Announcing our 2011 Fall Fellows

September 7, 2011

In News Blog

This fall, we broke records in the number of applications received for the GO Fellowship. The group we have selected for this fall is a diverse group that brings in an exciting set of skills and knowledge to contribute. Fellows will be working on projects involving teacher effectiveness, outreach to our community, fundraising, and much more.

Jamie Allardice
Jamie is a 4th grade teacher at Peres Elementary in Richmond.  He is in his fifth year at Peres, and he previously taught in Compton.  Peres has seen its test scores steadily rise, and the fourth grade team has consistently had the highest scores at the school.  He has recently become involved in a new grassroots organization that aims to boost parent involvement and student achievement in Richmond. As a former newspaper reporter, he is passionate about teaching writing.  He is a Teacher Consultant for the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP), having participated in BAWP's 2009 Summer Institute.  After spending years honing his skills within the classroom, he is eager to broaden his focus and become more involved with education reform and policy. He sees many similarities between Oakland Unified and West Contra Costa Unified -- severe budget challenges, under-performing schools, a history of state takeover, and a stark contrast between hill and flatland schools.  While he loves the diversity and the unique mix of urban and open space that Oakland offers, he believes the city deserves a more equitable school system that provides safe and effective neighborhood schools for all residents.

Chris Conroy
Chris's work focuses on the intersections between communities and the public institutions designed to serve them. He currently serves as the Lead Boston Organizer for Stand for Children, a national policy advocacy organization focused on empowering parents and educators to impact education policy reform at the state and local level. Chris comes to the GO Fellowship from Codman Academy Charter Public School, located in Boston, Massachusetts, where he has served as a high school special education instructor and program coordinator for the last three years. During his time at Codman, Chris developed a unique model for substantially separate classrooms serving students with exceptional learning needs within a high-performing charter schools. The class at Codman, called The Higher Learning Institute, is the first sustainable model of its kind in the Boston area. Prior to teaching at Codman, Chris was a member of Citizen Schools' National Teaching Fellowship. The Fellowship was a two-year, alternative educator program during which Chris taught middle school students at the Patrick F. Gavin School, a public middle-school in Boston. Chris is a graduate of Amherst College with a B.A. in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought. In the future, he looks forward to pursuing a PhD studying the interactions between large school districts and the communities they serve and the effect of these interactions on organizational learning and human development.

Claire Crossett
Claire currently teaches Physiology and Advanced Biology at Life Academy of Health and Bioscience in the Fruitvale District of East Oakland. She entered education through Teach For America in 2010 and is in the process of clearing her teaching credential through the two year BTSA program. Transplanted from Chicago, Claire is still happily exploring her new home in Oakland.



Jeni Frudden
Jeni is currently a second year law student at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She was a recipient of the USF Public Interest Law Foundation (PILF) 2011 Summer Grant, which provides grants for law students working in unpaid, full-time positions in nonprofits and government agencies. During the summer of 2011,  Jeni interned at Legal Services for Children (LSC) in San Francisco providing legal services to the youth of the San Francisco Bay Area. As an intern, Jeni had the opportunity to work on various projects related to dependency proceedings, legal guardianship and education cases, and juvenile immigration rights. Prior to law school, Jeni was a Teach For America corps member and taught middle school English at Edna Brewer Middle School in Oakland from 2006 to 2009. In between teaching and law school she traveled for six months in Europe and Southeast Asia and was the Deputy Institute Director of the 2011 Oakland Teaching Fellows Summer Institute.

Aviva Gilbert
Aviva is currently in graduate school at Stanford University pursuing a law degree and a masters degree in education. This summer she was a graduate school fellow with Education Pioneers in the Bay Area, working with Great Oakland Public Schools on policy issues. Before starting law school, Aviva worked at Google Inc. on the public affairs team where she represented Google's education technology in the media and public sphere. She is a 2007 graduate of Harvard College, where she taught with the Harvard Program for International Education and served as that organization's Development Director. After Harvard Aviva spent a year in Mexico researching nutrition and recreation landscapes in and around elementary schools in Cuernavaca. Aviva is an Oakland native and is glad to be on board with Great Oakland Public Schools this fall.
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Jonathan Hasak
Jonathan Hasak currently works as a Resource Specialist and the Coordinator of Intervention at Sankofa Academy in Oakland.  Before becoming a corps member at Teach For America in 2010, he taught English in Tel Aviv and worked as a behaviorist in Los Angeles public schools.  Aside from teaching and working for GO, Jonathan is currently interning for Obama For America in San Francisco.  Last year ZYZZYVA published his first short story.  He has two brilliant younger siblings and a girlfriend who just moved from London to live with him.

Suneeta Israni
Suneeta Israni is a third year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley pursuing a B.A. in Psychology and minor in Public Policy. She is also a prospective Teach for America and law school applicant who is highly motivated to build a successful career in the educational, healthcare, and disability-related fields. Currently, Miss Israni is working for the Research Administration and Compliance Office at UC Berkeley, researching with a Berkeley Law professor on a Bioethics case and is also Director of Internal Development for the not-for-profit organization Project RISHI; an organization that implements public health projects in a rural village. This fall 2011, Suneeta joins GO Public Schools as a Development Fellow to broaden her experience in education reform. She hopes to stay committed to serving the educational and healthcare fields throughout the rest of her life as she believes that the bridging the income gap in this nation is dependent on them. "In order to place the most productive people in the best-suited jobs, we must first focus on ensuring that all citizens have the adequate health and educational needs they require and deserve."

Sarah Kate Mullins
Sarah Kate is a recent TFA alumna who taught middle school in East Palo Alto and high school in Richmond. Before joining TFA, she was a Communication major at Cornell University. Currently, Sarah Kate works as a Legal Assistant at Google and lives in San Francisco. 






Sarah Pratt
Sarah began teaching 6th grade math and science in Oakland as a 2007 Teach For America corps member. After three years in the classroom, she directed an academic extended learning day program in San Jose that focused on hands-on learning experiences with middle school students. Sarah has also worked part-time for the Oakland Teaching Fellows as a candidate selector for three years, and currently works as a Fellow Advisor for new single-subject teachers. She is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and is an avid Longhorn Football fan.


Erika Topete
Erika is a senior at Stanford University from Houston, Texas, completing her degree in Urban Studies with a focus on the intersection of race and public policy. She is passionate about education equity and is dedicated to raising the life prospects of students from under-served communities, both through direct service and institutional change.  She has been an active mentor and tutor in East Palo Alto and has held summer internships with national public policy organizations, including the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and the Center for American Progress.  Erika believes in choosing action over apathy and in the blending of intellect with the power of faith to effect positive social change.  Erika plans to pursue a career in public policy upon graduation from Stanford, but, at this moment, she is busy looking for good books to read, so feel free to recommend one, or two, or three.   

Kevin Tsay
Kevin is currently pursuing his Master of Public Policy from Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, focused on studies in social policy and pursuits in social entrepreneurship. He recently served as an Education Pioneers Fellow at Aspire Public Schools, analyzing and developing several alternative staffing and scheduling time and cost models in order to maximize "flex time" available to Aspire's teachers.  Prior to his graduate studies, Kevin taught elementary school as a Teach for America corps member in Charlotte, NC, leading his students to significant gains in math and reading. He has also worked on a farm-school for at-risk adolescent males in Argentina, generating a business plan for the farm's potential profits to support the school's operations.  Kevin earned his AB in Educational Studies with a second major in Business from Washington University in St. Louis.

Sarah Upstill
Sarah teaches third grade at Futures Elementary in East Oakland.  She studied physiology at the University of Arizona where she discovered her passion for teaching.  She moved to the Bay Area as a teacher with Teach for America.  She recently finished her masters in education and is looking forward to being a part of the GO team as an education policy fellow.






Stephanie Wong
Stephanie is currently a senior at UC Berkeley, studying Media Studies and Global Poverty and Practice, with an emphasis on education and poverty. This past summer, she participated in the summer fellowship with GO Public Schools, working on projects that focus on board accountability and conditions for teacher effectiveness; the people and passions that thrived around the office pushed her own interests and efforts in working on urban educational issues. Her ties to Oakland public schools began three years ago, when she first became a tutor and mentor for Oakland Asian Students Educational Services (OASES). Since then, she has continued to volunteer with OASES and interned at the U.S. Department of Education. In the spring, she helped instruct a Berkeley undergraduate course on "Current Issues in Education," deconstructing and analyzing the social, political, and economic issues that affect education. She is passionate about social justice, human rights, education, and journalism, all of which help drive her educational interests and experiences.

Ann Zhao
Ann spent the past two years teaching Biology and Physiology in San Francisco as a Teach for America corps member. She graduated from Pomona College with a bachelor's degree in molecular biology. As an undergrad, Ann worked for and led various student organizations that provided program and support services to students of color.This is where she developed her commitment to serving under-resourced communities. After two transformative years in the classroom, Ann has developed a profound desire to change systems in public education. She is particularly interested in the impact of policy on teachers and their practices in the classroom.

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