The Women’s Foundation of California wishes to express its deep appreciation to Michelle Cale for her distinguished service for 7 years on our Board and as Board Chair over the last three years. We are grateful for her time, support, generosity and commitment.
Please join us in passing the torch of leadership to our next Board Chair Diane Manuel. As a financial advisor with Urban Wealth Management, Diane is proudly focused on helping women live their best lives. Through her work and philanthropy, she is committed to ensuring that women’s lives can be as wonderful as they can imagine. We’re thrilled to benefit from Diane’s leadership and her passion to empower women and girls.
The Foundation also would like to offer congratulations to our newest board members Jennifer Chou, Elizabeth Escamilla, and Lora O’Connor. We’re fortunate to add these three dynamic people to our Board who embody our organizational values of community, well-being, justice, learning, collaboration, trust, intersectionality and transformation. They have demonstrated their commitment to gender, racial and economic justice through various platforms including policy advocacy, the arts, and social entrepreneurship.
Jennifer Chou is a Reproductive Justice & Gender Equity Attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. Her current work focuses on expanding and protecting access to reproductive health care in the Central Valley. She also leads the ACLU-NC’s efforts to ensure implementation of inclusive, medicallyaccurate, and comprehensive sexual health education across the state.Before joining the ACLU, Jennifer was an If/When/How Reproductive Justice Fellow with the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, where she represented NAPAWF in coalition leadership to reintroduce federal immigrant health legislation and authored a policy agenda about the reproductive health status and needs of Asian American and Pacific Islander women. Before law school, Jennifer was a paralegal with the litigation department of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.Jennifer earned her law degree from the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, where, as a student in UCLA’s Appellate Advocacy Clinic, she argued a case in front of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Jennifer earned her B.A. in Political Science and Women’s Studies, with a concentration in Asian American Studies, from Wellesley College.
Elizabeth Escamilla, is currently Director of Education at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Before joining the Lucas Museum, she held various positions in the Education Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum for 22 years. In addition to designing the largest guided school visit program in an American art museum, she championed access to the museum by Title I school communities through an annual, one-million- dollar bus funding program. She spearheaded the development of online, collection-based resources, and brokered partnerships with Teaching Channel and Khan Academy to expand reach. Elizabeth is a leader in the area of arts integration, and she has presented locally and nationally on issues in the field of museum education. In 2014, she was named Museum Educator of the Year by the National Art Educators Association. Elizabeth is a California native, born in Ventura County and is proud of her California university undergraduate and graduate degrees from UC Santa Barbara and San Francisco State University, respectively.
Lora O’Connor is a producer, social entrepreneur and strategic catalyst, specializing in high impact partnership and resource development and cultivation, working across sectors towards the goal of a world that works for all of us. Areas of high Impact include Women & Girls leadership and empowerment, a Regenerative and Clean Energy-based Environment, Social, Racial and Gender Justice and Social Impact Film, Media and Entertainment.
