversity Committee and also served on the board of the MLK Community Hospital Foundation. She received her B.A. cum laude from Harvard University and her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in Cambridge, MA. She earned an Executive Management degree in Sustainability from the Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco and is a graduate of the USC Ross Minority Program in Real Estate.
Linda Griego (Vice-Chair & Founder) is an entrepreneur, successful business owner and former Los Angeles deputy mayor in charge of economic development in the Bradley administration. She served as the chief executive officer of Rebuild LA, charged with the economic recovery following the 1992 Civil Unrest; and was the chief executive officer of the LA Community Development Bank, a $400 million HUD funded empowerment zone lending institution. She serves on the boards of directors of CBS Corporation, AECOM and American Funds. She is a trustee of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. She served on the founding board of the MLK Community Hospital: and founded the MLK Community Health Foundation. She earned a B.A. in history from UCLA and was awarded the UCLA Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the university.
Renata Simril (Treasurer) the president and chief executive officer of the LA84 Foundation, brings more than two decades of leadership experience in government, management and civic engagement. Ms. Simril served as a Los Angeles deputy mayor of economic development in the Hahn administration. Earlier in her career, she was on the staff of former Councilman Ridley-Thomas, where she worked to rebuild South Los Angeles after the 1992 Civil Unrest. As a senior executive with Forest City Development, she worked to expand rental and affordable housing in Los Angeles. She also served as chief of staff to the publisher of Times Mirror. She holds a B.A. in Urban Studies from Loyola Marymount University and a Master’s Degree in Real Estate Development from USC.
Brenda A. Levin, FAIA, is president and principal of Levin & Associates Architects in Los Angeles, which she established in 1980. She is an urban revitalization pioneer, achieving worldwide recognition for her historic preservation and adaptive re-use work, including the restoration of the John Anson Ford Amphitheater, Grand Central Market, City Hall, Griffith Observatory and the Wiltern Theatre. Recent projects include buildings at Occidental and Scripps Colleges; galleries at the Huntington; and housing at the Downtown Women’s Center and Adams Congress Apartments. She has received several awards including the LA Architectural Angel Award from Project Restore. Ms. Levin was educated in graphic design at Carnegie Mellon and New York Universities and in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Fred Ali is president and chief executive officer of the Weingart Foundation, which works to advance fairness, inclusion, and opportunity for all Southern Californians, especially those communities hit hardest by persistent poverty. Before joining the foundation in 1999, he held senior leadership positions with a range of nonprofit organizations, educational institutions and government agencies.
He serves on the board of directors of Covenant House California and the board of the Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles. He also chairs the board of the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He is a senior fellow at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Yolanda Vera is the Chief Executive Officer of the MLK Outpatient Center located on the medical campus. She served as Senior Deputy for Healthcare Services and Advocacy, Office of LA County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, and has extensive background in civil rights and health-related matters. She is an attorney whose legal work includes positions with the Legal Aid Foundation, the National Health Law Program and the Western Center on Law and Poverty. She also served as the Director of LA Health Action, a California Endowment-funded non-profit dedicated to improving the health of low-income LA County communities, and as a member of the boards of the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California and the Child Health Initiative of Greater LA. She earned a B.A. in English from Loyola Marymount and a J.D. from UCLA.
Mark Ghaly, M.D. is the Deputy Director for Community Health, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (“DHS”) and is a pediatrician by training. His role at DHS focuses on how community resources and community efforts can help build a stronger and richer health services delivery system in the safety network of South Los Angeles. Dr. Ghaly is also working to enrich the health care services provided to youth in the juvenile detention system and for children within foster care. Prior to his current position, Dr. Ghaly was the medical director at Southeast Health Center (San Francisco Department of Public Health Clinic called Southeast Health Center in the Bayview Hunters Point community. He attended Brown University and received his MD and his MPH in health policy from Harvard University. He completed his residency in pediatrics at UCSF.
Denise Rios Rodriguez is a retired partner and health care lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP, where she focused her practice on payment issues arising under government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Her considerable knowledge in health-related laws and regulations has been applied in advising clients on the complexities of federal, state and local health care funding, as well as strategic planning for health care systems. Ms. Rodriguez was a member of the Health Care Industry Team.
In her early legal career, Ms. Rodriguez was an attorney for the United States Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., where she served as counsel to the Health Care Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and other agencies within the Department. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School (J.D., cum laude, 1979) and Wayne State University (B.A., with distinction, 1975).
Gerard McCallum II has over 20 years of experience in strategic marketing and planning, multi-tiered operations and risk management, as well as, creating and implementing community and municipal development programming. At Wilson Meany, Gerard serves as Senior Project Manager responsible for entitlement and development of commercial retail space and residential units. He is responsible for conducting all community outreach and public affairs for the Southern California and works in the capacity of sourcing new development opportunities, partnerships, and untapped real estate alignments. He currently serves on the Board of Commissioners for both the California Association of Local Agency Formation Commission (CALAFCO) and the Local Agency Formation Commission of Los Angeles County, (LAFCO), which is responsible for coordinating logical and timely changes in local governmental boundaries, and reviewing ways to streamline governmental structure. He serves on number of boards including the Inglewood Chamber of Commerce, The Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust and USC Ross Minority Program in Real Estate. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Biola University, Summa Cum Laude, has a certificate in Economic Literacy Business Administration at The New York Stock Exchange and one in Biblical Studies at Oxford University, Oxford, England.