Board of Trustees

List of 18 members.

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  Pria Hidisyan 

  Bio

  Co-Board Chair
  
  

  Pria joined the EB Board in 2018. She is an urban planner by training with more than a decade’s experience in long range, regional planning and consulting for state agencies and local municipalities, focused on community development and sustainability. Beyond her planning work, she is an active real estate investor in Oakland. Pria graduated with honors from Brown University, and received a master’s degree from the University of Southern California in planning. She and her husband Ben have two children at EB: Arek and Lucine.
• 

  Mark Westover 

  Bio

  Co-Board Chair
  
  

  MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Mark Westover serves as the chair of the Long-Range Planning Committee. He is the Founder of Nishioba Consulting providing management consulting to early stage start ups. Mark was previously CFO of Xmatters and has held a variety of leadership positions in Strategy, Corporate Development and Finance at LiveOps, Sybase, BearingPoint and AT&T. Mark received his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign. He and his wife, Dr. Barbara Galligan, have two children at EB.
• 

  David Abernathy 

  Bio

  David Abernathy is an alumnus of Ecole Bilingue.  He attended the school for 10 years, graduating in 1999.  He works as Executive Vice President for Business Solutions at a cannabis data, analytics, and research firm and has spent more than a decade in the fields of cannabis investment and market research.  Since his time at EB, David has founded and/or led three companies and five nonprofit organizations.  In addition to his position on EB's board of trustees, David sits on the board of directors of a nonprofit cat rescue and serves as co-chair of the Finance Committee at the Minority Cannabis Business Association.  He also teaches Economics at Oaksterdam University and co-owns a miniature golf company called Subpar Miniature Golf.
• 

  Aimee Aikin 

  Bio

  Aimee Aikin joins the Board of Trustees as the EB Parents Association's Anglophone Co-President for the 2021-2022 school year. Learning to draw and sew as a young child, she received her MFA in Fashion Design from the Academy of Art University. With over a decade in the industry, Aimee has worked at some of the most iconic consumer brands in the US, including Old Navy, The North Face and Athleta, bringing her artistic approach and creative designs to children's clothing. She is passionate about the arts and arts education for kids; when she has a moment to herself, she loves to knit and she bakes a killer Key Lime Pie. Aimee and her husband, Dan, have one son at EB and a younger daughter who will join EB in the future.
• 

  Alexandre Bayen 

  Bio

  Alexandre Bayen joined the board in 2019. He is the Liao-Cho Professor of Engineering at UC Berkeley. He is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is currently the Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS). He is also a Faculty Scientist in Mechanical Engineering, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). He received the Engineering Degree in applied mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique, France, in 1998, the M.S. and Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in 1998 and 1999 respectively. He was a Visiting Researcher at NASA Ames Research Center from 2000 to 2003. Between January 2004 and December 2004, he worked as the Research Director of the Autonomous Navigation Laboratory at the Laboratoire de Recherches Balistiques et Aérodynamiques, (Ministere de la Defense, Vernon, France), where he holds the rank of Major. He has been on the faculty at UC Berkeley since 2005. Bayen has authored two books and over 200 articles in peer reviewed journals and conferences.

        
• 

  Christine Beliveau 

  Bio

  Bachelor of Commerce and Graduate in Accountancy, Concordia University Christine served on the Finance Committee before joining the Board. Christine is originally from Quebec, Canada and moved to the Bay Area in 2000. She is a CPA and after more than 20 years in public accounting and consulting firms, is now the Director of Forensic Accounting Services at Morrison & Foerster LLP. At MoFo, Christine specializes in providing assistance with internal and SEC investigations, cases involving the securities law, and other disputes involving accounting issues. Christine and her husband, Neill, have one son who is starting Kindergarten at EB in the Fall of 2018.
• 

  Antoine Carriere 

  Bio

  MA in Management, HEC Business School Paris Antoine Carriere is a French citizen who emigrated to the US in 2007, he has worked in corporate finance as an analyst, in management consulting, and in the Internet sector (as founder of a web start up, and in the past five years as a manager at Google). Antoine is passionate about resolving growing pains in highly uncertain environments. He identifies priorities, gets the basics right (people, KPIs, processes, decisions), jumps in as needed, then ensures that scaling the business results in further efficiency gains without compromising execution velocity. The three values he puts on top of everything else in business are Insight, Impact, and Trust. At home, Antoine is married and has three children, including two at EB.
• 

  Thierry Durandard 

  Bio

  Thierry joins the Board of Trustees in 2022.  He retired as Lower School Head from EB in 2018 after working for 30 years at the school as Teacher and Director of Admissions and in his last position as Lower School Director from 2001 to 2018. Thierry is passionate about education, and firmly believes in educating the whole child in his/her academic, physical, social and emotional dimensions in becoming a well-rounded and balanced individual who can adapt to any environment.  Education is a journey with its joys and at times its struggles, which are actually learning opportunities with proper support and encouragement.   Thierry lives with his partner Rick, two dogs and three horses and spends most of his time caring for the animals and experimenting with permaculture on his property in the Oakland Hills.  He is the Godfather of two EB students.   
• 

  Rhonda Goldstein 

  Bio

  PA Anglophone President
  
  

  Rhonda Goldstein became the Anglophone President of the Parent's Association in the 2020-2021 school year. As Senior Counsel for the University of California, Rhonda handles litigation matters on behalf of the campuses, medical centers and laboratories within the UC system. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and received her undergraduate degree magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame. Along with her husband, Jacob, she has two children at EB.
• 

  Brooke Howell 

  Bio

  Brooke Howell is a litigation attorney, working in the housing sector for more than a decade.  Out of a commitment to equity and justice, Brooke interned for the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, clerked for the 31st Judicial District of Virginia, Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, and conducted clinical work in housing while in law school.  Prior to law school, she worked in education, business, and as a Fleishman-Hillard International Communications Scholar.  She earned her Juris Doctor from Howard University School of Law where she was recognized as a Merit Fellow and Dean’s Public Interest Law Fellow.  She also earned her Bachelor of Arts from Howard University where she was on the Dean’s List and was a Howard University Trustee Scholarship awardee.  Brooke and her husband have one child at EB.
• 

  Anne Kuhry 

  Bio

  Anne Kuhry is a native from France and holds a bachelor's degree in Music Education from the University of Strasbourg. She obtained her teaching credentials in France and has taught music in French elementary and middle school for 17 years. Anne is a songwriter and has traveled to the US many times. She looks forward to sharing her passion for music with EB students.
• 

  Chloe Le Marchand 

  Bio

  Chloé Le Marchand is a family medicine physician who is passionate about public health and pediatric and women’s health. In addition to seeing patients, she works at the California Department of Public Health as a medical officer on the Coronavirus Clinical Team. Chloe graduated from medical school at UCSF and studied human biology and french literature at Brown University. In addition to her MD, she has a MS in Global Health from UCSF and is an international board certified lactation consultant (IBCLC). Chloe and her partner David Pruess have two children at EB: Aurélie and Lupin.
• 

  Steve Levine 

  Bio

  Certified Fraud Examiner Steve Levine is an EB alumni parent. He served on the EB Parent Association Board for many years and also chaired many committees served in numerous other volunteer positions at the school.
• 

  Heather McWhinney 

  Bio

  Heather is from the east coast originally - born in Cleveland, Ohio, before her family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, then to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended Boston University and Wheelock College in Boston, graduating with a BS in Education with a certification in Early Childhood Education. After graduating from college, she moved to Europe and taught Kindergarten at the International School of Luxembourg for two years. Then she moved to Paris and taught ESL to adults and children. She traveled extensively and completed three bike tours in the United States and Europe. She moved to San Francisco in 1990 and started working at the French American International School of San Francisco. She taught mostly in the Lower School, from 1st grade to 5th grade, but also taught ESL in the Lower School, Middle School and High School. She got her Master's Degree in Second Language Education from McGill University during this time. She also did another bike tour from Seattle to California. Heather started at EB in 2018, teaching the Petite and Moyenne Sections in the Preschool. She moved to 3rd grade in 2020 and is currently teaching 3 classes. She's married to a Québécois and has a 21 year old daughter who is currently attending college at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.  She loves riding her bike, swimming, gardening and reading. She lives in South Berkeley and loves it here.
• 

  Kristen Sidell 

  Bio

  Kristen Sidell joined the Board in 2019 and serves as the chair of the Buildings & Grounds Committee. She is a principal at Sidell Pakravan Architects, where she designs a range of residential and commercial spaces. Kristen also teaches architecture as an Adjunct Professor at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Kristen received her M.Arch. from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts and holds a B.A. in Art History from Stanford University. She and her husband, Paul Abboud, have two children at EB. 
• 

  Hannah Stott-Bumsted 

  Bio

  Hannah Stott-Bumsted joined the EB Board in 2019. She is currently a partner at the Brunswick Group. Hannah joined Brunswick from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she was the Counselor to the Deputy Secretary and advised on a number of high-profile policy and programmatic issues. Before joining the Department of Health and Human Services, Hannah was a senior official at the Department of the Treasury. Prior to joining the government, Hannah practiced law at Williams & Connolly and represented dozens of companies in adversarial matters, including litigations, investigations, and arbitrations. Hannah has two sons at EB.
• 

  Florence Zakharov 

  Bio

  Flo Zakharov joins the Board of Trustees as the EB Parents Association's Francophone Co-President for the 2022-2023 school year. Originally from French Polynesia, Flo came to the US in 2001 to pursue a PhD in Plant Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Purdue University, IN. She moved West to California in 2006 and was a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis for 15 years, where she researched the inner workings of flavor development in fruits. More recently, Flo decided to rekindle her life-long passion for flowers and follow her artistic aspirations as a floral designer and ikebana practitioner. She is regularly invited to showcase collaborative work with fellow ikebana artists at the DeYoung Museum Bouquets to Art annual exhibit. Flo and her husband Valera have 2 children at EB. 
• 

  Valla Vakili 

  Bio

  Valla Vakili joins the Board in 2022. Valla is a digital executive and entrepreneur with a career spanning financial services, digital media, and technology. He is currently the Head of Insights and Innovation at Visa, leading the company’s global network of innovation centers and studios. Valla is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and conducted doctoral research at St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. He and his wife, Sheida Vakili, have one child at EB.