Ron Bouganim

Ron Bouganim is a serial entrepreneur in the telecommunications and consumer Internet sectors, having co-founded or been a member of the senior management of startups including CCI (sold to British Telecom), Trymedia (sold to Macrovision), Razz and Branchnext. Ron has raised over $300 Million in venture capital and vendor financing and completed 7 M&A transactions.

Ron has also been actively involved with a number of non-profits as a co-founder, adviser or board member including Code For America, Humanity Calls, Kiva, The Foundation For Defense Of Democracy, Full Circle Fund, Endeavor, ZSpace, Take Stock In Children and the Children’s Foundation For Creative Technology.

Ron has a Double Major in Accounting and International Business from McGill University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. He is married and has two children at Presidio Knolls, who will always be the startups of which he is most proud.

Lanier Coles

Lanier Coles is a manager in the Strategy and Business Development Group of California Pacific Medical Center. Prior to CPMC, Lanier was in Strategy at Kaiser Foundation Hospital. Lanier also worked as an Associate in Investment Banking for Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong and an Analyst at PaineWebber in New York. Lanier has an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business and a B.S. in Finance and Chinese Studies from the University of Virginia. Lanier’s family and ancestors have lived on a farm in rural Virginia for over 200 years. Despite being from a relatively conservative area, Lanier’s Episcopalian, all girls boarding school in Richmond, Virginia started offering Mandarin in the mid-eighties. Lanier has been a student of Mandarin ever since. After her first 2 years on Wall Street she quit her job to move to Harbin, China to focus exclusively on improving her language skills. Besides her children, one of Lanier’s other passions is collecting contemporary Chinese art.  Lanier and her husband have a 4 ½ year old daughter who attended PKS for 2 years and a 2 ½ year old son who is currently at PKS.

Joseph Haller

A partner in Grant McCarthy Group’s San Francisco office, Joe has fourteen years’ experience dealing with federal and state corporate tax issues. His practice includes federal and state taxation, with a focus on the high tech and utility industries. Joe has significant experience leading large-scale tax research and restructuring projects. He has also worked extensively with corporate clients in resolving tax audits in many states. Joe’s legal and business education, along with his professional experience, allow him to work with clients to understand the full financial impact of tax planning, audits, and restructurings.

Prior to joining GMG, Joe was a manager in the Tax and Legal Services practice in PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s New York office. Joe is a regular speaker at regional and national tax seminars. His recent presentations have generally involved California and federal tax matters, and have included tax and accounting issues affecting utilities.

Joe received an A.B. from Stanford University, a J.D. from Columbia University and an LL.M. in Taxation from New York University School of Law. Joe also received an M.B.A. from Columbia University. He is admitted to practice law in California and in New York State.

Matt Koidin

Matt has east coast roots growing up outside of Boston and attending both public and private schools as a child. He got his first taste of the Bay Area when he came to study Computer Science at Stanford University. After school, Matt joined the entrepreneur ranks founding a company called Justarrive, one of the first e-ticket companies focused on sports. During his career he has also worked at Microsoft, Deloitte and a handful of technology startups before ending up as the CTO of Read It Later.

A fortuitous decision to head to North Carolina for business school led him to meet his wife, Christine, at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. In 2008, Matt and Christine moved back to the Bay Area to start their family. A year later, their daughter, Maile, was born and she is currently loving her first year at Presidio Knolls. Matt is passionate about providing his daughter the very best educational opportunities and is looking forward to Maile teaching him his first Mandarin word!

Ranee Lan

Ranee has held a number of executive management roles in the consumer internet industry, most recently as Vice President at Art.com where she launched a new business line of contemporary art sourced from emerging artists worldwide. Prior to that, she was Senior Director of Business Development for Washingtonpost.com / Newsweek Interactive where she negotiated and managed all operational and strategic partnerships. Ranee has also worked at deviantART, Time Warner, AOL and McKinsey & Co. She has a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern.

Ranee grew up in Chicago in a Thai-Chinese immigrant family with quadrilingual parents, yet somehow managed to become a stereotypical monoglot American. She is committed to ensuring that her children don’t suffer the same linguistic fate. Ranee lives in the Barbary Coast neighborhood of San Francisco with her monolingual husband Jeremy, her bilingual daughter Ellie, and her not-yet-talking son Jett. She serves on the board of the Barbary Coast Neighborhood Association where she is working to transform San Francisco’s northeast waterfront into a more livable, family-friendly community.

Jeremy Liew

Jeremy is a Managing Director of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with over $2bn under management, where he focuses on internet investing. He led Lightspeed’s investments in Living Social, Playdom, Shoedazzle, Flixter, Bonobos and Kixeye, among others. Previously, Jeremy was with AOL, first as SVP of Corporate Development and Chief of Staff to the CEO and then as General Manager of Netscape. He also held roles at IAC, McKinsey and CitySearch, where he was an early employee. 

Jeremy holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA/BS from the Australian National University in Linguistics and Pure Mathematics. He was a massive nerd in high school, where he was on the Australian team at the International Maths Olympaid, and has spent the rest of his life overcompensating.

Jeremy was born in Singapore, grew up in Malaysia, England and Australia, and worked in South Africa, Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC before wising up and settling in San Francisco in 2006. He likes to keep one step ahead of the law. He and his wife Ranee have one daughter at PKS, Ellie, and one son, Jett, who is a future student.

Cynthia So Schroeder

As a bilingual San Francisco native who has lived and worked abroad in Asia and Europe, Cynthia is passionate about building a multilingual and multicultural world for the next generation. She is a consultant on Social Media and Online Communities. She is the Vice President of the Board of Directors at the Cal Alumni Association at U.C. Berkeley. Cynthia also serves as the Co-President of the Presidio Knolls’ Parent Association.

Previously, Cynthia led Global Community Development, and worked on Mergers and Acquisitions at eBay. She has held senior management positions at a number of technology startups, international urban planning firms and co-founded a small business. Cynthia decided to stay put for good in San Francisco after starting her technology career at Accenture and realizing that many of the world’s best foods can be found right here. She holds a BA from the U.C. Berkeley and an MA from UCLA.  Cynthia and her family are proud to be in their second year at Presidio Knolls.

John Stricklin

Raised in Hawaii on the islands of Oahu and Maui, John has been a designer, real estate developer, investor and builder based in San Francisco since 1989. 

With a primary focus on land acquisition, entitlement, design and development of apartment buildings, infill mixed/use commercial buildings, smaller condominium buildings and single family homes. As both an individual and through partnerships he builds in both California and Hawaii.

Tien Tzuo

Tien Tzuo is widely recognized as one of the thought leaders in the High Tech industry. He current serves as CEO of Zuora, a company he co-founded in 2008. Under Tien’s leadership, the company has raised over $70 million dollars and grown into one of the fastest growing and highest profile companies in Silicon Valley, with a list of world class customers. Prior to Zuora, Tien was one of the “original forces” at Salesforce.com, joining as employee 11, building out the product management & marketing organization,  and serving as both Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Strategy Officer. Tien was named CMO of the Year Finalist by BusinessWeek, and his podcast on the Secrets of Salesforce has been downloaded over 500,000 times since it was first published.

Tien serves on the board of Network for Good, a non-profit technology company that has helped other non-profits raise over $300 million dollars. He previously served on the board of Radian6 through that company’s successful exit as Salesforce’s largest acquisition. Tien holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell, and an M.B.A from Stanford. Tien and his wife Mariana have a 2 year old daughter, Ciana, at PKS for her first year. Together, they enjoy watching movies and traveling around the world.

Kevin Wong

Kevin Wong is a third generation real estate broker for his family’s San Francisco real estate practice, Golden Coast Properties. Kevin started his career in public accounting at PricewaterhouseCoopers then spent four years on Wall Street with Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. Kevin moved back to San Francisco in 2004 where he joined his family’s real estate practice and met his wife Audrey. Their oldest son is 3 years old and in his first year at Presidio Knolls. A graduate of UC Berkeley, Kevin was a four-year oarsman on the Cal crew team and in his spare time is a volunteer coach at Stuart Hall High School’s cross country and track teams.

Wendy Xa

Wendy is the founder of Presidio Knolls School, and is actively involved in the school’s operation. She grew up in New York and New Jersey and attended both public and private schools as a child. a former Regional Vice President of a large financial advising companies including Morgan Stanley, Enterprise(acquired by Goldman Sachs) and John Hancock (subsidiary of Manulife, an investment firm in Canada) she was no stranger to taking on big projects. She earned bachelors’ degree in Neuroscience at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She serves as a Board of Trustees for Saint Francis Hospital.

Ron Yu

Ron’s professional experience is rooted in the non-profit, education and start-up worlds. Currently the Executive Director for Champion Charities, Ron works with professional athletes to raise awareness and funds to support research tackling brain diseases and traumatic brain injuries. Previously, Ron worked for educational institutions including Teach for America, KIPP Foundation, a leading charter school management organization, and NewSchools Venture Fund. Ron has also dabbled with start-up organizations at Deloitte and Swan Systems (acquired by DGFastChannel Network). Ron holds an AB from Stanford University and an MBA and Masters in Education from the University of Washington.

Born in New York City but a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area for the past twenty years, Ron and his wife, Siegrid, have two children, Keira and Zachary. Keira is enjoying her days as a Presidio Knolls pre-schooler and Zachary looks forward to joining his big sister at Presidio Knolls one day soon.