Our Board
William Alderman
Retired Partner, Orrick
Bill Alderman has been a litigation and dispute resolution specialist at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP since 1970, focusing primarily on securities litigation, regulatory, and corporate governance issues. He commits a substantial part of his time to pro bono representation, is a director of Bay Area Legal Aid, and has previously served as a director and/or officer of the Bar Association of San Francisco, Disability Rights Advocates, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, the St. Thomas More Society of San Francisco, and The National MS Society Bay Area Chapter. Bill is a graduate of Miami University and Yale Law School. He has four adult children and lives in Santa Cruz, California.
Read more about Bill in our blog post here.
Diane Brandenburg
Philanthropist, Artist & Fundraiser, Brandenburg Family Foundation
Diane Brandenburg was a key capital fundraiser for the Martin Luther King Library, the first of its kind in our nation to combine its university collections and resources along with those of San Jose, California’s public libraries. She served on the Library Council Board from 2004 until 2011, raising endowments and participating in other fundraising projects for the library. She served on the Deep Peninsula League for seven years, raising funds for the San Francisco Symphony. Diane and her late husband Lee believe that investing in our children today, makes all of our futures brighter. They built the theatre for the Children’s Discovery Museum and the Gymnasium for the New Children’s Shelter in San Jose, California, as well as funding numerous other philanthropic organizations, including creating the Eric L. Brandenburg Memorial Children’s Fund giving program at our foundation
Read more about Diane in our blog post here.
Debra Fischer
Partner, Morgan Lewis
Debra Fischer has practiced employment law for more than 25 years, successfully trying cases in both California state and federal courts. She has experience in arbitration and her appellate work consists of briefing and arguing cases in state and federal courts of appeal, including briefing in the U.S. Supreme Court. She has defended clients in a wide variety of employment matters, including sexual harassment and wrongful termination suits; claims of race, sex, disability, pregnancy, age, and sexual orientation discrimination; and assault, battery, invasion of privacy, defamation, fraud, and false imprisonment allegations. Fischer hopes women will continue to emerge as leaders in the legal profession, thus enhancing their ability to practice law as well as providing more diverse representation to clients.
Thibault Gerbaldi
Partner, Tudor Investment Corporation
Thibault Gerbaldi was born and raised in Paris, France. An engineer by training, Thibault graduated from Ecole Polytechnique. After completing graduate studies at Princeton University, Thibault joined BNP Paribas Bank in New York before joining Tudor Investment Corporation as a portfolio manager in 2013.
Thibault has dedicated time to charity work with involvement in programs to help individuals in need in France, Peru, and New York. He has served food for the underprivileged in Paris as well as in New York and spent some time in a retirement home in Peru to help Catholic Sisters in their day to day work. Thibaut ran the 2019 NY marathon in support of the Robin Hood foundation.
Thibault joined the TFI board in 2019.
Dr. John B. de Graft-Johnson, M.D., FACS
Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeon, Sharp HealthCare
John has two decades’ worth of experience in the medical field. For ten years, he served as the Assistant Chief of Surgery for Vascular and Thoracic Surgery at Kaiser Permanente. Currently, he is a Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeon at Sharp HealthCare in San Diego, California. In addition, John is Physician CEO at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He also served in the United States Navy for two years, where he was the Lieutenant Commander, Medical Corps. On top of these accomplishments, John has also published several papers related to topics such as Cardiovascular Medicine and Thoracic Surgery.
Vivian Ho
Senior Director, Finance, Biotech NewCo
Vivian Ho is currently the Senior Director of Finance at a NewCo Biotech, where she leads the finance operations. Prior to NewCo, Vivian served as Assistant Controller at Portola Pharmaceuticals and as Senior Manager of Audit at EY. Vivian grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and earned her Bachelor of Commerce at the University of British Columbia. Her interest in helping others began when she was 6, when wrote a poem about a world with peace. Volunteering and giving back has been a constant presence in her life since then, particularly with causes that support education, children, and nature. She has helped TFI for a number of years, including making a site visit to TFI’s grantees in Peru. Vivian helps review TFI’s accounting records and joined the TFI board in 2016.
Read more about Vivian on our blog here.
Jilma Meneses
Secretary, State of Washington Department of Social & Health Services (DSHS)
Jilma has a proven track record of executive leadership through her roles in higher education, human services, civil rights, and social justice. She currently serves as the Secretary of the State of Washington Department of Social & Health Services, and is thus the chief executive officer providing overall leadership and strategic vision, overseeing 17,000 employees, and transforming the lives of nealy 2.4 million Washington residents annually. She previously served as CEO of Catholic Charities in San Franciso, one of the most comprehensive human services agencies in the Bay Area. She has also participated in global humanitarian efforts, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Jilma earned her Bachelor of Arts at the University of California, Berkeley, and her juris doctor degree from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, OR.
Gerard Hugh Mohan
Retired Commander, US Navy and Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP)
Gerard Hugh Mohan was born and raised in New York city and is a certified Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP). He has worked as an Advanced Cardiac Life Support instructor and he has a past history specializing in Dialysis and Trauma. He also was a Director of Inpatient services for a Naval Medical facility. After obtaining his B.S. in Nursing at Rutgers University, Mr. Mohan immediately joined the Navy in 1986 and served in the Navy Nurse Corps.
During his time in the Navy, Mohan continued his education at Seattle Pacific University. After obtaining the rank of Commander in the Navy, Mohan retired in 2004. Mr. Mohan, nevertheless, was reluctant to set aside his skills, so he made use of his clinical experiences at a variety of health facilities as well as teaching clinical courses. More recently, Mr. Mohan’s eagerness to serve others has led him to The Forgotten International.
Since joining TFI’s Board of Directors, Mr. Mohan has established the Dr. Eugene P. Mohan Medical Assistance Fund in the name of his late brother, in 2019. The fund has already made a positive impact on those in need in Africa, India, Nepal, and Peru.
Thomas Nazario
Founder & President, The Forgotten International
Thomas Nazario is an attorney and former Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco School of Law. He has authored four books on children’s rights, including the acclaimed In Defense of Children. His international work largely began in 1999 as a member of a legal team charged with preparing a report for the United Nations on the treatment of Tibetan children by the Chinese government. In doing so, he was asked to travel to India to meet with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Since then, and in addition to many more trips to India, Professor Nazario has traveled to Romania, South Africa, Nepal, Peru, Thailand, Rwanda, and Botswana to work on issues related to global poverty.
Read more about Tom in our blog post here.
Charles Alden Reed, CFA
Retired Finance Professional
Charles held a variety of technical and sales roles within the banking industry while on the trading floors of global banks operating in New York City. During his time in industry, he focused on the implementation of complex structured transactions serving insurance companies, banks, and other financial institutions. Prior to his time in banking, Charles worked in Research and Portfolio Management at an investment advisor which currently manages over $100bn for institutional and private clients.
Charles earned his Bachelor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California, his Master of Financial Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and held CFA charter continually through the majority of his career.
Having recently stepped back from the industry, Charles has focused increasingly on his Board duties and on ways to help TFI while traveling abroad with his wife.
Bobba Venkatadri
Venture Capitalist
Bobba was Vice President of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing operations at Warner Lambert Co. USA (Pfizer). He managed five plants with a staff of about 2,000 in in US. He served as President of Warner Lambert, Indonesia. He was Executive Vice President of Centocor Inc. (now a Divison of J&J) and was responsible for R&D, Clinical Development, and operations. His group developed Reo-Pro, the first successful monoclonal Antibody and Remicade, a drug for Rheumatoid Arthritis (sold about $8B in 2018). He was CEO of Molecular Biosystems, which developed the first ultrasound contrast agent, which is currently marketed by Mallinckrodt (about $300M in sales). He served as Senior V.P. of Covance Biosciences (now a division of Merck). Bobba joined Ventureast in 2007 as a general partner. He currently serves on the Board of Ventureast, Stasis Labs, Geneyx, Certus critical care, and Sparsha Pharma. He co-manages a seed fund investing in breakthrough digital health technologies.
In addition, he serves on the board of The Forgotten International and is a very active Rotarian. He spends most of his time now serving the needs of the less fortunate while completing the construction of a new school for the children of the village he grew up in in Southern India.
Read more about Bobba in our blog post here.