• The High Tech High Board will have governance and fiduciary level control over all HTH schools.  The board operates as a public agency and conducts its meetings in accordance with the Brown Act.
  
  
• HTH Learning is a private nonprofit overseeing the development and operation of the facilities that house High Tech High schools.  HTH Learning is also responsible for adult learning programs, including the teacher certification program and the residencies and institutes offered to network affiliates and the general public.
  
  
• The High Tech High Foundation is a private nonprofit responsible for securing the philanthropic support needed to develop High Tech High schools.

View recent board agendas

High Tech High Board
Kay Davis, Secretary
Gary Jacobs, Chair
Frank Kemerer, Director
Michael McCraw, Director
Julie Umansky, Director


High Tech High Learning Board
Richard Atkinson, Director
Jim Cahill, Director
Kay Davis, Secretary
Gary Jacobs, Chair
Lowell Potiker, Director
Ron Simon, Director

High Tech High Foundation Board
Victoria Barret, Director
Kay Davis, Secretary
Gary Jacobs, Chair
Greg Mauro, Director
Gail Stoorza-Gill, Director

...... Directors of the Boards of High Tech High ......

Richard C. Atkinson

President of the University, Emeritus  University of California
Director, High Tech High Learning

Richard C. Atkinson served from 1995-2003 as the seventeenth president of the University of California system.  His eight-year tenure was marked by innovative approaches to admissions and outreach, research initiatives to accelerate the University’s contributions to the state’s economy, and a challenge to the country’s most widely used admissions examination—the SAT 1—that paved the way to major changes in the way millions of America’s youth will be tested for college admissions.  Before becoming president of the UC System he served for fifteen years as chancellor of UC San Diego, where he led that campus’s emergence as one of the leading research universities in the nation.  He is a former director of the National Science Foundation, past president of the American Association of American Universities, and was a long-term member of the faculty at Stanford University.  His research in the field of cognitive science and psychology has been concerned with problems of memory and cognition.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Education, the American Philosophical Society, and a mountain in Antarctica has been named in his honor.
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James Cahill

Former CFO, Price Enterprises
Director, High Tech High Learning

Bio Pending



Kay Davis

Former Trustee, San Diego Unified School District
Board Secretary, High Tech High, HTH Learning and HTH Foundation

Ms. Davis served nine years as a San Diego Unified School Board Member, where one of her major accomplishments was establishing the Business-Education Partnership Program. For seven years, she was the Director of the Business Roundtable for Education of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce. She mobilized the business community on school-to-career programming, charter schools, standards, measurement, accountability, the selection of a new superintendent and passage of a $1.5 billion school bond.
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Gary Jacobs

Chairman and CEO, Jacobs Investment LLC
Chair, High Tech High, HTH Learning, and HTH Foundation

Mr. Gary Jacobs is the Managing Director of Jacobs Investment Company LLC (JIC). JIC was created in 1997 to participate in real estate development throughout the United States. Since then JIC has, in partnership with several developers, invested over fifty million dollars in projects ranging from government services to residential to commercial. Other partnerships include multi-million dollar investments in several venture capital funds. Mr. Jacobs is also the owner of the Lake Elsinore Storm in the California League, a “Fast A” baseball team affiliated with the San Diego Padres.

In the community, Mr. Jacobs is the Immediate Past President of the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County. He and his wife, Jerri-Ann, have endowed the Jerri-Ann and Gary Jacobs Teen Director position and created a endowment for the senior department in memory of both sets of grandparents at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, Jacobs Family Campus in La Jolla, California.

Mr. Jacobs serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High, a public charter high school founded on three design principles: personalization, adult-world connection, and common intellectual mission. Innovative features include performance-based assessment, daily shared planning time for staff, state-of-the-art technical facilities for project-based learning, internships for all students, and close links to the high tech workplace. He also serves as Chair of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the Social Sciences at University of California at San Diego UCSD and is a member of the CREATE Advisory Board, UCSD’s K-12 educational outreach program.  He and Jerri-Ann, created the Gary and Jerri-Ann Graduate Fellowship in Social Sciences Endowment. Mr. Jacobs is also a board member of the San Diego Symphony, the Del Mar Schools Education Foundation, Congregation Beth El, NTC Foundation for Arts and Culture, Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture, and the UCSD Board of Overseers.

In the summer of 2000 Mr. Jacobs created and funded the Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs International Teen Leadership Institute. The institute brings together 10 Jewish teenagers from San Diego, 10 Jewish teenagers from the Shaar HarNegev region in Israel, 10 Israeli Bedouin teenagers from Segev Shalom, and 10 Palestinian teenagers from Gaza. The participants and staff travel together to San Diego then study in Spain for a week on Muslim / Jewish relations in a historical perspective and then return to Israel for a week to study with a modern perspective. Past San Diego students, in particular, felt they had a life-changing experience at the Institute.

Mr. Jacobs graduated in 1979 from the University of California at San Diego with a B.A. in Management Science. He worked as a Software Programmer from 1979 to 1991 at Linkabit Incorporated. Mr. Jacobs joined QUALCOMM in 1991, first as a Software Engineer until 1996 and then as a Senior Education Specialist working with K-12 educational institutions to enhance science and math studies, until 2000. Mr. Jacobs lives in Del Mar with his wife Jerri-Ann, son Adam, 18, a freshman at Cornell University, daughters Sara, 15, a tenth grader at Torrey Pines High School, Beth, 13, an eighth grader at High Tech Middle School, Mara, 9, a fourth grader and their dog, Jasmine.
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Frank Kemerer

Professor in Residence, University of San Diego
Director, High Tech High

Frank Kemerer teaches education law in the schools of law and education as Professor in Residence at the University of San Diego. For 25 years he taught education law as a Regents Professor at the University of North Texas in Denton, where he also served as the Director of the Center for the Study of Education Reform and conducted several major studies on school choice and charter schools. He received his Ph.D. in educational administration and policy analysis from Stanford University in 1975 with a law minor from Stanford Law School.

Dr. Kemerer has authored, coauthored, or coedited twelve books. Among them is the legal textbook Constitutional Rights (West Publishing Company 1979); School Choice and Social Controversy: Politics, Policy and Law (Brookings Institution Press 1999); and School Choice Tradeoffs: Liberty, Equity, and Diversity (University of Texas Press 2002). Prof. Kemerer received the Scribes Certificate of Distinction in 1992 from the American Society of Writers on Legal Subjects for William Wayne Justice: A Judicial Biography (University of Texas Press 1991) and the 2002 Bronze Medal Book of the Year Award in Education from Foreword Magazine for School Choice Tradeoffs. His latest book, California School Law, will be published by Stanford University Press in May of 2005.
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Greg Mauro

President and CEO, California Small Business Development Corporation
Director, High Tech High

Mr. McCraw is the President/CEO of California Southern Small Business Development Corporation, where he administers State of California loan guarantee programs, and underwrites and services small business development loans for municipalities in San Diego, Imperial, Riverside, San Bernardino, and southern Orange counties.  Mr. McCraw is a member of the Board of The San Diego Foundation, serves as an instructor of microenterprise development for the San Diego State University Economic Development Certificate Program, and hosts the cable television show “Business to Business.”
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Lowell A. Potiker

Vice President, HSP Group
Director, HTH Learning

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Mr. Potiker graduated from the University of Michigan in 1983 with a Bachelor’s degree in General Studies. He then moved to California to continue his education. He graduated from Pepperdine University with his Juris Doctor in 1986 and is a member of the California Bar.

Mr. Potiker has served in various executive roles including Vice President of Marketing for Entertainment Publications, Inc. of Troy, Michigan and Vice President of Acquisitions for HSP Group, Inc. a private venture group. He has also served on the boards of numerous organizations including The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, the United Jewish Federation of San Diego, the Maritime Museum, The Burnham Institute and San Diego Jewish Academy. Mr. Potiker lives in La Jolla with his wife, Julie and their three children.
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Ron Simon

Founder and CEO of RSI Home Products

Entrepreneur and humanitarian Ron Simon is the founding chairman of RSI Home Products and the Ronald Simon Family Foundation. Growing up in a poor family, he achieved financial success as a businessman through an inquisitive mind and determination. Today, RSI Home Products is the leading manufacturer of home cabinetry.

Mr. Simon founded the Ronald Simon Family Foundation to support the educational endeavors of underprivileged students. The organization aims to prepare and support deserving high school students overcome financial adversity to succeed in college by offering mentoring programs and scholarships. Mr. Simon was honored with the Horatio Alger Award in 2005 for his work with the foundation.

Mr. Simon also sits on the board of directors of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, the UCI Chief Executive Roundtable, and the UCI Graduate School of Management Advisory Council.

Gail Stoorza-Gill

CEO, The Right Question, LLC
Director, HTH Foundation

Gail Stoorza-Gill is Chair and CEO of The Right Question, LLC, a marketing consulting firm specializing in solving marketing problems through qualitative research.  The firm provides public relations consulting to large and small companies, and conducts agency reviews for organizations wishing to evaluate advertising, public relations and public affairs firms. For over 25 years, Ms. Stoorza-Gill was Chair and CEO of Stoorza Communications, Inc., a marketing public relations firm which she founded and built into the largest independent public relations firm in California with four offices and 100 staff members.

Highly active in civic and professional affairs, Stoorza-Gill served as Chair of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, the first female to serve in this role.  She is a member of the Young President’s Association and was chairman of the local chapter.  She is also a member of the prestigious Arthur Page Society, an organization of the nation’s leading public relations professionals.  She was named by PR Week, the nation’s leading public relations professional publication, as one of the nation’s “50 Most Influential Women in Public Relations.”

Stoorza-Gill served as Vice Chair of the San Diego Convention Center Corporation, having been nominated for this position by the mayor and unanimously elected by the San Diego City Council; and served for eight years on the board of The San Diego Economic Development Corporation.  Presently, she serves on the boards of Security Business Bank of San Diego; Color Design Art, an ESOP organization based in Santa Monica, California and The Independent Colleges of Southern California Foundation.  She is a columnist for The San Diego Daily Transcript. She and her husband, Ian Gill, have chaired the San Diego Children’s Hospital’s annual gala.  She is frequently a featured speaker at national conventions, colleges and universities on the subject of marketing and public relations.
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Julie Ashby Umansky

General Manager, California Charter School Association, San Diego
Director, High Tech High

Julie Ashby Umansky serves as the General Manager for the San Diego Region, including the counties of San Diego, Orange, Riverside, Imperial, San Bernardino. Julie brings with her over seven years of legal experience representing public agencies in the State of California, with a particular emphasis on the charter school community. As a senior counsel at the national law firm Foley & Lardner, Julie advised charter schools, school districts and charter school management organizations on the variety of issues facing the charter school movement. She represented schools in court, administrative hearings, and negotiations with charter authorizers. She counseled schools on matters pertaining to charter law, contracts, facilities, public records, public meetings, and governance, among other things. In 2001, she worked on the San Diego City Schools’ Charter School Policy and Guidelines as a member of Charter Policy Workgroup and in 2002 assisted in the development of the uniform memorandum of understanding between the San Diego City Schools and its charter schools.

Julie’s legal work for school districts also focused on school construction projects, helping districts navigate the regulatory and legal requirements for planning, designing, building and funding schools. She also represented water, sewer and health care agencies in a general counsel capacity. Before joining the law firm, Julie served as the first Director of Legal Affairs for CalOptima, Orange County’s Medi-Cal managed care program. In that capacity, she designed grievance and appeal processes, participated in health plan audits and reviews, and represented CalOptima in administrative hearings.

Julie holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies from UCLA and a Juris Doctorate from Tulane Law School. She is licensed to practice law in Texas and California. She lives in La Jolla with her husband and young son.



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