| 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.
Yesenia Velez Ochoa is a Program Officer for the Merage Foundations for the American Dream. She joins us from Orange County United Way where she was the Community Development Director forging partnerships to financially empower low-income neighborhoods. Previous to that, she was Director of Stepping UP with Orange County Community Housing Corporation, a permanent housing provider for extremely low-income families. She holds a BA degree in Human Services from California State University, Fullerton, and MA degree in Higher Education and Adult Development from Claremont Graduate University.
Marshall Kaplan is a consultant to 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.
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