Last hidden column for tag filter | |
---|---|
Art Education & Display in EPA
Oct. 06, 2017
Join us Friday to hear from Tefferi Mogus Brook, the Executive Director of the Mural Music & Arts Project (MMAP). The MMAP educates, empowers, and inspires youth through the arts. Since 2001, MMAP has created a public art legacy while serving 12,264 youth, who have installed 206 murals, produced 162 original songs, and reached over 33,300 individuals through exhibits and performances. MMAP is made up of 4 specific programs.
Teff Brook is a lyricist, producer, and educator working in underserved communities since his teenage years. While at Stanford studying Electrical Engineering, Teff expanded his range, integrating music technology and building out MMAP's new History through Hip Hop program. During his undergrad and following graduation Teff taught performing arts to MMAP youth for over three years. After building out three different HHH studios and producing dozens of tracks with young East Palo Alto artists, Teff returned to his home in Los Angeles and began to explore the business aspect of the music industry, working in artist management and content production. Bridging both worlds and boasting experience in branding, production, and business development, Teff plans to increase visibility and range for young hip hop artists upon his return to MMAP.
|
|
Global Philanthropy & Children
Oct. 13, 2017
On Friday morning we will hear from Stephanie Heckman, the West Coast Director of the Epic Foundation, where moto is Give Better, Give Smarter, Give More. The Epic Foundation bridges the gap between a new generation of individual and corporate donors and organizations while supporting children and youth globally. They are developing new tools focused on enhancing how donors select, monitor and experience their impact. Their vision is to disrupt the philanthropic industry by combining passion and expertise with game-changing technology and partnerships. Supporting youth and understanding their challenges, they select exceptional NGOs and social enterprises by carefully reviewing their performance. Their areas of focus include education, economic empowerment, and health, along with rights & protection. Epic then provides ongoing monitoring using cutting-edge technology, field evaluations and research, to track and measure impact. They believe experience is a core component of philanthropy. To connect donors with their impact, Epic has developed innovative travel, technology and video experiences.
Stephanie Heckman obtained a Master of Arts in Philosophy and Psychology and a Master of Sciences in International and European Politics from the University of Edinburgh. She is currently a post-graduate research student in Philosophy (Wellbeing and Philanthropy) at the University of Edinburgh. For the last fifteen years, Stephanie has been building effective partnerships to create a better world. Except for a year working at SFJazz, her career is with a series of non-profits, including almost 6 years at One World Children's Fund. She has been inspired by the use of virtual reality by the Epic Foundation. Through immersive experiences of their grantees work, founder Alexandre Mars manages to foster empathy and nurture global partnerships that ‘do good, better’ (to borrow a phrase from philosopher Will MacAskill). They have also applied technology to create a platform that builds trust between philanthropists and community leaders, by making results and impact data accessible and meaningful. Another goal is to leverage technology to make philanthropic giving easier for corporation teams and individuals. Over the last five years Stephanie has facilitated discussions with people from all corners of the world, aligned values, and identified common goals. She feels it has been wonderfully rewarding to witness the very best of humanity working together to solve some of today’s biggest challenges. She has fostered international partnerships with grassroots leaders and philanthropists from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, that have helped fight sex trafficking, child labor, lack of access to life-saving medicine, education, and more. She says the greatest achievement is the friendships she has made along the way. She loves being a global citizen. |
|
|
|
Stanford Equestrian
Oct. 20, 2017
Join us on Friday morning when we welcome Jana Cain as our speaker. Jana is the Western Coach for Stanford’s Equestrian Team. The team, based at Stanford University’s historic Red Barn Equestrian Center, has between 35 and 45 active members riding Hunt Seat Equitation, Dressage, and Western Horsemanship. The team looks for both accomplished riders with strong show experience as well as beginners dedicated to learning more about the sport while actively involved in all aspects of horsemanship and care. For more than 30 years, Stanford has competed in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. The other schools in their region include Cal Poly – S.L.O., College of the Sequoias, Santa Clara University, Sonoma State University, U.C. Davis, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Reedley College. In order to create a fair playing field, IHSA competitions are based on “catch riding,” with riders drawing a horse provided by the host school. Riders accumulate points in their respective classes for their individual standing and for the team. The Stanford Equestrian Team has had many riders advance and compete with success at Regionals, Zones, and National Championships. When not on, around, or talking horses, Jana is the Associate Director and Recruiting Relationship Manager at the Career Management Center in the Graduate School of Business. Jana is involved in on-campus recruiting and activities. She cultivates and manages 150+ strategic relationships as the point of contact across nine industries. She develops tailored, scalable solutions for student and employer recruiting challenges while conducting deep dive industry research to identify potential recruiting partners and sources of high level career opportunities. Her Industry partners include Media and Entertainment, Healthcare, Sports, Retail, Consumer Products, Nonprofit, Education, Design, and Food and Agriculture. Jana is a former Stanford Equestrian Team Horse Manager and competitor for the Stanford Equestrian Team. She has had a life-long love of horses and spent many years in the barn working with her own horse (Slowly But Shirley, a feisty Quarter Horse mare who is a competitive eventer). Jana came to Stanford and quickly became a fierce competitor for the Western Team, with a show career that culminated with a 3rd place finish at Nationals in ’98. After earning her MBA Jana returned to Stanford to work at the Graduate School of Business and resume her role coaching the Western Team. Jana is an avid Stanford Football fan and can be found at every game when not traveling with the Equestrian Team. |
|
Oct. 21, 2017 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Meet at DLA Piper in the Community Room 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM - Light breakfast and keynote speaker; meet in service site groups, grab back lunch and HEAD OUT! 10:30 AM - 2:00 PM - Service at Sites with Lunch break Sign up at the YCS website: www.youthcommunityservice.org Service Sites include: EPA Senior Center
|
|
Member Talks
Oct. 27, 2017
On Friday we will hear from two of our dynamic members. Mary Chigos will give us her new member talk, and Sookja Han will inspire us with the retelling of her epic pilgrimage hike across the Pyrenees Mountains to Santiago de Compostella. Mary will no doubt expand on these thumbnail particulars: Born and raised in Kansas City, MO. She attended Loretto Heights College in Denver, graduated with BS in Nursing. She worked in Public Health in San Diego before moving to Los Angeles and joining a pilot project at Harbor General, now UCLA Medical Center, training “Women’s Health Care” providers. She was a Clinical Educator for two years, and worked in a private practice as a OB-GYN nurse practitioner. Mary has a Master’s Degree in Gerontology and has worked with a number of facilities in elder care. She has been working with Mission Hospice and Health Care since 2011. She also found time to be on the Hillsborough School Board, Hillsborough Schools Foundation, and Community Gatepath. Mary also enjoys golf, travel, and skiing. Sookja will be recounting the triumphs and tribulations she encountered as a pilgrim hiking 500 miles to Santiago de Compostella in Northwestern Spain. These trips have been made by thousands over the centuries. Few have had a twitter handle like vcqueen. Few were about to give up their previous VC existence and enter the Fuller Theological Seminary. She has described herself as a Christian, mother of two wonderful daughters, sister, Gemini, Korean-American, classical music and opera lover, hiker, critical thinker, and listener. As for adjectives to describe her character, God-fearing, honest, genuine, perseverant, patient, caring, assertive, passionate, compassionate, fearless, indefatigable, indomitable, strong-willed, and optimistic. As she has written, “While making myself a pilgrim on foot on the Road to Santiago, I will wrestle with God to clearly see his vision for me.” |
|
|
|
Nordic Innovation and Table Talks
Nov. 03, 2017
Join us on Friday morning when we hear from Swedish researcher Anders Wikström about innovation and design, and then have a table talk planned by Hal Louchheim. The first part of our program will introduce us to Anders and his work regarding conditions for innovation and what he has found in his research, and how it has led him to Silicon Valley with the Nordic Innovation House. He has a PhD in Innovation and Design, and is a Senior Researcher at the Research Institutes of Sweden
RISE ICT/SICS Västerås. He is also a member of the Rotary club in Eskilstuna, Sweden. In his research he has developed a tool to identify, analyze and take action on important success factors for productivity and innovation. This tool is now part of a start-up that he runs together with a colleague. In this journey, building a start-up, they have been accepted into an accelerator program here in Palo Alto, arranged by the Nordic countries, Sweden and Norway. In the other half, Hal will take the members on a quick conscious raising tour of “Gifts & Gratitude”. He will provide a brief context about recognizing all the gifts we receive and the benefits arising as a result of actually thanking people. Then, we can address profound questions like: When was the last time you thanked your boss, your parent or your spouse? At each table, members will be asked to share their experiences or suggestions in response to specific questions. We will likely have a high level of engaging conversation and run out of time before we can share the most amazing “findings”. The motivating ideas come from two sources: · Maxim #9 of Improv Wisdom, a little book by Patricia Ryan Madsen, a retired drama professor at Stanford. The thought is simple: Wake up to the Gifts. · OpenIdeo is running one of its Challenges on the topic: “How might we inspire expressions of gratitude in the workplace?”
|
|
|
|
Nov. 04, 2017 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
|
|
Nov. 05, 2017 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
East of the Sun and West of the Moon This event is suitable for parents, grandparents, kids, grandkids and kids at heart. Buy your tickets here: https://sa1.seatadvisor.com/sabo/servlets/EventSearch?presenter=PALOALTO&venue=PACHILDREN&tck=true
|
|
Finless Foods
Nov. 10, 2017
Join us on Friday morning to hear from Mike Selden, the Co-Founder and CEO of Finless Foods, a startup he hopes will become the world leader of seafood produced for mass consumption using cellular agriculture techniques rather than fishing in order to create a more sustainable world. This seafood isn’t vegan or vegetarian, it’s made from real fish cells. It will allow people to have the same fish that they love but without all of the mercury and plastic in fish from the ocean or the high levels of antibiotics and growth hormones in fish from aquaculture. It also enables people to continue eating fish without destroying ocean ecosystems through overfishing and has the added benefit of making animal cruelty entirely unneeded. Mike’s background in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has played a big role in him dedicating his life to climate justice and science advocacy. He has always been very politically active and considers his work now to be an extension of that. Before co-founding Finless Foods, he was working at the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in high-throughput cancer screening. His university research projects were twofold, one focusing on fungal epigenetics to solve food crises and the other on the evolutionary biomechanics of the mantis shrimp. He was a high school chemistry teacher at Wagor International School in Taichung Taiwan, where he ended up learning enough Chinese to become co-editor in chief of ChinaSMACK, a website that translates Chinese news for the English speaking world. Mike grew up on the coast, and feels very connected with the ocean. Many coastal communities rely entirely on the ocean for sustenance, and if the ocean ecosystem is ruined through overfishing, they will starve. An injury to these communities and to any suffering from food injustice is an injury to us all. He is from the North shore of Boston, and misses the attitude as well as the cold.
|
|
Nov. 11, 2017 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
SET-UP: 8:00 am – set up the American flags along University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto. ONE VOLUNTEER NEEDED TO RETRIEVE FLAGS FROM STORAGE AND BUY COFFEE FOR VOLUNTEERS (reimbursed by club). @ TUTS BAKERY, 535 Bryant Street Meet at the corner of Cowper and University Avenue. Flags are positioned on both sides of the street from Webster to High Street. Beverage and morning pastry will be served after the completion of the flag installation! Be sure to wear your Rotary at Work T-shirts and to bring your children, grandchildren and friends! If you want to volunteer, but don't have the "T-shirt" yet? Not a problem, please let us know! TAKE-DOWN: 5:00 pm – take down the American flags along University Avenue. RETURN FLAGS TO STORAGE AT THE LOCKER IN THE WEBSTER/COWPER PARKING GARAGE. ONE VOLUNTEER (LEAD) NEEDED TO COORDINATE RETURNING FLAGS TO STORAGE AND BUY DRINKS (reimbursed by club). Meet at the corner of Cowper and University Avenue. Beverage and light snack will be served after the completion @ Dan Gordon's 640 Emerson Street |
|
District Governor's Talk
Nov. 17, 2017
It will be our pleasure give a warm PAUR welcome to our speaker on Friday: District Governor Orrin Mahoney. Orrin is a long time resident of Cupertino, California. After graduating from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1967, he came to California to work at Hewlett-Packard and received a Master’s degree from Stanford while working there. After a 35 year management career at HP, he retired and devoted his time to community activities. He is a former member of the Cupertino City Council, and has served twice as Mayor. In addition to many other community groups, he is an active member and past president of the Rotary Club of Cupertino. As part of the Club’s International Service activities, he has participated in 12 project trips to Mexico, China, India, and Central and South America. He was the recipient of the Polio Plus Award in 2010, Area 8 Assistant Governor in 2014-2015, the District’s Membership Committee Chair in 2015-2016 and the District Conference Chair in 2016-2017. His theme for his year as District Governor is Rotary: Building Lifelong Friendships while Making a Difference. |
|
Nov. 18, 2017 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dec. 06, 2017 5:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bring A Wrapped Gift
Dec. 15, 2017
This week’s meeting will reprise last year’s successful holiday gift exchange program. Once again it will allow us the perfect opportunity for the practical application of our beloved 4-Way-Test. It is essential for this to work that each of us brings a wrapped gift to the meeting. It can be something new that costs under $10, or something gently used (commonly known as a white elephant) that you may already have at home. Rules of the exchange will be explained at the meeting with all the brevity that MC Rob Jack can muster, but everyone who arrives with a wrapped gift is sure to leave with an unwrapped new treasure. Come join the festivities certain to be filled with fun and fellowship. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our Club Assembly
Jan. 05, 2018
Our next meeting will be the semi-annual Club Assembly. This is a members-only meeting. You will learn about plans for the 2018 Gala, progress on our Avenues of Service (Youth, Community, International and Vocational) and the work of our dedicated Club Service folks. There will also be a very important election for our president elect-elect for Rotary year 2019-2020. Katie Cooney is the only known candidate (and an excellent choice by our past presidents committee). The assembly is a good time for self-reflection (what are we doing well, what are some opportunities for improvements...). Please give this some thought and bring your ideas to the meeting. During the last assembly we discussed ideas for expansion of our service projects and that will continue to be a major focus of the club. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jan. 15, 2018 8:45 a.m. - 2:45 p.m.
8:30-10:30am
Rotary volunteers are needed to help set-up the event, including tables and the poster display
10:30am-12:30pm or 12:30-2:30pm Staff registration and information tables
10:30am-12:30pm or 12:30-2:30pm Assist youth and families at activity tables, including button-making, poster making, writing letters to representatives
2:15-2:45pm Clean-up and Shut-down event
|
|
How Immigration Changes the "Natives"
Jan. 19, 2018
Join us on Friday morning when we welcome Tomás Jiménez as our speaker. Tomás is Associate Professor of Sociology and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford. He is also Director of the undergraduate program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and Director of graduate studies in sociology. His research and writing focus on immigration, assimilation, social mobility, and ethnic and racial identity. His latest book, The Other Side of Assimilation: How Immigrants are Changing American Life (University of California Press, 2017), uses interviews from a race and class spectrum of Silicon Valley residents to show how a relational form of assimilation changes both newcomers (immigrants and their children) and established individuals (people born in the US to US-born parents). His first book, Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity (University of California Press, 2010) draws on interviews and participant observation to understand how uninterrupted Mexican immigration influences the ethnic identity of later-generation Mexican Americans. The book was awarded the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Latinos Section Distinguished Book Award. He is currently working several other projects. The first looks at how immigration becomes part of American national identity by studying a sample of high school US history textbooks from 1930-2005. A second project uses survey data (with embedded experiments) and in-depth interviews to understand how state-level immigration policies shape the sense of belonging and related intergroup attitudes, behaviors, and support for immigration policies among immigrants and host-society members in the United States. A third project uses Yelp! data to examine the contextual factors that predict whether Mexican food has entered a mainstream. In another project, Tomás is studying how Silicon Valley residents find housing in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world. Tomás graduated from Santa Clara University with a B.S. in sociology; magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and was Class Valedictorian. He has an A.M. and Ph.D. in sociology, both from Harvard. He has taught at the University of California, San Diego. He has been named a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (2017-19). He has also been an Irvine Fellow at the New America Foundation and a Sage Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. He was the American Sociological Association Congressional Fellow in the office of U.S. Rep. Michael Honda, where he served as a legislative aide for immigration, veterans’ affairs, housing, and election reform. |
|
|
|
New Member Talks
Jan. 26, 2018
This week we will be able to learn more about two of our new members, Larry Christenson and Grady Mateen. Larry Christenson grew up in the mid-west. After graduation and Naval Flight Training, he arrived in the Bay Area is 1971. He served eight years on Active Duty plus fourteen years in the Reserves at Moffett Field as a P3C Orion multi-engine patrol aircraft Navy Pilot. He is a retired Navy Commander. An Eagle Scout, he has been very active in the Peninsula Boy Scout, Pacific Skyline Council. He served on the Council’s Executive Board of Directors and the Palo Alto Historical Association. He has been a Northwestern Mutual Financial Advisor for forty years. As a transferring Rotarian (Milwaukee and Miami) Grady Mateen has been looking for the right fit in a Rotary Club since his arrival in the Bay Area. He has visited many other clubs, even volunteering as a Sergeant At Arms for a District Meeting where many already knew him. Although invited to join by all he met, we were his first choice. Grady works for Boehringer Ingelheim as a Cardiovascular Business Specialist, but his real talent is dealing with people, as any conversation with him will prove. An expert communicator with a background in consultative sales, software consulting, and SAP implementation. He is able to “speak the language” and sell solutions to decision makers in technology organizations, hospitals, and medical offices. He is also a 6’10” former international professional basketball player competing in Cyprus, Israel, and France. An Arkansas native, Grady has a BS in psychology from The Ohio State University. He was successful in sales at Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. He was a financial analyst with Whirlpool and General Motors. While a Certified Senior SAP HR Consultant he was a veteran of 11 successful SAP implementations in Canada, France, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and here in the United States. |
|
|
|
Jan. 26, 2018 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.
|
|
Hidden Women, A History of Europe, Celts, and Freedom
Feb. 02, 2018
Join us on Friday morning when we are pleased to welcome once more Jacqueline Widmar Stewart. Jacqui will be discussing her new book: Hidden Women: A History of Europe, Celts and Freedom. New finds call for another look at women in European history. Ever more convincingly, buried treasures show that Europe’s ancient Celts valued females in ways that later empires did not. Archaeology is uncovering vast differences between these family-centric populations and the Roman Empire that fueled its expansion by conquest, occupation and enslavement of Celtic peoples. Over the past 2000 years, institutionalized sexism has carried Rome’s elitist male domination all the way to the present. Along with the riches that have been found in women’s burial chambers, excavations across the continent reveal a surprising consistency in technological capabilities, communication and trade networks of Iron Age Celts. Ancient tombs and treasure troves throughout Great Britain, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, and Slovenia give insights into a formerly vibrant culture that is no longer recognized. Hidden Women brings vantage views into this wealthy, productive, nature- loving, Iron Age civilization. As author, mother, education advocate and perpetual scholar, Jacqui pursues a wide range of interests that draw her back to her family’s European homeland. Her use of a variety of lenses – law, literature, languages, art, architecture, archeology, and genetics – brings a clearer picture of an obscured past. Those who need to look behind the scene will love her books that explore the how and why. A native of Beverly Shores, Indiana, Jacqui completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and German from the University of Colorado and a Masters Degree in French from the University of Michigan. Following her marriage to our Blair Stewart in 1970, both earned law degrees at Stanford. Jacqui’s European studies include a classics program in Athens, Greece, German language at the University of Bonn in Germany and Slovenian language at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. Their two children - Andy (also a previous speaker) and Julia - both completed Stanford graduate programs. Twenty years ago Jacqui helped found the East Palo Alto Kids Foundation and then ran the organization for ten years. Since then she has written four books that focus on environmental triumphs: The Glaciers’ Treasure Trove: A Field Guide to the Lake Michigan Riviera, Finding Slovenia: A Guide to Old Europe’s New Country, Parks and Gardens in Greater Paris, and Champagne Regained. |
|
Feb. 08, 2018 7:00 p.m.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Neuroscience of Happiness
Feb. 23, 2018
Our speaker on Friday is innovation coach and tech pioneer Ellen Petry Leanse, who has spent 35 years working with extraordinary leaders at Apple, Google, Facebook, and with dozens of tech startups. In her nine years at Apple she served on the Macintosh launch team (1984) and led the company's pioneering work in creating digital communities (1985). Her work since then has spanned entrepreneurship, investing, and strategy consulting. Today, combining decades of perspective with insights from neuroscience, design, and mindfulness practice, Ellen guides companies and individuals to “think different” about life satisfaction, relationships, impact, and the paths that build them. An author, Stanford instructor, and respected Silicon Valley influencer, Ellen is passionate about intentional living and how our brains can shape or interfere with our sense of purpose. She's been featured on CNN and in publications including Time, Vogue.com, Forbes, and Business Insider, and the CNN, and Today Show. Her book “The Happiness Hack," sharing brain-aware paths to increasing focus, connection, and life satisfaction was named by Evernote and The Mission as a top book of 2017. You can get a copy from Kepler’s, Books Inc., and Amazon, and she will be happy to stay after our meeting to sign them and answer any further questions. You can find out more about Ellen’s work from an interview with her that appeared on CNBC 2/18/18 here:
|
|
Mar. 01, 2018 7:30 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Youth Community Service (YCS) and PAUR Youth Services invite you to consider assisting at several upcoming school service days in Palo Alto this spring in March and April.
The first is Gunn High School Service Day on Thursday March 1.
Organized by Gunn YCS-Interact students and YCS staff, over 200 students will go out on district buses to twelve local agencies for a day of service and learning from 8:00AM to 2:00PM. The twelve sites include: Gamble Garden, Arastradero Preserve, Magical Bridge Playground, Baylands, YMCA and JCC.
Interact is the high school version of Rotary. The purpose of the event is to engage students in "service above self" in the local community, with adult role models, to experience connectedness and learn about local issues. We hope students will discover a service activity they will want to follow-up on their own to deepen their engagement, and to begin a life-long habit of service. Keynote speaker at 8:15 is Palo Alto Councilman and Gunn alum Adrian Fine.
Volunteer roles include:
7:30 to 9:00AM on Gunn campus to help with morning student check-in.
8:00AM to 2:00PM accompanying the student team, ride the bus to the sites, assist with the activity, and return to campus. Student leaders trained by YCS will partner with agency staff to lead the activity - PAUR volunteer responsibility is to assist, not lead. We have choices of outdoor or indoor activities, active or seated.
1:00- to 2:30PM check students back in on campus when they return to help them record their reflections and comments, with YCS staff.
Thank you for the club's past support for these events. For more information or to sign up for the Thursday March 1 event, please email Leif Erickson at YCS at: leif@youthcommunityservice.org.
|
|
Palo Alto Today
Mar. 02, 2018
Please join us on Friday to welcome fellow Rotarian and Mayor of Palo Alto Liz Kniss. She will give us some insight into the current and future state of the city. Liz was elected Mayor in January and it will be her third turn as the City’s top executive. Liz was born in Cape Cod, Massachusetts always valuing education and has continued to pursue her own life-long learning. Initially receiving a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Simmons College in Boston, she returned to school after her children completed elementary school and earned a Master's in Public Administration and Health Care Policy from California State University, as well as completing graduate work in Health Policy and Economics at the University of California. Liz has worked as a Registered Nurse in hospitals, in schools, and in the public health system. When technology boomed in the Valley, Liz applied her skill set to Marketing and Communications at Sun Microsystems. Her experience in both the public sector and private sector provide Liz with an informed perspective from which to consider important topics of the day. Her community service includes Board work with the League of Women Voters, the United Way, the Stanford Friends of Nursing, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and the Family Health Plan of Santa Clara County. Liz began her public work when elected to the Palo Alto Unified School District Board in 1985. She was then elected to the Palo Alto City Council in 1989 where she served three terms and was chosen as Mayor of Palo Alto in 1994 and 2000. In 1994, Kniss made Palo Alto the first city in the U.S. with a presence on the Internet and initiated Family Resources, a public-private partnership that provides on-line and on-site social services, job training information and other resources for families in Palo Alto. On the Council, she led efforts to make government more accountable to taxpayers, created new affordable housing and developed a citywide shuttle service to reduce traffic. In November 2000, Liz was elected to represent Santa Clara County's Fifth District on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. The Fifth District includes the cities of Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Monte Sereno, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Saratoga, Stanford, Sunnyvale, the West San Jose neighborhoods, and unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County. After serving three terms, the maximum allowed at one time, she returned to the Palo Alto City Council. Nothing is more important to Liz than her family and the community they call home: Palo Alto. Liz and Rick Kniss have been supporters and members of multiple community efforts and non-profit organizations. Liz's many years of community service include a long standing membership in Rotary, and numerous advisory councils and foundations dedicated to community betterment. Liz and Rick have two daughters, Liza and Johanna, and five granddaughters. |
|
Mar. 03, 2018 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
|
|
New Member & Vocational Service
Mar. 09, 2018
Please join us Friday when the first part of our program will be getting to know one of our newest members, Camille Kennedy. Camille is an East Coast Native with a West Coast Heart. Striving to make the world a little bit kinder, she hopes to never lose the sense of wonderment an awe that comes from being surrounded by her 3 young children. Her hobbies and interests include cooking, hiking, cycling, land conservation, wine tasting and collecting. She went to Oberlin College where she studied History and Trombone Performance in the Conservatory of Music, getting a B S. in Public Affairs from Baruch College, and a Masters in Urban Planning from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She is currently the Major Gifts Officer for Avenidas in Palo Alto. The second half of the program will be Bill Doyle and the Vocational Service Committee reporting on their efforts to support mentorships with the Peninsula College Fund and the Pursuit of Excellence Scholarship Fund. Two of the mentors from our first year of involvement (Deborah Pappas and Uwe Bergmann) will relate their experiences. They hope their story of the pilot program will encourage more of our members to get involved as they try to increase the mentee pool from 5 up to 15. They also hope we might be able to identify some summer internships for current juniors. |
|
Uganda Healthcare
Mar. 16, 2018
This week we will be meeting in the Cypress 1 & 2 Rooms at the Sheraton. They are on the lower level at the bottom of the stairs by the pool. If in doubt, look for the directional signs pointing the way. Please join us Friday when our speaker will be Gerald Atwine talking about Bulamu Healthcare in Uganda where he is Co-founder, President and Director. Bulamu, in the local Luganda language, means the health and well-being of the entire person. They operate with the underlying belief that access to professional healthcare is a basic human right. Looking for local solutions, they are building in-country organizational strength in Africa that can ultimately operate independently of foreign help. They want to find the lowest-cost model for providing needed services and deliver them with continuously improving operational excellence. They trust that this will create an organizational culture that puts the patient first, is consistently caring, turns no one in need away, and attracts dedicated employees and volunteers. All this while being information driven, evolving toward sustainability, while providing faith-based counseling as a component in the process of acceptance, treatment, and recovery from disease. About 1/3 of their patients are children under 15 brought by their mothers. Since their first weeklong medical camp in April 2016, Bulamu has tapped into a huge unmet need for primary medical care in rural Uganda. Their medical camps are held at small, government-operated health centers designed to serve the local population’s needs. They utilize the existing building for their operating room, dental clinic, maternity ward, testing lab, pharmacy, and supply room and then add rented tents, tables and chairs in the surrounding open space. That clinic has been there all along, yet when they announce a new medical camp, 8,000 people came from miles around because they were confident they will see a doctor and receive the treatment and medicines they need. Gerald Atwine was born and raised in Uganda, the youngest of ten children in a middle-class family in the industrial town of Jinja. His father, a high school teacher turned businessman, was shot and killed during the brutal regime of the infamous Idi Amin when Gerald was only 8 months old. His mother, widowed and illiterate, managed to raise her ten children single handedly amidst unspeakable social, economic and political hardships. Through a lot of struggle and help from relatives, Gerald graduated with honors from Makerere University, Uganda. While his degree was in mass communications, he had known since he was a child that he wanted a career as a medical professional. Gerald managed to secure a U.S. student visa, gain acceptance to the University of Michigan, earn his bachelor’s degree in nursing, and become a licensed R.N. in California. He later moved to the San Francisco area, where he still works as a contract registered nurse in the Kaiser healthcare system. His flexible work schedule allowed him to travel to Uganda on volunteer medical missions and ultimately launch Bulamu. Gerald became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2013, but he has never lost his childhood desire to use his education to benefit his native Uganda. He found himself in a Santa Clara hospital treating Jim Balassone, a retired technology firm executive who was recovering from surgery. The two bonded, and a few months later Jim traveled to Uganda with Gerald to explore the potential for starting an NGO to improve the health of poor Ugandans. They soon had formed Bulamu Healthcare International, with Jim as chief fundraiser and Gerald in charge of program activities, personally overseeing on-site each medical camp while continuing his nursing work in the U.S. between camps. Tragically, Jim Balassone passed away in 2017 after three weeks of hospitalization due to a rare lung disease. Because of that chance encounter in a Santa Clara hospital room between co-founders Jim, Gerald, and Bulamu will treat over 60,000 patients in 2018 who would not have otherwise seen a doctor, all for a cost of about $4 per patient. And this is just the beginning. |
|
|
|
DAF and Gala Program
Mar. 23, 2018
Join us Friday when we discuss our upcoming Gala and our Fund for the Future. As a service organization, the only way PAUR can fund service projects is to raise money. While some Rotary clubs have a substantial endowment that generates income to fund all or a substantial part of their service, our club is only 30 years old (formed when women were allowed into Rotary) and our “endowment” is younger still and quite modest. On Friday the Gala Committee will be giving us an update on the upcoming Gala, including a preview of some awesome auction items that will be available. They will also summarize ways you can help with the gala and fundraising. The PAUR Fund for the Future (AKA our endowment or DAF) was one of the key legacy projects when we were celebrating our 25th Anniversary. Now at our 30th Anniversary we will get an update as to how far we have come and where we are now. The PAUR Fund for the Future was created in October 2013. This Donor Advised Fund is intended to provide a vehicle for receiving tax-deductible donations from PAUR Rotarians and friends who wish to support PAUR’s service activities over the long term. The DAF has been established through The Rotary Foundation. It is managed as an endowment fund, in that the DAF principal will accumulate indefinitely and disbursements will be made only to the extent of net annual earnings on the DAF principal. The DAF is managed by the PAUR DAF Committee, with disbursements approved by the PAUR Board of Directors. |
|
Telomeres & Aging
Mar. 30, 2018
Please join us Friday for a talk from our very own Jerry Torrance. Jerry has been dedicating the last year to studying aging and longevity, culling research from lots of talks at Stanford and some very active academic literature. With the graying of America, this is a subject of increasing attention, based on significant scientific progress, with a realistic hope for spectacular breakthroughs in our understanding and even treatment of aging. Certainly in the past aging and longevity have been associated with snake oil, a fountain of youth, health food, etc., but in the last 10 years, things have changed. For example, in 2015 Scientific American published a special edition entitled "Secrets of Staying Young, The Science of Healthy Aging". Even the FDA, for the first time ever, has recognized "Aging" as a disease that can be treated and hence can be subjected to a trial (never before) and such a trial has begun. What is a telomere, and what does it do? Like they say, it is quite complicated. In 1933, Barbara McClintock, a distinguished American cytogeneticist and the first woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, observed that the chromosomes lacking end parts became "sticky" and hypothesized the existence of a special structure at the chromosome tip that would maintain chromosome stability. This structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome is the telomere. Elizabeth Blackburn, who studied the telomere, co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere. For this work, she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Telomerase increases the length of one’s telomeres. Presumably exercise, as an example, affects the body chemistry in such a way as to increase the telomerase levels. What is measured is the resulting increase in telomere length. Most of the workers in the field are trying to understand the chemical pathways behind this, but Jerry has been concentrating on the solid measurements of the length and what factors change it. It has been shown that our telomere length is a direct measure of our biological age (and not our “chronological age”) and is directly correlated with our longevity. For example, the difference in longevity between female and males is quantitatively accounted for by the corresponding difference in the length of their telomeres. They are relatively easy to measure (infinitely easier to measure than longevity) and an increasing number of studies are emerging demonstrating the quantitative relation between telomere length (and hence longevity) and stress, exercise, obesity, sleep, smoking, and various factors of our diet. Jerry will summarize these results to help us understand how to increase (or decrease) our longevity. |
|
Self-driving Cars
Apr. 06, 2018
Please join us Friday to learn more about the future of self-driving cars from our speaker Sudha Jamthe. Sudha is one of the instructors Hal Louchheim works with at Stanford Continuing Studies, and she is deeply engaged in the topic of autonomous vehicles and disruption of the automotive industry. 30 self-driving car pilots from Silicon Valley technology companies, startups, and global car manufacturers are redefining the future of human mobility. We are on the cusp of a revolution in the automotive industry, which will usher in new business models, new vehicle designs, and the transformation of other related industries—energy, freight, insurance, infrastructure, and beyond. Sudha has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science Engineering from S.R.M. Engineering College and a M.B.A. from Boston University. . She is the CEO of IoTDisruptions.com and a globally recognized thought leader at the junction of IoT (Internet of Things) and Autonomous Vehicles. She brings twenty years of digital transformation experience from building organizations, shaping new technology ecosystems and mentoring leaders at eBay, PayPal, Harcourt, and GTE. She teaches the IoT Business course and "The Business of Self-Driving Cars" Course at Stanford Continuing Studies Program and enjoys mentoring industry professionals to shape emerging technology ecosystems. She advises corporate and city leaders on regional economic development using technology with a focus on innovation gaps and social equality. Sudha is the author of '2030 The Driverless World' about the junction of Autonomous cars and Cognitive IoT. She is the author of three other IoT books, 'IoT Disruptions,' 'IoT Disruptions 2020' and 'The Internet of Things Business Primer'. She is the producer of 'The IoT Show' on YouTube. Sudha is a champion for STEM programs and 'Girls Who Code,' and hosts mentor programs for kids. |