Abe Abullarade, Program Coordinator
Abraham was born and raised in San Francisco and has a strong passion for working interactively with young people in his community. For the past three years Abraham has participated as a youth group mentor in his church. His responsibilities include coordinating group events and facilitating weekly discussions on important issues that young people face in today's society. He earned his B.A. in Broadcasting Communications from San Francisco State University. After graduation he interned for Kaiser Permanente's Public Affairs Department in San Francisco, wherein he assisted in the organization of various events and health fairs. He is honored to join a team of talented Spark staff who are committed to empowering youth by working closely with their community.

Ben Allen, Los Angeles Managing Director & Spark General Counsel
Ben Allen was born and raised in the Los Angeles area. He has worked in international development and political communications in Washington DC, served as a Regent for the University of California while a student in law school, and he currently serves as an elected leader on the Santa Monica-Malibu school board. For the past two years, Ben has worked as an
attorney at the international law firm of Bryan Cave LLP. With this multi-faceted background, Ben is excited to spearhead Spark's continued growth and success in Los Angeles.

Chris Balme, Co-Founder & Executive Director
Chris has seen the education system from a variety of angles and is dedicated to helping students find motivation and inspiration. He has taught with the Breakthrough Collaborative and worked as a National Science Foundation Fellow, developing and teaching new science curricula in the Philadelphia public schools. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School of Business, Chris moved to San Francisco and founded a successful tutoring cooperative, serving youth throughout the Bay Area. In 2004, Chris co-founded Spark with fellow educator (now Spark Board member) Melia Dicker. He was honored in July 2008 with the Bay Area's Jefferson Award for Public Service and later with the prestigious Draper Richards Fellowship in recognition of Spark's potential for broad social impact. Most recently, he received the "Forty Under Forty" Leadership Award from the New Leaders Council in July 2009. Through his experience teaching and through numerous research visits to schools around the world, Chris has developed a belief that hands-on, self-motivated learning and community building are keys to educational change.

Lauren Banister, Bay Area VISTA Outreach Coordinator
After spending the summer of 2004 in rural Mexico teaching local youth, Lauren saw firsthand the power of community engagement and youth empowerment through creative learning. She believes that by inspiring youth to follow their passions, they will become members of more active, involved communities. Lauren first joined Spark as an outreach intern for the summer of 2010, and is excited to have recently expanded that role through AmeriCorps VISTA. She now focuses on recruiting and supporting 60 volunteers in San Francisco each session. Lauren holds a BA in Linguistics from Reed College, where she wrote a senior thesis on how language is used in active and participatory social groups like those that Spark strives to create. She is thrilled to continue building active, involved communities in her role at Spark. In her spare time Lauren enjoys yoga, fire dancing, cooking, and trapeze.

 

Jen Bloomer, Bay Area Program Director
Spark’s Bay Area Program Director strongly believes that education is the primary means necessary to create global change. After earning a B.A. in International Studies from Middlebury College, Jen lived and taught youth on several different continents around the world. Whether leading evening education classes for street children in Guatemala, or incorporating arts curriculum into a school serving AIDS orphans in Kenya, Jen is personally committed to ensuring that every child is valued and has the opportunity to succeed. After receiving a fellowship in 2006 from the Global Education Fund, Jen traveled to the Thai/Burmese border to teach Karen refugee children and led workshops on identity. Upon returning to the U.S. she continued her work with teens, setting up experiential learning opportunities and leading art therapy groups for middle and high school students. These experiences have reinforced Jen’s strong belief in the necessity of empowering children to take responsibility for their own learning. Jen loves being a resident of the innovative atmosphere of the San Francisco Bay Area and enjoys painting, mountain
biking, hiking and traveling in her spare time.

Sara Draffin, Bay Area VISTA Outreach Coodinator
After spending a summer teaching English at an orphange in Thailand in college, Sara had found her passion: working with and re-engaging youth into their education. Sara came to the Spark Program as an intern in October 2009, which gave her incredible insight into the non-profit sector. After graduating from San Francsico State University with a BA in Psychology this past May, Sara has become an Americorps VISTA Outreach Coordinator for the Redwood City program as well as the pilot program in San Rafael.

 

Katie Griffin, Grants Manager
Katie joined Spark first as intern, learning the ins and outs of running a nonprofit organization, and now focuses on making Spark a financially sustainable organization through corporate and foundation funding. She holds a B.S. in Biology from The University of San Francisco and recently completed a degree in Classical Vocal Performance at San Francisco State University. Katie has always been a concerned citizen and an active volunteer in her community. By working at Spark, she hopes to help transform education into a process that will allow students to increasingly direct their own learning and personal development.

Katie Krummeck, Program Operations Specialist
Katie has been a teacher for five years, working with both middle and high school students. After graduating from Whitman College, she received her secondary education teaching certificate. Shortly thereafter, she co-founded a small, independent middle and high school where she taught for three years. Built on a foundation of community-based, interdisciplinary learning, Palouse Community School's progressive approach closely mirrors the educational philosophy at Spark of making education relevant to their passions. Most recently, Katie taught English at Yunnan University in southwest China, and trained election workers for the City of San Francisco. She is extremely excited to join Spark in its mission to engage and empower students as life-long learners.

Julie McGuire, Development Director
Julie's passion for providing educational opportunity to all children has been a hallmark of her career. Julie became interested in education reform while leading a mentoring program for inner city high school students as an undergraduate in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduating from college, she worked as a Director at Score! Educational Centers in the Bay Area, where she ran a tutoring center serving over 400 children. Prior to joining Spark, Julie worked as a management consultant, where she served on the firm's nonprofit advisory board and helped both for- and not-for-profit organizations realize their strategic intent. Julie holds a BA in History from Yale University, and an MBA and Master's in Education from Stanford. In her spare time, Julie enjoys running, hiking, road biking, visiting museums, good food and traveling. She's thrilled to have the opportunity to put her business skills to work in guiding the development of such a promising and inspiring organization.

Lupita Rodriguez, Program Coordinator
Lupita Rodriguez grew up in Southern California, and before graduating from SFSU with a BA in Psychology, took a year to study in Germany. She is now is committed to working with youth as a role model, resource and mentor. She comes to Spark with a wealth of knowledge and experience from working with educational Non-profits and youth in San Francisco for the last 6 years. She believes in building supportive, caring, long lasting relationships with the students, teachers and community to ensure our youth have the necessary tools to succeed.

Sarah Schramm, Development & Communications Manager
Through a variety of professional and personal experiences, Sarah has witnessed the power of education as a catalyst for empowerment and social change. After completing her undergraduate studies in music performance, Sarah moved to Costa Rica to focus on arts education’s effect on orphan populations. Inspired by the arts’ impact on local communities, Sarah then joined the development department at The Philadelphia Orchestra to expand her knowledge of the nonprofit arts sector, and later pursued an interdisciplinary arts administration graduate degree at Columbia University. While Sarah expected to continue down the arts management career path with this degree, she instead discovered a passion for social enterprise – businesses employing innovative business models to address important social issues. During the summer between her two years of graduate study, Sarah ventured to South Africa for a short-term consulting project with a social enterprise employing HIV+ artists. Here again, Sarah witnessed education as an agent of empowerment in underserved communities. Inspired by this experience, Sarah decided to focus her career on social enterprise in the education space, and was thrilled to discover Spark’s innovative business model, its dedication to spreading the Spark mission across the country, and its commitment to broad-scale social change. New to the west coast, Sarah is excited to join the Spark team and the progressive San Francisco business community.

Jon Spack, Director of National Growth
After receiving his BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jon began a nine-year career at Citizen Schools. He began in 1999 as a Teaching Fellow and later took on the organization's Boston area recruitment and training for over 1,000 volunteers. While eventually leading Citizen Schools' volunteer support nationally, Jon was one of 50 professionals selected for the Boston's Future Leaders Program, sponsored by Harvard Business School. In 2005, Jon moved to California to launch a new Citizen Schools program at Monroe Middle School in San Jose, CA. Jon received his MS in Non Profit/NGO Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania and was selected as an Education Pioneers Bay Area Fellow and supported Summer Search through an intensive five-year strategic planning process. As Director of Consulting Jon plans to leverage his years of educational program management and his academic exposure to take Spark to new communities in California and elsewhere nationally. Originally from Brookline, MA, Jon speaks Spanish and Portuguese and has lived in Seville, Spain and traveled extensively in Brazil, Morocco, Panama, Israel, and Europe.

Nathalie Wade, Apprenticeships Operations Specialist
A strong believer in the power of learning, Nathalie Wade has devoted her career to various aspects of education. While studying child development and international relations at Tufts University, Nathalie conducted a project on the rural education system in a Senegalese village which motivated her to further explore the world where learning, community and social justice meet. Her interests led her to teach in the US and in Guadeloupe, lead a high school abroad program for The Experiment inInternational Living, and design the French language curriculum for a Connect18 exercise education course. In the Bay Area, Nathalie has worked with multiple nonprofits, including for HEROES, the volunteer program for the Oakland Unified School District, as Director of Volunteer Projects. She is thrilled to be part of the Spark team and looks forward to bringing community members and students together to promote a positive, connected society, ultimately giving students a chance to explore their futures in a whole new way.

Sonya - Social Worker

Mason is one of several Spark students who have pursued a dream of learning to fly with a trained Apprentice Teacher.