Our Team

Results 1
Sort By:

The Spark Team

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

Robin M. Keefe

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.

close

Bay Area Board Members

Executive Board
Garen Corbett, National Chair Emeritus, Executive Director, Health Policy Expert, University of California
Advisory Board
Ananya Jha, Product Manager, Salesforce Andrew Covarrubias, Release Manager, Salesforce Gina Garcia, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition, Unify Consulting Gloria Liu, Private Equity Associate, GI Partners Illiana Reed, Product Manager, Google Jessica de Leon, Director, HR Information Systems, Salesforce Julia Elliott, Senior Program Manager, (interim CEO, Kaggle), Google Karina Gonzalez, Client Success Manager, Facebook Lisa Follman, Architect, SOM Manu Prasanna, Head of Growth, Solid Neha Gupta, Senior Strategy Analyst, Accenture Nicole LeBlanc, Staff Content Designer, Wealthfront
Board of Directors
Garen Corbett, National Chair Emeritus, Executive Director, Health Policy Expert, University of California

Start a Career with Spark

Join a culture of possibility! Learn about career, fellowship and internship opportunities.

Careers