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The Spark Team

We are a passionate, innovative and collaborative team focused on celebrating students and promoting possibility.

Robin M. Keefe

Jazmine Sanders

Robin M. Keefe
Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director: Spark in the Bay

Robin M. Keefe was the founder and President of BookEnds. Through her passionate and focused leadership, Robin developed a community of people to grow BookEnds as a distinguished Los Angeles leader in introducing children to philanthropy as they worked to fill the barren bookshelves in their neighborhood schools and youth organizations. More than one million children learned the power of community service through the donation of over three million books to create nearly 700 libraries throughout Los Angeles.

BookEnds’ programs were successfully transitioned into three nonprofit organizations in 2015 to drive scale and economy in support of the national initiative for sustainable nonprofit organizations.

Robin then assumed the position of Interim CEO for The Beauty Bus Foundation and then for Karma Rescue, tasked with reorganizing these emerging nonprofit organizations to position them for strength and scale in the delivery of their missions.

Robin’s early career was in the real estate development and finance field, including industrial brokerage, corporate site acquisition for a national bank and a national restaurant chain and commercial real estate development. But she found a growing passion for philanthropy and children as she served on numerous community boards of directors. Robin joined these passions in 1998 with the founding of BookEnds.

Robin continues to focus her passion on the development of our youth in community service. She is an active participant and guest lecturer at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Policy and Pepperdine University’s School of Business and Communication, engaging students in entrepreneurial nonprofit leadership. Robin has served on the boards of directors of 14 diverse nonprofit organizations.

Among her numerous honors is her most cherished: “The Angel Award for Service” presented to Robin by Oprah Winfrey.

Robin graduated from California State University Northridge with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration, Finance and a minor in Art History. Robin joined Spark in the Bay Area as Executive Director in 2018.

Jazmine Sanders
Senior Program Manager

Jazmine Sanders is the Senior Program Manager at Spark Chicago. She completed her B.A in Communication from Loyola University Chicago. She has a strong passion to empower young people of color to reach beyond the daily barriers and help them use their communities as support. Before joining Spark she worked at City Year Chicago as a team leader, where she was a support system for students to realize their full potential and plans to continue within Spark.

Board Members

Executive Board

Brad Wynn, Head of Client Strategy (East Region), LGIM America Britton Picciolini, Board Chair, Regional Manager, Google for Education, Google Carolyn Jones, Principal, Perkins Bass Elementary School Charles Calloway, National Board Vice Chair, Partner, Chapman & Cutler LLP David Furlin, Private Client Advisor, Senior Vice President, Bank of America Garen Corbett, National Chair Emeritus, Executive Director, Health Policy Expert, University of California Griffin Gordon, Head of Growth, Heyday Jonathan Brown, Executive Director, Real Estate Banking (Central Region), JP Morgan Chase Katharine Patch, Director- Family Offices, Foundations, and Endowments, BlackRock Krystin Hernandez, Senior Counsel, McDonald’s Corporation MR MacGill, National Board Chair, Consumer Marketing Consultant, MRM Consulting Renee Mendez, Executive Board Chair, Partner, Ernst & Young Sara Wasserteil, Managing Director of Expansion and Integration, Cara Chicago Tamara Roberts, Director, Program Portfolio Management, Gogo Commercial Air Tiffany Bristol, Senior Account Manager, Google Tony Alejo, Management Consulting Managing Director, KPMG

Advisory Board

Allison Toussaint, Office Manager, Schneider Ananya Jha, Product Manager, Salesforce Andrew Covarrubias, Release Manager, Salesforce Blair Sucher, Vice Board Chair, Associate Director, Business Development and Sales Enablement, ExecOnline Collin Starkweather, Founder and President, Starkweather Economics Daniel Kogan, Senior Associate, Strategy, KPMG Faheem Tapia, Strategy & Analytics Consultant, Deloitte Gina Garcia, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition, Unify Consulting Gloria Liu, Private Equity Associate, GI Partners Illiana Reed, Product Manager, Google Jaime Rehm, Portfolio Manager, Fixed Income Solutions, LGIMA Jennifer DeCilles, Account Manager, Epsilon Digital Jenny McNicholas, Officer, Portfolio Manager, Bank of America Jessica de Leon, Director, HR Information Systems, Salesforce Jessie Schreier, Consultant, Bain & Company Julia Elliott, Senior Program Manager, (interim CEO, Kaggle), Google Karina Gonzalez, Client Success Manager, Facebook Kristina Choo, Business Analytics & Strategy Consultant, IBM Lisa Follman, Architect, SOM Manu Prasanna, Head of Growth, Solid Mark Doose, Consultant, West Monroe Partners Neha Gupta, Senior Strategy Analyst, Accenture Nicole LeBlanc, Staff Content Designer, Wealthfront Paul Warkins, Board Chair, Director, Strategy and Transactions, Ernst & Young Pratik Shah, FP&A Manager- Corporate Functions, Varian Medical Systems, a Siemens Company

Board of Directors

Alicia Winckler, CEO, The Golden Apple Foundation Benjamin Rowe, Board Treasurer; Managing Partner, KHP Capital Partners Britton Picciolini, Board Chair, Regional Manager, Google for Education, Google Charles Calloway, National Board Vice Chair, Partner, Chapman & Cutler LLP Garen Corbett, National Chair Emeritus, Executive Director, Health Policy Expert, University of California Griffin Gordon, Head of Growth, Heyday Maureen Lang, Co-Chair, Gartner MR MacGill, National Board Chair, Consumer Marketing Consultant, MRM Consulting Renee Mendez, Executive Board Chair, Partner, Ernst & Young

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