CNYD is fortunate to have a staff that brings substantial experience and wide-ranging expertise to the work that we do. With backgrounds in education, the arts, psychology, community organization management and philanthropy, among others, our staff is as varied and versatile as the field we work in.

To learn more about the CNYD's staff, please see Staff Biographies.

The Community Network for Youth Development is grateful for, and proud of, the energy, hard work and support that our board provides. Board members bring experience and knowledge from a wide range of professional backgrounds, making them an invaluable resource for CNYD's current work and future planning.

To learn more about CNYD's Board of Directors, please see Board Biographies.

Community Network for Youth Development
Staff Biographies

Sue Eldredge
Executive Director

Sue is the founder and Executive Director of CNYD. Currently, she focuses on strategic planning, fund development, managing program development and implementation, and organizational operations. Sue works closely with CNYD's consulting team to ensure that CNYD delivers on community promises, and does this with efficiency and impact. Sue's past experience includes work in the philanthropic world, research, design and delivery of training and technical assistance systems for nonprofit, educational and governmental agencies, as well as training and curricula development.

Lynn Johnson

Director of Community Field Work
Lynn Johnson is a theater artist and social entrepreneur dedicated to building strong connections of creative & compassionate people to bring about positive social change. 2011 marks her 20th year as a teaching artist, having taught everyone from age 3 – 83.

She is the co-founder/owner of Glitter & Razz Productions, an Oakland, CA based business that celebrates kids and the grown-ups who love them with premium camps, classes, and events. Folks create and perform their very own plays that promote compassion, community, and creativity.

Lynn is pleased to be back with CNYD as a youth development consultant. She started with CNYD back in 2002 when she was given the chance to transfer her direct service work to become a youth development trainer and organizational consultant. In her 4 years as an employee there, she led a variety of training workshops, advised on a number of city-wide youth serving efforts in San Francisco, and specialized in the connections between the arts and youth development.

Rashi Mehta

Finance and Administrative Assistant

Rashi completed her Bachelors Degree in Commerce and Post Graduate Diplomas in Human Resource Management and Marketing in India; her Diploma in Business Administration in London; and is currently working towards an advanced degree in accounting at University of California, Berkeley. She has worked in the world of finance in both England and California and brought her world-wide and diverse experience to the nonprofit world in 2010.

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Community Network for Youth Development

Board of Directors

Michael Montoya - President

Deputy Director, The Broad Residency

Ellen French - Treasurer

Director of Finance and Administration, Legal Community Against Violence

Kim Hayin - Secretary

Director of Community and Youth Engagement, Emery Unified School District

Melanie Moore Kubo - Board Member
Principal, See Change, Inc.

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Board Biographies

Michael Montoya

Michael, deputy director of The Broad Residency in Urban Education, is responsible for supporting all aspects of program management, including the application, screening, and evaluation process for school districts and Charter Management Organizations. Montoya also plays an intricate role in the design and execution of the training sessions for The Broad Residency. Montoya came to The Broad Center from the Y & H Soda Foundation, where he served as program officer for education and youth development programs. He previously spent four years at Stanford University's John W. Gardner Center as a policy and program specialist. Montoya also worked as undergraduate admissions counselor at the University of Chicago, as director of science education outreach at UC San Diego, as director of youth education and formation at the Diocese of Colorado Springs, and as education coordinator and admissions officer at Up With People International Service Organization. He has a bachelor's degree in biology from Colorado College and a master's degree in social science from the University of Chicago.

Ellen French

Ellen has 25 years of nonprofit financial management experience. She also holds a Masters in Nonprofit Administration from the University of San Francisco. Since moving to San Francisco in 1998, she has provided financial management services in both a staffing and consulting capacity to approximately a dozen organizations in the San Francisco, the Mission District, Palo Alto, and the East Bay; and served as a fiscal reviewer nationally for Head Start. Currently, she also teaches Nonprofit Financial Management as an adjunct faculty for USF and provides guest lectures for the Presidio School of Management and New College. She also serves on the Board of Directors for The Women’s Building.

Hayin Kim

Hayin is an independent educational research and evaluation consultant, and researcher at the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University. Her work primarily focuses on community youth development, and school and community partnerships. At the Gardner Center, she co-facilitated the evaluation of multiple project initiatives with an emphasis on collaborative, theory-based, qualitative research methods that engaged community partners in San Mateo, Santa Clara, and San Francisco counties.

Prior to joining the Gardner Center, Hayin worked at the Coalition for Community Schools in Washington DC and the Children’s Aid Society’s Community Schools initiative in New York City. At CAS, Ms. Kim supported community schools staff in Washington Heights, East Harlem and the Bronx, and contributed to technical assistance efforts with several adaptation sites as part of the CAS National Technical Assistance Center. In 2008, Ms. Kim served as the Asian-American Constituency Director for the Colorado for Change, Obama for America Campaign, where she mobilized local Asian American community leaders and residents as part of a coordinated national political outreach and education campaign. She holds a BA in Sociology from Amherst College, and a PhD in Educational Policy from Stanford University School of Education.

Melanie Moore Kubo

Dr. Moore Kubo specializes in theory of change and evaluation design for non-profit organizations, intermediary organizations, foundations and public agencies. With a doctorate in child and adolescent development from the Stanford School of Education, her areas of content expertise include youth development, girls’ development, early childhood, school reform, and community development. Dr. Moore Kubo was the lead evaluator for the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth, and Families comprehensive outcomes-based evaluation from 2000-2002, and she also led the Department’s citywide strategic planning efforts for children, youth, and families through the Mayor’s Children’s Cabinet. She worked with the Hewlett Foundation as a lead evaluator for their Neighborhood Improvement Initiative, and presented the findings of this work to the Aspen Roundtable on Community Change. In addition to working with a wide range of foundations and community-based organizations, Dr. Moore Kubo conducts trainings and presentations on evaluation around the country.

In 2005, Dr. Moore Kubo founded See Change, Inc., an evaluation and strategic consulting firm with the goal of improving critical thinking in organizations working to make social change. See Change is currently working on a range of evaluation projects, including assessments of two different foundation-led community youth development initiatives, as well as an evaluation of the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth.

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Community Network for Youth Development

Consultants

Kiarash Afcari

Kia is a trainer, facilitator, and organizational development practitioner focused on youth development for the last 15 years. He has done work with grassroots non-governmental organizations in Ghana and with many youth programs in the United States. Kiarash has a keen interest in diversity and anti-oppression work, the arts, the outdoors and in programs that value the inherent intelligence of each and every young person. He has been fortunate enough to learn Theater of the Oppressed techniques from Augusto Boal, teaching and training techniques from Quantum Learning, and facilitation techniques from Interaction Associates. Kiarash has a Masters in Intercultural and International Management from the School for International Training.

Kiarash worked for YouthBuild USA, a fantastic national/international youth development organization, for ten years in the National Direct AmeriCorps program, as the Director of Technical Assistance for the Western Region, and as the Director of the Academy for Transformation. He's an independent consultant that supports cities, schools and programs that are helping young people reach their full potential. Kiarash lives in Oakland, California with his wife and three beautiful children. He enjoys surfing, soccer, photography and anything that involves music.

Ed Center
Ed Center's first job was as a dolphin trainer. He then shifted to working with young people, and though dolphins were definitely easier to handle, he's dedicated the last 15 years to making the world a better place for youth and families. He taught ESL and ran the Peer Resource Program at Balboa High School in San Francisco for five years before coming to CNYD as a trainer and coach, helping youth organizations to build quality programs. For the past eight years, he's worked as the program director at Team-Up for Youth, bringing a youth development focus to sports and physical activity programs across California. He's most proud of building an initiative that has encouraged over 1000 middle school girls in low-income neighborhoods to join newly created soccer and basketball teams. Ed now works as a consultant helping organizations to re-imagine and build vibrant experiences for kids and families. His favorite hours are spent coaching the Wildcats, a 13 year old girls team short on talent and big on heart.

Kim Coulthurst

Kim brings both business and human services perspectives to her 22 years of management and consulting. She has trained and coached hundreds of people of all ages in the private and public sectors. Kim started her human services career with the City of Oakland where she launched two new and innovative programs: Camp Read-a-Lot and Team Oakland Youth Employment Program. Her six years at the City were followed by four years consulting in program management and event planning. She was lured away from consulting by a fledgling nonprofit organization called HOME/Alternatives in Action. There, she had opportunities to be a member of a self-managed executive team, train Oakland Public School teachers, and grow a micro-enterprise incubator. Kim was compelled to return to consulting by her desire to support adults who strive to serve community with authenticity. She now consults with organizations to build capacity and infrastructure so that clients receive the highest quality services.

Shavonte' Keaton

As someone who herself spent five years in the foster-care system, Shavonte’ is a passionate advocate for raising awareness of the need for change in the way foster care is now administered. Her personal experience and her work within many organizations focused on foster care has allowed her to help service providers, policy makers, legislators and other interested parties with seminars and training workshops that seek to improve the quality of that care for all involved. Shavonte' is also an advocate for low-income children and families, and for others who live in economically depressed communities.

Soon to be a graduate of San Francisco State University, Shavonte' plans to attend law school while using her education and life experience to create positive change within the foster-care system.

Aila Malik

Aila has her JD from Santa Clara Law School and is member of the California Bar. At Santa Clara Aila was a recipient of the Dean Emery Scholarship for academic achievement and a member of Honors Moot Court Board, Advocate journalist, and the Vice-President of Women and Law Society. Aila has a B.S. from the University of California at Santa Barbara in Environmental Science and minors in both professional writing and music.

During law school, in addition to teaching at-risk youth enrolled in Fresh Llifelines for Youth’s programs, Aila taught a weekly music class to mentally ill residents in an intermediate care home. Aila also worked with the Northern California Innocence Project for 3 years to provide free legal services to wrongfully convicted life prisoners in northern California. Finally, Aila interned with a local immigration clinic and specialized in assisting Cambodian prisoners gain refugee status in the U.S.

Over the last eight years, Aila has specialized in national best practices for law-related education curriculum, training of legal professionals, and youth interaction techniques (case management)—and has conducted trainings and presentations for audiences at both national and local levels. Aila has extensive experience in working intensively with high-risk juvenile justice youth in community settings and locked facilities. Aila was born and raised in San Jose and Cupertino. She is a first generation Pakistani-American. Aila’s parents were divorced at an early age. She grew up as an only child in two households, where she watched her family battle alcoholism in one home and her mother struggle with Bipolar disorder in the other. Through her life experiences, Aila developed a passion for educating those in need.

Beatrice Sweet

Bea was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, as a young African American woman growing up in a low-income urban community. She has been blessed to overcome many obstacles to get to where she is today. Bea is a YouthBuild graduate of the class of "2000". She has served on the staff of many transformational youth programs including Los Angeles Conservation Corps, LA CAUSA YouthBuild, CCEO YouthBuild and Katrina AmeriCorps Rebuilding Project (residental program). Bea is an elected member of the YouthBuild National Alumni Council (NAC) and represents over 60,000 YouthBuild alumni across the nation. She has touched many staff and young people's lives in a profound way, by sharing her personal experiences.

Bea is currently an independent consultant who trains, coaches, and advises a broad array of youth programs across the country. She is certified in Interaction Associates Essential Facilitation(C), trained in the Quantum Learning for Teachers methodology and in Open Space techniques and is a master trainer certified by YouthBuild USA's Graduate Facilitators Program. She has provided her training expertise and MC skills to federally funded conferences (HUD and DOL), Community Network for Youth Development engagements, alternative schools, youth program retreats, educators, young people and a whole host non-profits. Bea focuses her efforts on youth development theory and practice, youth leadership, building authentic youth/adult partnerships, adultism, and Open Space. Bea is full of energy and excitement when it comes to facilitation and training. She loves the work, but most importantly, she loves the connection she gets from working with young people, staff and directors.

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