The East Bay Young Dems Advisory Board (AB) is made of individuals from various professional spheres, including but not limited to politics, business, media, nonprofit, labor, and the arts. AB members are committed to promoting East Bay Young Dems’ mission, increasing the club’s visibility, and helping the club be an effective force for change in East Bay politics.

AB members should be of “honorary member” age (at least, 36 years old). Elected officials are not eligible for the AB while holding office, but are eligible if they not a current office holder. New AB members will be selected during the Spring of each odd year.

What are the Advisory Board’s responsibilities?
AB members will provide advice and counsel to the club, drawing from their respective area of expertise and community experience. In addition to guidance, each AB member will contribute or raise at least $500 each term year for the club.

EBYD does not anticipate the need for in-person meetings of the entire AB. However, attendance may be requested at specific EBYD events, which will be optional but strongly recommended. AB members should attend at least one meeting each term year of the EBYD executive committee. These meetings are for strategic planning and club business, and are held the fourth Monday of every month.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Current Advisory Board Members:

Jakada Imani

Jakada became Ella Baker Center’s Executive Director in 2007, after serving as a lead strategist and chief team member on some of Ella Baker Center’s most high profile campaigns for eight years.

Most recently, Jakada directed Books Not Bars, taking the ongoing campaign to replace California’s abusive youth prisons with effective rehabilitation programs to ever-increasing heights. Before that, Jakada helped lead the successful “Stop the Super Jail Campaign,” a two-year effort to stop Alameda County from building a massive, expensive and remote juvenile hall that it didn’t need. He was a leader in the “Justice for Moreno and Pacheco Campaign,” the successful fight to free two wrongly convicted Latino boys in Solano County. And he ran Ella Baker Center’s youth organizing project, Third Eye Movement, during the “No on 21″ campaign to educate voters about the dangers of Proposition 21, a draconian ballot measure aimed at
putting 14-year-olds in adult courts and 16-year-olds in adult prisons.

Before joining Ella Baker Center staff, Jakada was a Constituent Liaison for Oakland City Councilwoman Nancy Nadel. He helped launch or lead a number of important Bay Area organizations, including Empowered
Youth Educating Society (EYES), Rising Youth for Social Equality (RYSE) and Underground Railroad (an artist collective).

Born and raised in Oakland, California, Jakada is the father of three powerful and creative young girls.

Sumi Paranjape

Sumi Paranjape is a fellow in the School of Public Health at the UC Berkeley. Her research aims to identify therapeutic targets for treatment of dengue fever. In conjunction, Sumi is interested in international health policy and recently traveled to Nicaragua to teach molecular techniques for surveillance of mosquito-borne diseases. At the national level, Sumi is interested in the development of policies to ensure universal accessibility of healthcare. She worked with the California Department of Health Services to determine the demographics of prenatal screening uptake within the state of California and has participated in working groups on intellectual property and technology transfer.

In 2003, Sumi co-founded a non-profit organization, No American Left Behind. Through music, spoken word, movies and discussion, the organization engaged people in areas throughout the country where voter participation was low. In addition to motivating and educating voters, the organization fundraised for local get out the vote organizations. Sumi continues to assist Bay Area non-profits in fundraising and get out the vote efforts.

Sumi Paranjape holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from UCSD, an MPH from UC Berkeley and a BA from Washington University.

Richard Raya

Richard is the Director of Administration for the Alameda County Public Health Department. He is proud to be implementing the will of the voters everyday as a County employee.

His main role is to balance the Public Health Department budget. He strives to connect the budget to actual program outcomes and to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used effectively and efficiently.

Prior to this Richard was a Senior Associate for PolicyLink, leading the Equity in Infrastructure Initiative. His greatest success was working with urban school districts, community advocates, the building industry, and state legislators to craft Proposition 1D. This legislation ensured that low-income urban school districts received a more equitable share of billions of dollars in school construction funds.

Richard dropped out of high school, but used the California community college system to get to UC Berkeley, where he received his B.A. in English and his Master’s in Public Policy.

Richard is a third-generation Bay Area native who lives in North Oakland with his girlfriend, three sons, and two mastiffs.

Dan Rush

Dan Rush and his Wife Pam are the Parents of Jennifer, Kelly & Eugene Rush, all currently, Public High School students at Encinal High School, in the 16th AD.  The Rush Family is a proud 5 Generation Labor family in Oakland and their roots in the 16th AD, UFCW, the Teamsters, the Machinists Union, and the Labor Council, all in Oakland. The Rush family, lives on the same Compound ( W. MacArthur & Telegraph) that their Great-Great Grandfather built in 1867.

Dan is currently the Special Operations Director for United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 5 (UFCW5, a BI-State Local Union in CA & AZ) and is currently (since 1996) the Executive Secretary Treasurer of Instituto Laboral de la Raza, a workers resource center for unorganized, mono-lingual, immigrant working families in Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose. He has dedicated his career to assisting mono-lingual Latin immigrant working families, and has done this since his days (in the early 1980’s) with the Teamsters, working as a Dues Collector in the fields and packing sheds of the Salinas, Imperial and Yuma Valley’s.  Those very Members are now part of UFCW5.

Dan is celebrating his family’s Private Investigation firms’ *33rd year in business, in Oakland and his own 20th anniversary (July, 2009), as a Licensed Private Investigator.  Dan’s Grandfather started the firm in 1976, his father Jim Rush took it over in 1982, and Dan’s daughter Kelly is currently employed there (as a student intern).

Dan is an Elected 16th AD Central Committee Delegate and Chair of the 16th AD Democratic Club.  He is the former Political Director of UFCW120, and the retired Sgt at Arms of the Central Labor Council of Alameda County.

Dan is a life-long Motorcycle enthusiast and Chair of the Lobby Committee of CA Modified Motorcycle Assoc.

Frank D. Russo

Frank D. Russo is an Oakland attorney who has been active in California politics for 40 years during which he has been elected Chair of the Alameda County Democratic Party.  He has directed campaign efforts locally and in other states for candidates and ballot measures.  He is the Chief of Staff to Assemblymember Nancy Skinner.

In the 1970’s and 80’s, he worked in the Capitol for Democratic legislators in prominent positions including serving as Legal Counsel to the Speaker of the Assembly. Over these years, many of the proposals he has drafted have become California law.

He led a statewide advocacy organization of over 1,000 attorneys in the 1990’s, lectured and written extensively on industrial injuries, established the Russo Law Firm, and over the course of three decades represented thousands of working men and women.

In 2006, he founded and published the California Progress Report, a website publishing daily on politics and public policy.  He has frequently appeared on television and radio including election night coverage on CBS in the Bay Area, on KQED Forum, and the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour.

Mr. Russo graduated cum laude from Yale University with a degree in Political Science and from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law.

Growing up in San Diego, at the tender age of 14, he became President of a Young Democrat Club he founded and voted for Howard Berman to replace Henry Waxman as Chair of the California Young Democrats.

Phil Tagami

Born and raised in Oakland, Phil Tagami spends every day working to help the city he loves. He has built his life here believing that both families and business can thrive in Oakland. Phil works tirelessly to improve both Oakland’s urban and environmental assets.  Phil has spent his entire adult life donating his time, energy and money to a long list of worthy charitable causes. The list of recipients is as varied as Phil’s interests, with environmental, educational, recreational, social services and science benefiting. Phil has had extensive local and state media coverage during the past 20 years, both for his professional work and for his community service.

Melanie Tervalon

Melanie Tervalon, MD, MPH, has over 25 years experience in health care as a program director, advisor, teacher, clinician, strategist and consultant.  She has spent 20 years of devoted work creating original approaches in the field of multicultural health with an emphasis on education within the health care professions. Dr. Tervalon’s work incorporates principles of social justice, fairness and equity in program practice.  Her extensive consultant history for clients includes crafting strategic plans for program and funding initiatives, providing expert knowledge in the field of culture, race, ethnicity and identity in health and health services, guiding leaders or teams from ideas to implementation while modeling participatory processes, synthesizing large amounts of often disparate information for use in organizational planning or redirection, and facilitating meetings for large and small groups. Dr. Tervalon has a reputation for building constructive, participatory relationships inside and outside of institutions, modeling respect for divergent points of view, and setting a tone of urgency for the work of inclusive policies and practices in all settings. Dr. Tervalon is well published and recognized as an excellent public speaker locally, nationally and internationally. Dr Tervalon is a 40 year resident of Oakland, California where she raised her adult children, Lateef and Esperanza.