Sara McClellan is an organizational change consultant and an adjunct professor for the University of Southern California’s (USC) Price School of Public Policy. She earned her PhD in Organizational Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder and her Masters in Public Administration from USC. She currently works as an organizational consultant for WestEd, an educational research, development, and service agency. She also works with the John Standish Consulting Group, a criminal justice and public safety research and planning firm. Previously, Sara worked as a deputy county administrative officer, personnel director, and First 5 director in northern California. She has conducted program evaluations, developed RFPs and grants, and facilitated strategic planning sessions for a number of public and nonprofit organizations. In her spare time, Sara enjoys yoga, hiking, cooking, and reading detective novels. She lives in Sacramento with her husband and two cats, and works from the Urban Hive, a membership-based community workspace.
Lee Chazen is a teacher, writer, curriculum developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder and developer of a game-based project for social studies teachers, called Global Challenge. The game teaches students about geography, history, economics, politics, and offers them the opportunity to learn about money management, as well as various team and leadership skills. Over the course of his career, Lee has worked on political campaigns, served as project coordinator for a trade mission to the former Soviet Union, taught high school level world history, U.S. Government and speech and debate. As an educator, he’s delivered workshops and presentations on game-based learning, preparing students for the global village of the 21st Century, critical thinking and the use of humor in the classroom. Lee holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Colorado State, a teaching certification from the University of Nevada and Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Sacramento State. As a graduate student, Lee developed a “complex-adaptive theory of education” which is built on a chaos theory model and supports a more open and lateral style of learning. A French Horn player since the age of 7, Lee has played with various symphony orchestras, wind ensembles and brass quintets. In his free time, he also enjoys hiking and running.
Parisa Nejad is an enthusiastic Designer. She is conscientious, motivated, organized and committed to the improvement of the local and global conditions. She loves learning and experiencing life. She studied Architecture at Newschool of Architecture and Design in San Diego, CA. She understands that design is seeing, feeling compassion and keeping an open mind to new ideas. While in School Parisa participated in many of the extracurricular activities sponsored by Cosumnes River College and NewSchool of Architecture & Design and has volunteered in organizations national and international. She has won numerous competitions and has been awarded for scholastic achievements. She has worked at Lionakis, State of California, Estudio Teddy Cruz, Habitat For Humanity San Diego, and American Institute of Architects Central Valley. She enjoys traveling, hiking, swimming, horseback riding, cooking, and painting.