Advisory Board

Matt D. Jacobson, ’79 Geography

Managing Member, Jacobs & Co., LLC

Matt Jacobson is a managing member of Jacobs & Co., LLC, a San Francisco registered investment advisor, where he has worked since graduating from Berkeley in 1979. Jacobs & Co., LLC provides investment management and financial planning services to high-net-worth individuals, company retirement plans, and multi-employer pension plans. Prior to joining Jacobs & Co., Mr. Jacobson worked from 1971 to 1979 for the Berkeley Gazette and Richmond Independent newspapers as a copy boy and sportswriter. While working at...

Roger Kang, ’98 Economics

President, LifeSign LLC; Vice President,Princeton BioMeditech Corporation

Roger Kang is the vice president of Princeton BioMeditech Corporation (PBM) and president of LifeSign, which are medical diagnostic companies delivering high-quality, rapid point-of-care testing solutions worldwide. PBM, a family-owned company, specializes in point-of-care tests related to fertility, infectious disease, drugs, tumors, cardiology, and veterinary and environmental diagnostics, including: the one-step pregnancy test, rapid COVID-19/influenza A & B panel test, and the rapid 3-in-1 cardiac marker panel. In 2012, Mr. Kang established an endowment for the Kang...

Jeanette Kennedy, '88 Economics, Haas M.B.A '94

Board Chair and Director of Marketing, Ravenswood Classroom Partners

Jeanette Kennedy began her career in management consulting before working at Sun Microsystems, where she held management positions in product marketing and software partner development. Her work there with startups earned her the Chairman’s Award for Innovation. Ms. Kennedy believes that education has the power to transform lives, and, after retiring from high tech, she invested time in strengthening the educational experiences of students in her community. She helped to build the nonprofit Ravenswood Classroom Partners, which is dedicated to improving the literacy...

Kathy A. Kwan, co-chair, ’87 Microbiology & Immunology, M.B.A./M.P.H. ’93

President, Eustace-Kwan Family Foundation

Kathy Kwan is a local philanthropist who funds a broad range of educational, safety net, and leadership/career development programs in the San Francisco Bay Area. At UC Berkeley, Ms. Kwan supports programs in Student Affairs, the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, the College of Letters & Science, and the School of Journalism. Previously, she funded projects at the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, the School of Public Health, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She also provided a $1 million match for the 2020 Student Emergency Fund. Ms. Kwan serves on...

Georgia Lee, B.S. ’76, Business

Former Senior Adviser, Managing Director and CFO, Hellman & Friedman, LLC

Georgia Lee is a former senior advisor, managing director, and CFO of Hellman & Friedman, LLC, a private equity firm, where she worked for 20 years prior to her recent retirement. Before joining Hellman & Friedman, she was a partner in the New York office of Deloitte, LLP, specializing in accounting for mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, and financial instruments. Ms. Lee’s son also graduated from Berkeley, where he rowed on Cal Crew, leading her to become involved with fundraising for the team. Ms. Lee and her husband, George Shenk, were members of the Cal...

Doug McBeth, '87 Applied Math

Managing Director, Nomura Securities Inc.

Doug McBeth is a managing director at Nomura Securities Inc, a Japanese investment bank, based in New York. His banking career began at Lehman Brothers in 1996 starting in quantitative modeling and then trading interest rate derivatives. He soon moved to Lehman’s Tokyo office (1997–98) successfully managing his book through the volatility of the Asian Financial Crisis. After returning to New York, he focused on solutions for insurance industry capital issues, pioneering a number of groundbreaking transactions. He served as a director and president of Lehman Re and Congress Life...

Sean McCauley, Ph.D. ’98 Geology

Co-Founder, Alkali Earth

Sean McCauley studied isotope geochemistry at UC Berkeley in the 1990s, finishing his Ph.D. in 1998 and completing a postdoc in atmospheric chemistry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1999. After leaving academics, he has spent 25 years in business at Charles Schwab, McKinsey and Co., Target Corporation, a short stint in Silicon Valley and 12 years at TPG Capital. Mr. McCauley also helped to launch, run, and sell a specialty pharmacy that served Mayo Clinic patients. After selling that business, he co-founded Alkali Earth, a Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) company...

Akiko Mikumo, '78 Asian Studies

Retired Senior Partner, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP

Akiko Mikumo is a retired senior partner of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a global law firm headquartered in New York City that she joined as an associate in 1982. She served on the firm’s management committee for 12 years, as Asia managing partner for 10 years, and as a senior mergers and acquisitions partner in their New York, London, and Hong Kong offices. In addition, she was founding partner of the Hong Kong office. Ms. Mikumo is recognized as one of the leading mergers and acquisitions lawyers by various publications. After retiring at the end of 2017, Ms. Mikumo was a...

Na’ilah Suad Nasir, ’93 Psychology & Social Welfare

President, Spencer Foundation

Na’ilah Suad Nasir is the sixth president of the Spencer Foundation, which funds education research nationally. Prior to joining Spencer, she held a faculty appointment in education and African American studies at UC Berkeley, where she also served as the chair of African American studies and as the Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion. She has served on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Nasir’s research examines the racialized and cultural nature of learning and schooling, with a particular focus on the experiences of African American students....

Stacie Olivares, '97 Economics

Board Member, Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board

At the intersection of technology, finance, and policy, Stacie Olivares advances equity, economic growth, and environmental protection. Olivares is a member of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, appointed by President Biden to oversee the world’s largest defined contribution plan, the Thrift Savings Plan, on behalf of its 6.5 million participants. From 2019 to 2022, Olivares served as a member of the CalPERS Board of Administration, appointed by Governor Newsom to oversee the largest public pension fund in the United States. Previously, Olivares was the chief...