Board of Directors

MARGARET BOLLENBACHER, Treasurer

Margaret Bollenbacher is a typographer, graphic artist and print production/publisher with over 15 years of experience in marketing and production management. She has designed and published numerous corporate training packages and manuals and overseen the production of marketing and collateral development for several Fortune 500 clients. Ms. Bollenbacher was a partner with Sagittarian Press in Oakland, CA and Chief Marketing and Community Relations for her own company. Her production, graphic design and marketing clients included the Port of Oakland , Safeway Stores, Pill Hill Medical Groups and the County of Alameda.

Margaret is also an accomplished technical writer and was an instructional consultant with the Berkeley Unified School District.

ERNEST CLARK, JR.

Mr. Ernest Clark, Jr. is a real estate broker and developer with twenty three years of experience in organizational leadership and management on a national level. He has twenty-one years of real estate investment knowledge and experience and specialized knowledge in the acquisition of multi-unit apartment houses, the listing and selling of income property with real estate firms and the establishment of private partnerships in real estate. Mr. Clark is the past president of the Association of Real Property Brokers, a member of the Oakland Board of Realtors and 100 Black Men.

Mr. Clark developed the Conceptual Framework for a California Statewide Study on Lenders practices in California, 1990, Redlining/Refusing to make Loans with the California State Department of Real Estate. He also developed the Minority Real Estate Guide, a directory of minority real estate licensees in the Oakland Bay Area.

MITCHELL HARDIN

Mitch Hardin is a real estate analyst/developer/consultant who has over 25 years of real estate development and housing management experience. He has supervised the planning and development of several regional southern California shopping centers. He was a Grubb & Ellis executive in the Northern California Bay Area region, and has served on several boards that guided important real estate development milestones including The Trust for Public Land and The Oakland City Center Economic Development Corporation.

Mr. Hardin has been involved in a number of significant local community development planning activities over the years he has lived in Oakland.

Mr. Hardin is currently active in housing development and management projects in Oakland, and works with many housing organizations as well as local housing policy activities and initiatives.

LAWRENCE HYNSON

Lawrence Hynson serves as the Executive Director of the East Oakland Community Development Corporation (EOCDC). During his tenure, EOCDC has served as the co-developer/owner of seventy-four (74) units of affordable housing in Central East Oakland. EOCDC’s corporate office is located at 1406 Seminary Avenue in Central East Oakland.

Working in the public sector since 1975, Mr. Hynson studied City and Regional Planning at San Jose State University. Since that time, Mr. Hynson has served as a City and State Planner, Housing Director, Consultant, and Manager of Public Housing.

As a long standing community activist, Mr. Hynson current serves as a board member on behalf of the Oakland Citizens Committee for Urban Renewal, (OCCUR). A life long Bay Area resident, Mr. Hynson currently resides in an unincorporated area of Alameda County, Ashland.

DENISE JENNINGS

Denise Jennings is a media arts specialist committed to education and specifically media education. She is a coordinator for the Career Technical Education program in the Peralta Community College District. She is committed to serving the community through the fields of biotech, green jobs, youth media, and school to career opportunities.

Ms. Jennings was the founder and director of Youth Media, a community-based organization that helps youth, teachers and parents produce digital media productions and operate a homework help hotline.

She is a former free media producer, high school media teacher, and Laney Community College teacher.

Ms. Jennings worked as a production assistant on “The Arsenio Hall Show” and “Fresh Prince of Bel Air. She produced a documentary for PBS entitled “Listen Up.” Ms. Jennings is the recipient of awards from Met Life, the San Francisco Film Festival and the Oakland Unified School District.

CONWAY B. JONES, JR.

Conway B. Jones, Jr. is a patriot, businessman, and arts patron.

He retired from the United States Air Force with over sixty-eight hundred flying hours and 87 combat missions in Viet Nam.

His business career spans thirty years. He founded Communications Products Company, Inc. in 1970. In 1981, he founded Adelphi Communications, Inc.

Art is his passion. He was chairman of the Oakland Arts Council. He served on the Alameda County Arts Commission. He founded the Calvin Simmons Center for the Performing Arts. He serves on the board of directors of the Oakland East Bay Symphony and the Oakland Youth Orchestra.

As chairman of the Western Aerospace Museum , Oakland , California , he established the Museum’s first home at the Oakland International Airport .

He is on the board of directors of Concurrent Technologies Corporation, a high-tech firm and board chairman of the CTC Foundation. He is on the board of OCCUR, Oakland Citizens Committee for Urban Renewal, and the Advisory Board of One California Bank.

He received a BS degree from C.W. Post College and an MBA from Golden Gate College.

He is married to the former Leslie Coffman and has a son, Eric.

YVONNE LEWIS

A native of Texas, Yvonne moved to Oakland with her family as a child in 1948. She graduated from Fremont High School and originally came to Laney as a student. She subsequently earned a certificate in secretarial science and an Associate degree in Business Administration, before transferring to Saint Mary’s College, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in management.

Yvonne began her employment with Peralta Colleges in 1976 when she was appointed as Staff Assistant to the Dean of Instruction (Odell Johnson) at the College of Alameda. In 1982, she assumed the position of Executive Assistant to the President of Laney College. Yvonne has served as Executive Assistant to four Laney Presidents – Dr. Frank Chong, Dr. Deborah Blue, Mr. Earnest Crutchfield and Mr. Odell Johnson – but her impact on the college extends far beyond the President’s Office. She is also an adjunct faculty member in the Business Department at Laney College; a co-founder and leader of the Peralta Association of African American Affairs (formerly known as Council on Black American Affairs), and a co-founder of the Laney Classified Senate, where she later served as vice president and senator. Yvonne has mentored and enriched the lives of countless numbers of students, and she is an inspirational role model to her colleagues. Laney College is a better place because of Yvonne Lewis.

Yvonne also worked in an interim capacity as Executive Assistant to the Chancellor for Peralta District in 1995 and Executive Assistant to the Vice Chancellor of Education for Peralta District in 1990.

Prior to her work at Peralta Colleges, Yvonne served as an Executive Secretary for the Vice President of Kaiser Engineers in Oakland, California (1968-1975). Before that, she worked as a Clerk II at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California.

After 32 years working in the Peralta College District, Yvonne Lewis retired from her position as Executive Assistant to the President of Laney College on August 2, 2008. She continues to teach part-time at Laney College during her retirement.

SISTER MARIE DE PORRES TAYLOR, President

Sister Marie de Porres Taylor is a Program Administrator and Educator with over 25 years of experience and service to communities in the East Bay region of Northern California. She is the former Director of Community Based Services of the Catholic Youth Organization, where she oversaw the agency’s diverse programs including its Foster Family Agency, Canal Family Services, Mission Day Care and CYO Athletics programs. She has lead aggressive and successful resource development campaigns for several community services agencies such as Oakland Housing Authority, Oakland Private Industry Council and the Office of the Mayor of Oakland.

Ms. Taylor was a Special Assistant to Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris and a Program Development Specialist for Alameda County Supervisor Mary King. She has also served as Executive Director of the National Black Sisters’ Conference, Oakland CA, a highly acclaimed organization promoting collaborative spiritual and service activities for black women. She has also served as the Department Chair of Home Economics at Holy Names High School, Oakland and as the Director of the Black Catholic Pastoral Center for the Diocese of the Oakland, CA.

REVEREND BRIAN K. WOODSON, SR., Vice-President

Servant Brian K. Woodson, Sr. is the founding pastor of the Bay Area Christian Connection (BACC). BACC is an inner city church with a full service women’s treatment program called Covenant Sisters and a feeding program that this year has distributed over 453,000 lbs of food to the inner-city residents of Oakland Ca.

Brian K. Woodson, Sr. accepted the Lord Jesus Christ at a young age. His life’s purpose has always been to live a life that pleases his first Love and Savior our Lord Jesus Christ.

Pastor Woodson desires most to be part of fostering the uplift of African Americans and other disenfranchised peoples. It is his sincere belief that this can most effectively be done through a continuing evaluation of exant economic and social oppression. He believes that in America’s diverse urban communities, this objective is best obtained through the proclamation of the Gospel and the development of fellowship and commitment in and to the church which would produce an empowered, proactive community.

Pastor Woodson’s educational training includes a Bachelor of Industrial Design Degree from Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York; Master of Divinity from United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio; and most recently continuing studies in Old Testament at the Graduate Theological Seminary, University of California at Berkeley. He has traveled in Europe, Scandinavia, Israel and most recently to Burkina Faso, Africa.

While at United Theological Seminary, Servant Woodson was selected as the first Black Church Ministries Fellow to pursue a Masters of Divinity degree where he completed the four-year program in less than three years; received the Bert V. Flinchbaugh Award for excelling in the study of the Old Testament in the Hebrew Language; received the Robert E. and Mary Elizabeth Cramer Award for outstanding achievement as a middler student and was selected in a national competition to receive the Urban Church Ministries Fellowship by the Fund for Theological Education, Inc.

Prior to full time ministry, Pastor Woodson served as a commissioned officer in the United States Air Force where he obtained the rank of Captain. During his military years he served as a designer, project officer and manager.

Pastor Woodson has served as Senior Pastor at First Baptist Church, London, Ohio; Assistant Pastor and Church Administrator at Third BaptistChurch, San Francisco, California; Executive Assistant to the Pastor at The Church by the Side of the Road, Berkeley, California; and Senior Pastor of The Church of the Good Shepherd, Oakland, California. He became the founding pastor of the Bay Area Christian Connection, Oakland, California in February, 1998.

Pastor Woodson is married to Valerie McCann Woodson and is the proud father of three sons, Joshua, Josiah and Brian, Jr.