Board of Trustees
The PKS Board of Trustees provides governance and oversight to PKS. As stewards of the school’s mission, Trustees are responsible for establishing the school’s direction, and setting out the corresponding strategic priorities with input from PKS faculty, staff, and leadership, and feedback from the parent community. The Board hires, supports, and evaluates the Head of School, who carries out the strategic priorities and is assessed by the Board for meeting goals and milestones. Trustees also have fiduciary responsibility, ensuring that PKS is on sound financial footing and meeting its financial obligations.
2023-2024 Board of Trustees
Alejandra Rincón, PhD
Alejandra Rincón, PhD serves as Assistant Vice-Chancellor and Chief of Staff for the Office of Diversity and Outreach at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). In that capacity, she manages the overall operations of the Office of Diversity and Outreach, is the lead strategist for this unit and assists in carrying out the vision and goals for the overall campus. This includes a new initiative dedicated to Advancing Excellence in Staff Recruitment by working with search committees hiring top executives and upper management. She also serves as a Curriculum lead for the new Latinx Center of Excellence in the School of Medicine.
Dr. Alejandra Rincón is the author of “Undocumented Immigrants and Higher Education: ¡Sí se puede!” This is the first book on the topic to chronicle the historic struggle of undocumented students and their supporters to gain equal access to higher education through in-state tuition laws. Her new publication entitled “Immigrants’ Efforts to Access Public Schools and Higher Education in the United States” is part of Springer’s 2020 Handbook on Promoting Social Justice in Education.
Dr. Rincón is the 2006 recipient of the Human Relations Award of the National Association of College Admissions Counseling. The award honors persons who have been instrumental in making postsecondary education opportunities available to historically underrepresented students. Through her current service for the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE), she continues to advocate for increased educational opportunities for underrepresented students.
Ali Nazer
Ali and his wife Cynthia have two children at PKS. Ali was born in Iran and grew up in Canada where he completed a couple of engineering degrees at Queen's University. He moved to the Bay Area in 2002 to get his MBA from Stanford and has been in San Francisco since 2004. His wife Cynthia is Chinese-American, so both Chinese immersion and a progressive program were priorities. They joined the PKS community in 2016 when their oldest child started pre-school. Ali has worked in technology and product management for most of his career including multiple start-ups and roles at Electronic Arts, Facebook, and most recently Adobe. His interests include cooking, eating, travel, and watching sports of all kinds.
Emila Damjanovic
Emila Damjanovic and her husband Peter Lee have two children at PKS. Emila was raised in Slovenia before immigrating to New York City and speaks three languages. Emila was part of the initial founding team, and is a Partner, leading the Investor Relations team at Lead Edge Capital, a growth stage private equity fund. Prior to Lead Edge, Emila was the Head of Investor Relations and Assistant COO at Eastern Advisors, a global crossover hedge fund funded by Tiger Management. Emila is passionate about empowering women and leads the effort to connect female entrepreneurs, operators, and investors across her network. She enjoys traveling and exploring new places with her family and friends.
Emma Cocks
Emma served as in-house counsel for a federal agency for over a decade and then moved to the client side where she works on the acquisition of all things real estate portfolio related, whether A/E services, capital construction, repair and alteration, or maintenance. She also acquires and disposes of federal real estate. Saving money for the taxpayer drives her work life, but what Emma loves is her family and her friends. Emma and her husband Rob joined the PKS community in the fall of 2013 when their daughter Charlie entered the preschool as a toddling two year old. Their circle of friends has been expanding ever since. Emma and Rob, with barely passable Franglish and Spanglish skills respectively, are constantly amazed by the Mandarin chatter that comes from the backseat during carpool.
Emma has been a room parent three times, given many an admissions tour, and chaperoned multiple field trips over the years at PKS. Most recently, she served as the Communications Chair for the Parent Association. Emma and Rob moved to San Francisco from Atlanta in 2000 and live in Noe Valley. She still longs for the warm nights of the South. Emma holds a JD from Golden Gate University and a BS in Biology from Emory University.
Jamie Wong
Jamie and her husband, Andrew, live in the Inner Richmond with their two kids. Originally from Sacramento, Jamie grew up in a household passionate about bridging US-China relations through cultural and economic exchange. After spending several summers abroad, Jamie went on to earn a B.A. in International Relations and Asian & Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She had brief stints in Hong Kong and Shanghai before returning to California to attend law school at UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings) where she was President of the Chinese Law & Culture Society and helped recruit the school’s first Chinese Law professor. She is now a corporate law attorney at Apple managing its legal entities in Greater China, Asia Pacific, India, and the Americas, while supporting geographic and business expansion efforts worldwide. Jamie enjoys travel, music, tabletop games, cooking with her family, and, most of all, connecting with old and new friends. She had the opportunity to get involved in the PKS community while serving as a room parent and looks forward to progressing the school’s mission as a trustee.
Janette Fong
Janette and her husband Neville have two children at PKS. Originally from the suburbs of New York, Janette picked up a little Mandarin at Saturday Chinese school and a little Cantonese at home. She has previously been a room parent and is now trying her hand at “managing” a soccer team. She recently started a company aiming to increase family and medical leave awareness and uptake, and currently sits on the Board for U.S. Digital Response, a civic technology non-profit. Janette earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and a Masters of HCI from Carnegie Mellon University.
Jed Lau
Jed and his wife Elisa have two children at PKS. Originally from Northern Virginia, Jed was dragged to Chinese school for 2 hours every Sunday for over 12 years, only to have his kids surpass his Chinese proficiency in their first year of preschool at PKS. He has been a room parent for both of his kids’ classes, and has served as the parent liaison for Admissions. Now a stay-at-home dad, Jed has held leadership roles in software engineering and product management at both enterprise- and consumer-focused companies. Jed earned a B.S. in Mathematical Sciences from UNC Chapel Hill, and an M.Eng. in Computer Science from Cornell University. His interests include education, eldercare, travel, scuba diving, and karaoke.
Jevan Soo
Jevan and his husband Ryan have two sons at PKS, and live in the Mission along with a large Airedale terrier. Jevan grew up in a New Jersey suburb, where he was a delinquent student at Saturday Chinese school. He made it up to his parents by majoring in East Asian Studies at Harvard College, including a summer in Beijing in a Mandarin immersion program, and later moving to Shanghai for several years. Jevan also earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School.
Having begun his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, Jevan has spent the last decade helping high-growth companies scale their operations and cultures. He is currently the Chief People Officer at insitro, a techbio company that seeks to transform drug discovery through machine learning and high-throughput data generation.
Kirkwood Land
Kirk is a tenured Associate Professor at the University of the Pacific where he has teaching responsibilities in the first-year biology core for several different pre-health programs and tracks. In addition, his research laboratory encompasses two areas (1) the identification and characterization of natural antimicrobials found in a variety of sources, and (2) the identification of the critical factors associated with undergraduate student success. He has presented and published extensively in both areas. Kirk earned a B.S. degree in Microbiology from UC Davis and a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from UCLA. He finished postdoctoral training at UCSF prior to joining the University of the Pacific.
Kirk and his son, Sean, have been a PKS family since 2021. Mandarin immersion and global awareness have been a top priority since Sean enrolled in preschool, and now he will be starting the 8th grade this coming year. In his spare time, and while waiting for Sean to finish his swim team practice, Kirk enjoys running and training for his next half marathon.
Mark Roche
Mark Roche and his wife Kirsten have three children at PKS. Mark grew up in upstate New York, studied Chinese while at Middlebury College, and spent time living in Harbin, Qingdao, and Beijing, China before going to law school. Mark received his law degree from Georgetown and moved to San Francisco in 2006.
Mark is a partner at Baker McKenzie where he focuses on corporate tax and white collar disputes. He also co-chairs the firm’s California pro bono program, where his practice ranges from advocacy on behalf of children in special education matters to appellate advocacy before the Ninth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court. Mark and Kirsten have been active members of the PKS community since 2014. They live with their three kids and over-sized dog in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond.
Mary Mercer
Mary and her husband, Tom, are parents to two students at PKS, who have attended since preschool. They were first drawn to the school because of its strong sense of community, and are grateful for the continued curiosity, joy in learning, and love of Chinese language and culture fostered by teachers, students, and families, alike. Mary has served as room parent for both of her children's classes and has enjoyed lending her elbow-grease for many different school celebrations. When not circumnavigating the city for her kids' sports or music activities, Mary works as a professor of emergency medicine at UCSF and at San Francisco General Hospital. She is an expert in prehospital and disaster medicine and public health. Most recently, she has helped to lead the San Francisco Department of Public Health's response to Covid-19 and Monkeypox (MPX). A native of Massachusetts, Mary graduated from Harvard University with a BA in History of Science, Columbia University Medical School, and UC Berkeley School of Public Health. In her free time, she enjoys reading, running, hiking with her family, baking, and theater.
Nancy Hang
Nancy grew up in the Bay Area and is ethnically Chinese; her parents were refugees from Vietnam. She and her husband, Alex, first heard about PKS in 2012, when the school was only a few years young. They were compelled by the school's mission, innovation, and joyful learning approach and now have two children at PKS. Nancy embarrassingly and proudly admits that their children's Mandarin surpassed hers after just one year at PKS!
Professionally, Nancy comes from a business and technology background, with over 15 years experience in various strategic and operational leadership roles at startups and Fortune 500 companies. She was most recently VP of Global Travel Product Strategy at SAP Concur; before that, she was VP of Consumer Travel Products. Nancy joined SAP via Hipmunk, where she was SVP Product, helping build and scale the company through its acquisition in 2016. Prior to Hipmunk, Nancy was an early product leader at Zynga, helping lead its IPO in 2011. She has also spent time at Yahoo! and IBM. Nancy received her MBA from MIT and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Computer Science & Engineering from UCLA.
It brings Nancy much joy to watch her and Alex’s kids conversing with their grandparents in Mandarin and connecting through language. She looks forward to further advancing the PKS mission as a trustee in this stage of the school's growth.
Robert Tsai
Robert arrives at Presidio Knolls School by way of rural Pennsylvania and Louisiana. He and his family have been part of the PKS community since 2012, where his spouse is a regular guest speaker and where their children are happy students. Robert has been a repeating room parent, has explored San Francisco as a chaperone on many field trips, and has coached and managed his children’s respective soccer teams.
Outside of school and family life, Rob is a software engineering professional who has delivered a wide range of products, from very small electronics to very large internet-scale systems. He was on the founding teams for Google/Android contactless smartphone payments, and for Google[x]/Verily medical devices and surgical robotics; he currently works on vehicle controls software at Cruise. Rob holds a B.A. from Harvard College and an M.Eng. from Cornell University, both in Computer Science.
Rob Zivnuska
Rob works at an investment bank, where he helps boards and management teams navigate crises and other challenges with their investors. Previously working at an asset manager and as a lawyer, Rob has a background in board governance; diversity and inclusion; responsible investment; mergers and acquisitions; and corporate finance. Rob holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A in International Relations from the University of California, Davis.
Rob and his husband John were delighted to join the PKS community in 2014, after their daughter prophetically observed, “This is my school!” at the start of her first preschool tour. They knew for sure that PKS was the right school for their family a few months later, when she broke into a duet with her grandmother to Teresa Teng’s classic 月亮代表我的心. Rob has served as a PKS room parent and his favorite PKS tradition is semi-formal lunch.
Theresa Johnson
Dr. Theresa Johnson works on new Payments technology platforms to accelerate belonging at Airbnb. On Payments she leads multiple cross-functional teams focused on micro-services architecture and platform APIs. Her product team builds platform products and tools to allow any developer to seamlessly integrate with Airbnb Payments infrastructure. Theresa joined Airbnb as a Data Scientist after earning a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. As a data scientist, she worked on product teams focused on supply growth and quality. Her biggest bet was working on a smart pricing system for listing photography that increased global access to high quality photos for hosts to increase their revenue, regardless of market.
She has a BS, MS and PhD in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from Stanford University. She enjoys bringing her passion for all things space to the students and parents of PKS. She’s help the Willow Tree class build model comets and hosted a “Count Me In” to watch a meteor shower. She is a founding board member of StreetCode Academy, a non-profit dedicated to high touch technical training for inner city youth. She is also serving a 5 year term on the Stanford Alumni Association Board of Directors.
Theresa lives in Bernal Heights, San Francisco with her husband Brian, daughters Cora and Luna, and her rescued catahoula hound, Amelie.
Wendy Wong
Wendy Wong is currently an SVP in Wells Fargo’s Mid-Corporate Technology Banking Group where she partners with mid-to-late stage technology companies on debt and equity capital markets, liquidity management, foreign exchange, and treasury infrastructure needs. Her portfolio includes some of the most innovative companies in fintech, software and internet, and she has supported many of them from startup through IPO. Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Wendy worked in credit-related roles at Goldman Sachs, Silicon Valley Bank, and American Express. Wendy holds a BA/BS in Business Administration and Economics from UC Berkeley, and an MBA from NYU.
Wendy is a Bay Area native and currently lives in Noe Valley with her husband Will, and two kids, Vivienne (G6) and Johnny (G4).
Will Chu
Will and his wife Sarah are parents and uncles/aunts to four PKS children. Will grew up in Fremont and attended Chinese school on Saturdays, which was run by parent volunteers including his mom.
Will is passionate about supply chain and working with people that keep our goods moving. He is the CEO of Vector, a software platform that enables collaboration between the yards of distribution centers and the truck drivers that visit them. On Saturday and Sunday mornings you can find Will swimming in and out of SF’s aquatic park. Will graduated from Cal with a B.A. in computer science.