Letter of Reappointment
May21,2024
DearPresidentBasandmembersoftheCityCouncil:
PursuanttoCityCharterSection601,theMayorhasreappointedthefollowingpersonsasmembersofthefollowingboardorcommission,subjecttoCityCouncilconfirmation:
PublicSafetyandServicesViolencePreventionOversightCommission PaulaHawthorn,toserveatwo-yeartermastheDistrict3representativeonthePublicSafetyandServicesViolencePreventionOversightCommissionthatbeganApril21,2024andendingApril20,2026,fillingtheseatpreviouslyfilledbyherself.
SonyaMehta,toserveatwo-yeartermastheAt-LargerepresentativeonthePublicSafetyandServicesViolencePreventionOversightCommissionthatbeganApril21,2024andendingApril20,2026,fillingtheseatpreviouslyfilledbyherself.
Thankyouforyourassistanceinthismatter.
Sincerely,
MayorShengThao
Submit Date: Aug 23, 2023
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City of Oakland Boards & Commissions
Profile
What City Council district do you live in?
District 2
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Public Safety & Services Violence Prevention Oversight Commissions - 2014: Appointed Interests & Experiences
Sonya Mehta
Oakland CA 94606
Self-Employed:
Metamorphosis Consulting
LLC
Independent Consultant
Sonya Mehta
Upload a Resume
Please tell us how your qualifications and participation will relate to the requested board and/or commission's mission.
My experiences uniquely position me to make meaningful contributions to the Public Safety & Violence Prevention commission. Over the course of my career, and as a member of the Oakland community where I have lived for the last 10 years, I have gained insights and skills that directly align with the commission's goals.
Having spent 5 years as a public school
teacher in East Oakland, specifically at a Title I school, I have firsthand experience working within a community that faces challenges related to violence prevention. During this time, I actively supported students and their families in accessing essential services. I became intimately familiar with navigating complex issues such as gun violence, immigration challenges, incarceration, and community safety. This experience has given me a deep understanding of the factors that contribute to violence and the necessary interventions to prevent it.
My time in the classroom reinforced my belief in the power of education and social services as a key factor in violence prevention. Strong education contributes to a safer and more vibrant community. Moreover, my involvement in a Title I school exposed me to the profound impact of a robust social safety net, accessible trauma healing, and community programming in addressing underlying issues that can lead to violence.
My commitment to
violence prevention extends beyond the classroom. As the co-founder of an incubator focused on Healing Justice initiatives, I am actively engaged in supporting community projects aimed at addressing fundamental needs such as housing, nutritious food, and healing services. This work underscores my dedication to holistic approaches that address the root causes of violence and promote community well-being.
Collaboration is central to
my approach. Through my friendship and work with Yoana Tchoukleva, a member of this commission, I have already begun participating in essential conversations surrounding public safety (including a circle we led together this last weekend). Our joint efforts in organizing a community circle conversation demonstrate my dedication to fostering open dialogues and creating awareness about available resources. I am eager to contribute my insights, knowledge, and dedication to this commission, and appreciate the opportunity to be considered.
Please submit your resume or curriculum vitae. You may upload a document. (A Word format is preferred.) Alternatively, you may paste the text of your resume in the field provided below.
Please paste the text of your resume or curriculum vitae below.
Please click the acknowledgement below.
Service on City of Oakland boards, commissions, and committees may require filings of the FPPC's Statements of Economic Interest (Form 700). Upon appointment and determination of filing status, I will comply with all filing obligations.
I Agree
*
Sonya_Mehta_-_Resume.pdf
Sonya Mehta
06/2021 - Present
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2011 - 2012
2006 - 2010
SUMMARY
I'm an experienced consultant, coach, and facilitator with a deep passion for collaborating around innovative solutions, equity- centered design, and organizational development to fortify team vision and catalyze transformational action.
I thrive in roles where I can serve as a force multiplier, pollinator, systems-builder, and creative problem-solver, and where I can contribute dynamically to a collaborative team in service of transformational social impact.
I've dedicated the last 10 years to working with other visionary leaders to drive systemic change in education, government, philanthropy, and the nonpro
fit sector. I now support a portfolio
of coaching and consulting clients with projects ranging from program design and implementation, human capital strategy, leadership coaching, and strategic planning with an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Founder & Lead Consultant
Metamorphosis Consulting
San Francisco Bay Area
Transformational support for social impact organizations, with focus on facilitation, project management, hiring, executive coaching, strategic partnerships, capacity building, operations, and resource development.
Designed and facilitated 2-day team retreat focused on team-building and strategic planning, where 100% of participants said they gained new insights and found the sessions valuable (Client: Civil Rights Department of California)
Recruited, hired, and onboarded 2 new Bilingual Family Organizers to partner with Spanish-speaking families to build civic power and participate in community empowerment activities (Client: Families in Action for Quality Education)
Partnered with founder to develop and launch Incubator for 8 Social Impact Ventures, including managing business services and co- facilitating leadership cohort. Led e
ffort to hire and onboard a Grant
Writer to support organizational scaling and expansion. (Client: Holistic Underground)
Led international curriculum redesign for 1200 students in the US, Mexico, and Guatemala. Liaised with 16 chapters in the US and Latin America to redevelop their signature program and navigate all implementation challenges (Client: Boys Hope Girls Hope) Launched organization's
first-ever fundraising board, for community of
South Asian gender-expansive families (Client: Desi Rainbow)
GALLUP STRENGTHS
Activator
Turning ideas into action -- sparking life
into visionary thinking and galvanizing
teams and partners to launch projects
Futuristic
Inspired by what's possible when we
create and build in alignment with our
highest selves
Strategic
Quickly spots relevant patterns, needs,
challenges, and opportunities, and
determines a path forward
Maximizer
Strives for excellence, takes people and
projects from great to excellent
Relator
Values human-centered work,
finds deep
satisfaction in collaborating to achieve
collective goals
EDUCATION
Master of Arts in Education,
Bilingual T eaching Credential
University of California, Berkeley
Bachelor of Arts in Political
Science, Minor in Spanish
University of California, Los Angeles
LANGUAGES
Spanish
Fluent (non-heritage speaker)
Hindi
Intermediate
E
q e
Sonya Mehta, M.Ed.
Social Impact & Community Transformation
San Francisco Bay Area, CA
2018 - 2021
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2017 - 2018
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2012 - 2017
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2022 - Present
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07/2022 - 11/2022
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03/2018 - Present
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05/2020 - 05/2021
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PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Managing Director
The Teaching Well
Oakland, CA
First full-time hire at a startup nonprofit focused on interrupting the chronic teacher turnover cycle, by retaining more high-impact teachers.
The Teaching Well provides tools for mindful stress resilience resulting in improved staff wellness, organizational health, and teacher retention. Our innovative model has successfully reduced teacher turnover by 50%, and saved partner schools millions of dollars in attrition-related costs.
Member of founding team of 3: Supported the founder to scale our regional consulting group to a national organization with 10 full-time team members, 25 consultants, and contracts in 11 states across the US Raised $1.8 million through grants and earned revenue, creating financial security for our team in the scarce educational sector Built human resources, external communications, accounting, and hiring systems, which set us up to scale nationally and grow the team Cultivated and stewarded multi-year philanthropic partnerships with 6 national funders and recruited 3 early-stage team members Legislative Design Specialist
Alameda County Government, Early Education Department
Oakland, CA
Directed, organized, and administered all aspects of a $140 million annual early childhood education ballot initiative for June 2018 Alameda County election. Spearheaded policy development, drafting, and revision process, stakeholder presentations, and citywide relationship management.
Partnered with elected officials, labor groups, non-profits, and parent/community groups to design a ballot initiative to expand access to early education to 21,000+ additional children
Drafted allocation plan for $140 million annually, divided between three legislative priorities: increasing access, ensuring affordability, and raising wages for childcare providers and early educators Prepared and delivered presentations to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and facilitated 85+ stakeholder engagement sessions Incorporated feedback from 650+ stakeholders into draft policy documents with legislative data, program implementation plans, ballot text, financial modeling, and budget allocation plans
Teacher and Advocate
Learning Without Limits, an Education for Change School Oakland, CA
Served in a multifaceted role as program leader and educator in a Spanish/English bilingual setting. Collaborated with teachers, administrators, staff members, parents, and stakeholders at Title I school to improve educational structure and drive student excellence.
Received awards for excellent instructional practice, served as mentor and Spanish-language translator for other teachers on site Worked with network CEO and Director of Human Capital to pilot new network models for teacher evaluation and compensation
Member of executive hiring team, supported with hiring over 15 teachers over 4-year period
Served as teacher leader on Instructional Leadership Team and network-wide Staff Leadership Council
Integrated technology-based tools and software and flexible groupings to advance student engagement and achievement
Developed partnerships with Playwell Teknologies, Planting Justice, Common Vision, the MOSAIC Project, and other community-based organizations to enhance student access to community resources
VOLUNTEER ROLES & PROGRAMS
Women Making Change
National
Network of Women Entrepreneurs for Impact
Convened and created systems to organize a
collaborative of 30+ women business leaders
to learn from and support one another
Uptima Entrepreneur Cooperative
SF Bay Area, CA
Member of Uptima community for entrepreneurs
Participated in Uptima Freelancer Bootcamp, a
selective program for mission-driven
entrepreneurs
Provides holistic and culturally relevant
education, advising, and community to
support diverse entrepreneurs in creating
thriving businesses in service to their
communities
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
Spanish/English volunteer interpreter for
refugees and asylum seekers
Assists lawyers and legal teams at translating
conversations, documents, and hearings for
asylum candidates
Transformative Education Leadership Fellowship
National
Fellowship focused on mindful leadership
Diverse group of national education leaders
focused on systemic transformation
Built capacity to drive collective impact by
weaving together the four threads: leadership,
mindfulness, social-emotional learning, and
educational equity
REFERENCES
available upon request
WORDS I LIVE BY
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead
Submit Date: Feb 24, 2022
First Name Middle
Initial
Last Name
Email Address
Street Address Suite or Apt
City State Postal Code
Primary Phone Alternate Phone
Employer Job Title
Upload a Resume
City of Oakland Boards & Commissions
Profile
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Public Safety & Services Violence Prevention Oversight Commissions - 2014: Submitted Interests & Experiences
Please tell us how your qualifications and participation will relate to the requested board and/or commission's mission.
Current member of the SSOC, term expiring
Please submit your resume or curriculum vitae. You may upload a document. (A Word format is preferred.) Alternatively, you may paste the text of your resume in the field provided below.
Please paste the text of your resume or curriculum vitae below.
Please click the acknowledgement below.
Service on City of Oakland boards, commissions, and committees may require filings of the FPPC's Statements of Economic Interest (Form 700). Upon appointment and determination of filing status, I will comply with all filing obligations.
I Agree *
Paula Hawthorn
Oakland CA 94618
retired
presume2022.doc
Paula Hawthorn
Paula Hawthorn
5469 Kales Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
Phone 510.601.8388
[email protected]
Volunteer Activities:
District 3 representative on the Public Safety and Services Oversight Commission Treasurer, Oakland Violence Prevention Coalition
Co-Chair, Oakland/Alameda County Brady United
Board member, Make Oakland Better Now!
Chair, Episcopal Diocese of California Commission on Peace, Justice and Hunger Member of Soldiers Against Violence Everywhere, the Coalition for Police Accountability, and the Episcopal Diocese of California Commission on Peace, Justice and Hunger Employment
Present Retired; last worked as Independent Consultant
Consulting with early-stage companies on software architectural and development process issues.
Fall, 1999 Visiting Lecturer, EECS, UC Berkeley Taught CS 186, the undergraduate database course.
1997 - 1998 Vice President, Product Development, Andromedia, Inc Andromedia was a click-stream analysis start-up. Managed the development, support, QA, IT, documentation and product management groups..
1996 - 1997 Vice President, R&D: Tools, Informix
Managed the Palo Alto tools group, who were responsible for the Informix Tools set: NewEra, Java development tools, and Visual Basic development tools; the Lenexa, Kansas, Database Utilities group; and the Oakland DataBlades group
1992 - 1996 Vice President, Product Development and Support, Illustra One of the founders of Illustra. Staffed and managed product development, QA, documentation, internal training, IT and support groups. Grew these groups from 9 to 140 people. Illustra was acquired by Informix, and the groups were merged with the appropriate Informix groups. Illustra won “product of the year” awards, was well-recognized as an innovative, technically successful database product, and the team was recognized as a team of super-stars.
1991 - 1992 Manager, Distributed Operating Systems Department, Hewlett-Packard Labs Department responsible for three projects: Performance Evaluation, LAN-based parallel systems, and tightly-connected parallel systems. Responsibilities included helping devise HP’s OS strategy.
1989-1991 Member of Technical Staff, Research Projects Group, Hewlett-Packard Responsible for finding university research that directly benefited HP product divisions, funding that research, and assuring its transfer to HP product divisions 1984-1989 Vice President, Software Engineering, Britton Lee/ShareBase, Inc (87-89) ShareBase (name changed from Britton Lee, 5/89) was a manufacturer of integrated hardware/software database machines.
Director, Advanced Development, Britton Lee/ShareBase (84-87) Managed the Server/300 product, including all hardware, software and packaging.
Fall, 1988 Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley
Concurrent with above. taught the undergraduate database course. 1983-1984 Manager, Database Systems, Hewlett-Packard
Managed the HP people porting a DBMS to two HP operating systems 1980-1983 Assistant Director, Computer Science and Mathematics Department, Lawrence Berkeley Lab
Coordinated research applications with funding agents. Managed the LBL/Darpa Seismic Data Center project. Research in Database Machines.
1979-1980 Software Development, Britton Lee
One of the nine original employees of Britton Lee
EDUCATION
1979 PhD, EECS, UC Berkeley
Thesis topic: performance evaluation of database machines. Advisor: Michael Stonebraker 1974 MS, Computer Science, University of Houston
Thesis Topic: performance evaluation of a CDC 6600
1966 BS, Mathematics, University of Houston
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Member, National Academy of Science panel on V oter Registration Databases http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/CommitteeView.aspx?key=48805 Co-author, ACM Study on Statewide V oter Registration Databases http://usacm.acm.org/usacm/VRD/
Member, ACM President’s Panel on Software Engineering
Co-Founder, UCB College of Engineering Reentry Program, UC Berkeley 1996 UC Berkeley Distinguished Alumnus Award
1996 Women in Computing Top 100 Women Award
Member, ACM Committee on US Policy (USACM)
Member of Program Committee, 1998 VLDB, and several previous Member of Program Committee, 1998 ICSE.
Member, UC Berkeley EECS Department Industrial Advisory Board, 1992-1999 Vice-Chair, ACM Special Interest Group on the Management of Data, 1985-1989.
Publications – List provided on request
APPROVED AS TO FORM AND LEGALITY
________________________
CITY ATTORNEY’S OFFICE
OAKLAND CITY COUNCIL
RESOLUTION NO. _______________ C.M.S.
INTRODUCED BY
MAYOR SHENG THAO
RESOLUTION CONFIRMING THE MAYOR’S REAPPOINTMENT
OF PAULA HAWTHORN AND SONYA MEHTA AS MEMBERS OF
THE PUBLIC SAFETY AND SERVICES VIOLENCE PREVENTION
OVERSIGHT COMMISSION
WHEREAS, Section 601 of the City Charter provides that members of City boards and commissions shall be appointed by the Mayor subject to confirmation by the a ffirmative vote of five members of the City Council; and
WHEREAS, the 2014 Oakland Public Safety and Services Violence Prevention Act (the “Safety and Services Act”) adopted by the voters of Oakland, November 4, 2014 in the General Municipal Election crea tes the Public Safety and Services Violence Prevention Oversight Commission to evaluate, inquire, and review the administration, coordination, and evaluation of strategies and practices mandated by the Safety and Services Act; and WHEREAS, the Safety and Act specifies that the Public Safety and Services Violence Prevention Oversight Commission shall consist of nine (9) members, one member recommended by the Mayor and one member recommended by each City Council member, with all Commission members being appo inted by the Mayor and confirmed by the City Council in accordance with City Charter Section 601; and
WHEREAS, the Safety and Services Act specifies that at least two (2) members will have experience working with service -eligible populations, two (2) members will reflect the service - eligible populations, and two (2) members will have professional law enforcement or criminal justice background while all other members will have general experience in criminal justice, public health, social services, research and evaluation, finance, audits, and/or public policy; and WHEREAS, the City Council adopted Ordinance No. 13303 C.M.S. establishing that Public Safety and Services Oversight Commission members serve two -year terms, and no more than three consecutive terms; now therefore be it
2 33497714/PWB
RESOLVED: That pursuant to City Charter section 601, the City Council hereby confirms the Mayor's reappointments to the Public Safety and Services Violence Prevention Oversight Commission:
Paula Hawthorn, to serve a two-year term as the District 3 representative on the Public Safety and Services Violence Prevention Oversight Commission that began April 21, 2024 and ending April 20, 2026, filling the seat previously filled by herself.
Sonya Mehta, to serve a two-year term as the At-Large representative on the Public Safety and Services Violence Prevention Oversight Commission that began April 21, 2024 and ending April 20, 2026, filling the seat previously filled by herself.
IN COUNCIL, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA,
PASSED BY THE FOLLOWING VOTE:
AYES - FIFE, GALLO, JENKINS, KALB, KAPLAN, RAMACHANDRAN,
REID AND PRESIDENT FORTUNATO BAS
NOES –
ABSENT –
ABSTENTION –
ATTEST:
ASHA REED
City Clerk and Clerk of the Council of the
City of Oakland, California