Paul J. Geller | Partner, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP

Mark Solomon | Partner, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP

Michael Phelps | Most Decorated Olympic Athlete in History

Michael Phelps is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time. He captured 28 Olympic medals, including a record-setting 23 gold medals, and set 39 world records over the course of his distinguished career. Mr. Phelps utilized his performance bonus for winning eight gold medals in 2008 to establish the Michael Phelps Foundation, which promotes water safety, healthy living (physical and mental), and the pursuit of dreams. The Foundation’s signature program – IM – is implemented through strategic partnerships with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Special Olympics International. Mr. Phelps courageously opened up about his own mental health challenges, becoming one of the first and most prominent athlete voices who have helped catapult the important conversation across sports and pop culture. His advocacy for water safety and mental health have earned the recognition of the American Image Awards, BBC Sports, Child Mind Institute, The Kennedy Forum, Laureus World Sports Awards, PR Week, the Ruderman Family Foundation, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, among others. In addition, Mr. Phelps served as an Executive Producer, Narrator, and featured talent in the HBO documentary The Weight of Gold, which explores the mental health challenges Olympic athletes often face. He also appeared in the iNDIEFLIX documentary Angst, which explores anxiety among middle school students and their families.

Symone D. Sanders | Author and Seasoned Political Strategist

Symone D. Sanders rose to prominence in 2016 as the national press secretary for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ then-presidential campaign. At 25, she became the youngest presidential press secretary on record and was named to Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 16 young Americans shaping the 2016 election. At 29, she published her first book, No, You Shut Up: Speaking Truth to Power and Reclaiming America and served as a senior advisor for President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. At 31, Ms. Sanders was appointed as a senior member of the Biden-Harris administration, serving as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor and Chief Spokesperson to Vice President Kamala Harris.

A communicator with a passion for problem solving and social justice, Ms. Sanders served as the national chair of the Coalition of Juvenile Justice Emerging Leaders Committee and a member of the Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice before joining Senator Sanders’ campaign. There, she worked to raise the profile of young voices in the fight for juvenile justice reform and brought millennial perspectives to policy conversations. Prior to joining the Biden-Harris administration, Ms. Sanders was principal of The 360 Group, where she helped clients find sound solutions to tough political and social problems.

Ms. Sanders is a former political commentator for CNN and resident fellow of both Harvard’s Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School and the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future.

She is a native of North Omaha, Nebraska and currently resides in Washington, D.C. with her fiancé, Shawn.

Dana Carvey | Multi-Emmy Nominated, Primetime Emmy Award-Winning Actor and Comedian

Multi-Emmy nominated, Primetime Emmy Award-winning actor and comedian Dana Carvey is best known for his iconic and indelible Saturday Night Live characters – most memorably Church Lady, Grumpy Old Man, Hans, of the Hans and Franz body building duo, and of course, Garth of Wayne’s World. Mr. Carvey has received much praise for his uncanny comedic impersonations of American political figures (popular with both audiences and the subjects of his impersonation), including the elder George Bush, Ross Perot, Jerry Brown, David Duke, and Bob Dole.

Mr. Carvey made his feature film debut in This Is Spinal Tap, and other earlier works include Racing with the Moon, One of the Group, Tough Guys, and the comedy Opportunity Knocks. Other notable films for Mr. Carvey include Alan Parker’s The Road to Wellville for Columbia Pictures, Zanuck’s Clean Slate for MGM, and Twentieth Century Fox’s Trapped in Paradise. In 2004, Mr. Carvey starred in The Master of Disguise, a family comedy where Mr. Carvey took on 36 different identities and spoke in 14 different languages as the hapless titular character.

In 2016, Mr. Carvey appeared as the expert-in-residence on USA Network’s comedic half hour series First Impressions. The show featured amateur impressionists competing against each other in a weekly battle of celebrity impressions with Mr. Carvey mentoring each contestant. Also, Mr. Carvey’s Netflix Special Straight White Male, 60, was released in 2016, to much acclaim. Most recently, Mr. Carvey lent his voice to bring “Pops” the dog to life in the 3D animated mega-hit, The Secret Life of Pets and The Secret Life of Pets 2.

Henry C. Levy | Treasurer, Alameda County

Henry C. Levy is honored to work at the County Treasurer-Tax Collector (TTC), where he works diligently with his expert staff of 54 dedicated employees in Oakland and Hayward. Mr. Levy leads the office with integrity, efficiency, and transparency, and looks forward to collaborative working relationships with all other departments and leaders of the County. Mr. Levy was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to fill the remaining term of the former TTC through December 2018, and was elected to office during the June 2018 election for a four-year term.

Mr. Levy is dedicated to educating all County residents about the County’s financial affairs and welcomes questions and concerns from all constituents.

The office of the TTC has three major functions:

• To provide efficient and effective tax collection of property taxes (secured and unsecured); to collect business, utility, and hotel taxes in the unincorporated areas of the county; and to sell property that has become delinquent. There are over 470,000 secured property parcels in the County.
• To manage and protect the County’s financial assets by acting as the County’s banker and directing the investments of the County’s funds, which are invested in a portfolio of credit instruments called an “investment pool.” These funds also belong to school districts and other related agencies, and it is the job of the TTC to provide all pool participants with safety, liquidity, and yield on their investments. The pool currently has approximately $6 billion.
• To act as the fiduciary for the deferred compensation program for County employees who choose to participate. Almost 60% of the County’s employees choose to participate in this program, and there are over $725 million of employees’ funds currently invested.

Mr. Levy is also an ex-officio trustee on the Alameda County Employees’ Retirement Association (ACERA), which has responsibility for providing pension and other post-employment benefits to County retirees.

Mr. Levy has been a CPA since 1987, has worked for large accounting firms, and began to build his practice in Oakland in 1991, where he created a firm from its beginnings in his home to a bustling practice centered at College Avenue in Oakland that employed over 30 people in six offices in Northern California. Although Mr. Levy is no longer an owner, The Henry Levy Group, A CPA Firm, still exists, specializing in tax compliance and planning, small business accounting, entity and tax structuring, political treasury reporting, non-profit & labor union accounting work, litigation support, and forensic investigations. In the early part of his working life, he was a car and forklift mechanic and a journalist.

Mr. Levy has long been extremely involved in trying to better his community, serving on numerous non-profit boards and civic committees. He has been involved either as a member or board member of OCCUR, Machinists Local 64, Plant Closures Project, Oakland School District Budget Advisory Committee, City of Oakland Citizen and Business Budget Advisory Committees, City of Oakland Political Reform Act Advisory Committee, North Atlantic Books, La Pena, Conciliation Forum, Pogo Park, Rockridge Soccer Club, Rockridge District Association, and the East Bay Chapter of the California Society of CPAs, among others. He was a board member and president of the KPFA Radio Station Board from 1992 to 1997, served on the Alameda County Assessment Appeals board from 2004 to 2017, and was the proud PTA president of Peralta Elementary School during the years 1983-1985. Mr. Levy continues to train income tax preparers in the VITA (Voluntary Income Tax Assistance) program at the Hayward Area Recreation District.

An Oakland and Berkeley resident for over 45 years, he has raised four children, and assisted their sports and school clubs and teams. Mr. Levy began umpiring baseball games during his youngest son’s involvement with the sport and went on to train as a high school and college level umpire. He has umpired games, including men’s baseball, vintage baseball, and women’s softball, all over the county and surrounding counties, including umpiring at San Quentin prison. He recently authored a personal memoir in a book on umpiring.

Mr. Levy is an accredited community college instructor. He has taught accounting, employee benefits, and economics at San Francisco Community College, Laney College, and San Francisco State University, as well as teaching through the UC Berkeley Labor Center and Haas School of Business.

An East Coaster by birth, Mr. Levy came out to California in his early twenties. Mr. Levy was married to Marcia Goodman for almost 32 years until she passed away from complications from Ovarian Cancer on December 5, 2017. He is proud of the happy family they created together.

Mr. Levy received his B.A. (History) from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, his M.A. (Industrial Arts) from San Jose State University, and his accounting education from California State, Hayward (now Cal East Bay) and Golden Gate University.

Van Jones | CNN Host and Dream Corps Founder

Van Jones is a CNN host, political commentator, Emmy Award-winning producer, and author of three New York Times bestselling books: The Green Collar Economy (2008), Rebuild the Dream (2012), and Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together (2017).

Mr. Jones has also found success as a social entrepreneur, having founded and led many thriving enterprises, including the REFORM Alliance, Color of Change, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and the Dream Corps, which works to close prison doors and open doors of opportunity in the green and tech economies.

In 2009, as the Green Jobs Advisor to the Obama White House, Mr. Jones oversaw an $80 billion dollar investment in clean energy jobs.

Mr. Jones was the main advocate for the Green Jobs Act. Signed into law by George W. Bush in 2007, the Green Jobs Act was the first piece of federal legislation to codify the term “green jobs.” During the Obama Administration, the legislation has resulted in $500 million in national funding for green jobs training.

Mr. Jones has stewarded several bipartisan legislative and advocacy efforts, racking up wins under the last four U.S. Presidents: Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. Mr. Jones’ most recent victory was advocating successfully for the passage of the First Step Act, which The New York Times calls the most substantial breakthrough in criminal justice in a generation.

A Yale-educated attorney, Mr. Jones has won numerous awards, including the World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leader” designation, Rolling Stone’s 2012 “12 Leaders Who Get Things Done,” TIME’s 2009 “100 Most Influential People in The World,” the 2010 NAACP Image Award, a 2017 Webby Special Achievement Award, a 2019 Lumiere Award, and a 2020 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Interactive Program.

Darren J. Robbins | Partner, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP

Richard A. Bennett | President & Chief Executive Officer, ValueEdge Advisors LLC

Richard A. Bennett is President and CEO of ValueEdge Advisors, a firm he founded in summer 2014 to help institutional investors engage with their portfolio companies. From 2006 he was CEO and then Chairman of GMI Ratings and its predecessor, The Corporate Library, a globally recognized investment research firm specializing in corporate governance and ESG with offices in London, New York, San Diego, and Portland, Maine. In August 2014, GMI Ratings was sold to MSCI.

He worked as Director of Corporate Governance for LENS, an institutional activist fund, from 1997 to 2002. He served from 2004 to 2016 as a non-executive director of Trucost, Plc, a U.K.-based firm offering products and services that allow companies, governments, and fund managers to better understand their environmental performance. From 2009 to 2014, he served on the Board of Governors of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), and currently serves on the ICGN Nominating Committee. He is an independent director of Biddeford Internet Corporation d/b/a GWI (an ISP and telecom business), Atlantic Trust (Maine) (a fiduciary trust company), and Quoddy Inc. (a footwear brand enterprise).

Mr. Bennett has an extensive background in politics and government service as well as a wide range of private sector experience. A former president of the Maine State Senate, Mr. Bennett served four terms in the Maine Senate and two terms in the state’s House of Representatives. From 2013 to 2017, he was Chairman of the Maine Republican Party and a member of the Republican National Committee. In 2014, he volunteered as a member of the MainePERS ESG Integration Task Force.

Directorship magazine has recognized Mr. Bennett six times in its annual list of the 100 "most influential people in corporate governance and the boardroom." In December 2010, he was named by Global Proxy Watch as one of the "10 people around the world who had the most impact on corporate governance in the previous year."

Mr. Bennett was a member of the board of trustees of Hebron Academy from 2010 to 2019. He was a member of the President's Commission on White House Fellowships from 2005 to 2009. He graduated with honors from Harvard College in 1986 and received his M.B.A. from the University of Southern Maine in 2000.