| Paul Merage is the Founder and President of the Merage Foundations. He is Chairman of Falcon Investment Management, a private investment management firm; Stoneridge Capital Partners, engaged in commercial real estate investments; and Silverpoint Investments, a private-equity capital company. Paul was the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Chef America, a major manufacturer of frozen food products, best known for Hot Pockets®. He is active in a number of philanthropic endeavors, including the Merage Foundations. Paul is also a Trustee of the University of California, Irvine, and he serves on the Boards of the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Pacific Symphony. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics and master's degree in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
Marshall Kaplan is Executive Director of the Merage Foundations. He is the former Dean of the University of Colorado's Graduate School of Public Affairs, where he also headed the Wirth Chair and Institute for Public Policy. Marshall was a senior official at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a principal in the policy advisory firm Marshall Kaplan, Gans & Kahn. He has written widely on urban policy, the environment, infrastructure financing, and poverty. He holds BA and MA degrees from Boston University and the MCP degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kelly Ocampo is Program Officer of the Merage Foundation for the American Dream. She joins us from Loyola Marymount University where she was a Research Development Assistant for the Center for Global Education. Previous to that, she was Director of Academic and Financial Affairs for the Office of International Programs at Pepperdine University. She holds BA degrees in Linguistics and Latin American & Iberian Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara; and an MA degree in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Sue Cronmiller is the Program Officer for Children First. Sue joins us from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) where she pioneered the development of several innovative writing, arts and humanities programs for at risk youth. A poet, scholar and lecturer in UCI’s departments of English and Education, Sue is also the Founding Director of the UCI Poetry Academy, the Associate Director for Community Partnerships at UCI’s Center for Learning Through the Arts and the President of poetryXchange, a non-profit coalition of writers, artists and software engineers. Previously at UCI, Sue was the Director of Programming and Publications for Humanities Out There (HOT). Sue holds BA and MFA degrees in English from the University of California, Irvine
Raquel Sojourner is an intern at the Merage Foundations for 2007-2008. She attends the University of California, Irvine where she majors in Sociology and minors in Management. Raquel has been actively involved in her community through her past position as the Community Development Coordinator for the UCI Social Science Resource Center; where she developed and established a Community Service and Leadership Program for UCI students. Raquel is currently a member of the UCI SAGE Scholars Program, which partners with organizations to offer paid multi-year internships to talented and highly motivated UCI students related to their field of study.
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