Steve Barr – Founder and CEO
Marco Petruzzi – President and Chief Operating Officer
Sandy Blazer – Chief Academic Officer
Sabrina Ayala – Chief Financial Officer
Cristina de Jesus – Vice President of Curriculum and Instruction
Dan Chang – Vice President of New School Development
Hoa Truong – Vice President of Operations
Alma V. Márquez – Vice President of External & Government Affairs
Steve Barr – Founder and CEO
Steve Barr founded Green Dot Public Schools in 1999 with the vision of transforming secondary education in California by creating a number of high-performing charter high schools using available public dollars. Under Steve's leadership, Green Dot built one of the first comprehensive public high schools in the Los Angeles area in thirty years in fall 2000 and a second high school in 2002. Green Dot now operates twelve high-performing public charter high schools and is the leading change agent in the region.
Green Dot's leadership in pushing for improved public education led the Los Angeles Times to name Steve as one of 100 most influential people in Southern California in 2006. In addition to leading Green Dot, Steve is a State Board of Education appointee to the Advisory Commission on Charter Schools, where he provides policy recommendations to the State Board of Education on charter school-related issues.
Prior to founding Green Dot, Steve held a number of leadership positions in political and social service organizations. In 1990, Steve co-founded Rock the Vote. The Rock the Vote campaigns and field efforts led the way in the first upward surge in 18-24 year old in voting since the passage of the 26th Amendment. Following Rock the Vote, Steve led the successful efforts to pass the Motor Voter Bill, which was signed into law in 1994 by President Clinton. Thirty million Americans have registered to vote via Motor Voter.
Steve hosted President Clinton's National Service Inaugural event, which led to the creation of Americorps. He then oversaw an Americorps after-school program project in South Central and East Los Angeles that focused on helping single mothers transition off of welfare.
Steve has been active in politics throughout his professional career, serving several presidential campaigns and as a finance chair for the Democratic Party. Additionally, Steve has helped drive political change through television, as a national correspondent on the nationally syndicated Disney-produced "The Crusaders", as a contributor to Discovery Channel's "Why Things Are?", and as a writer in national magazines such as George. Steve authored "The Flame: An Unlikely Patriot Finds a Country to Love" (Morrow, 1987).
Marco Petruzzi – President and Chief Operating Officer
Marco Petruzzi is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Green Dot Public Schools. Prior to joining Green Dot in January 2007, Marco founded r3 school solutions, an organization that provided management and administrative services to charter management organizations. Prior to founding r3 school solutions, he was a Vice President at Bain & Co., a global management consulting firm. Marco has fifteen years of consulting experience working with top management of major international groups in corporate and product-market strategy, channel management, pricing strategy, commercial organization, operations, R&D management and supply chain management assignments, in the USA, South America, and Europe. Prior to joining Bain & Company, Marco also worked at McKinsey & Co. and for Enichem Americas, a petrochemical trading company based in New York. Marco earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering at Columbia University, where he also earned an M.B.A. He has extensive international experience, having lived in six different countries, and is fluent in four languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian). Marco, an active community member, is married and has two children, both attending public schools. He is also the Venice chapter president of LAPU (Los Angeles Parents Union) and served on Green Dot's Board of Directors from 2002 until 2006.
Sandy Blazer – Chief Academic Officer
Sandy has been an elementary, middle school and high school principal, and the Director of General Education and Special Education Services in the Long Beach Unified School District. All of the schools she has led have been recognized as California Distinguished Schools, where Sandy has implemented models of collaboration that directly impacted the achievement of all groups of students she served. She is a Senior Consultant with Focus on Results, a company dedicated to the improvement of public schools throughout the world. As Chief Academic Officer, she now is using her skills to impact all of the schools in the Green Dot system.
Sabrina Ayala – Chief Financial Officer
Sabrina Ayala brings to Green Dot ten years of Wall Street experience. Prior to joining Green Dot in 2006, Sabrina was an Institutional Equity Trader with Merrill Lynch, a Valuation and Compensation Consultant with Stern Stewart & Co. and an Investment Banker with Kidder, Peabody & Co. All were based in New York City. Her areas of expertise include natural resources, cyclical chemical industries, consumer products, REITS and arbitrage. Sabrina, an Eli Lilly Scholar, received her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in 2002 with majors in Finance and Entrepreneurship. Her Bachelor of Science degree in Finance, with minors in Accounting and Sports Management, is from Northern Illinois University, where she graduated with honors, cum laude and Outstanding Woman Graduate of the Year.
Cristina de Jesus – Vice President of Curriculum and Instruction
Cristina de Jesus is Green Dot's Vice President of Curriculum and Instruction. Her responsibilities include administrator and teacher training, supervision, and evaluation; course and curriculum development; evaluation of Cluster Directors and Principals in Residence; and academic logistics for new schools and new grade levels. She previously served for four years as the founding Principal at Ànimo Inglewood Charter High School, Green Dot's second school. Prior to joining Green Dot, Cristina was an English and History teacher for seven years in the Santa Monica/Malibu School District. While in Santa Monica, she served as the Department Chair for the English Department at Lincoln Middle School. She also received many awards while at Lincoln Middle School: Lincoln Middle School Teacher of the Year, Santa Monica Jaycees Young Educator of the Year, and a PTSA award for service to the school and the community. In 2001, she received National Board Certification from the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards in the area of Early Adolescence English/Language Arts.
Dan Chang – Vice President of New School Development
Dan Chang is the Vice President of New School Development for Green Dot, responsible for managing the founding and setup of the organization's new schools, including re-structuring Locke High School into ten new Green Dot schools. Prior to joining Green Dot, Dan held business development and product marketing positions at enterprise software companies Model N and Desktop.com. Before Model N and Desktop.com, he served as a financial analyst at Broadview International, a division of the investment bank Jefferies & Company focused on the IT, communications, healthcare technology and digital media industries. Dan holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Business Administration from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Hoa Truong – Vice President of Operations
Hoa Truong is the Vice President of Operations and is responsible for managing the Information Technology, Operations, and Knowledge Management departments for Green Dot. Hoa has a business background, having graduated from UC Berkeley with a BS degree in Business Administration. He began his career as a strategy and business consultant at Arthur Andersen, working with various Fortune 500 clients. One significant experience was consulting at the Los Angeles Unified School District for 18 months, where his interest in public education was piqued. After four years at Arthur Andersen, Hoa attended the UCLA Anderson School of Management and earned his MBA. Upon graduating, he worked in Strategic Marketing for an audio visual services firm in Long Beach, and also joined KIPP Los Angeles College Preparatory School as a Founding Board Member, where he currently serves as the school's Board Chair.
Alma V. Márquez – Vice President of External & Government Affairs
Alma Vivian Márquez is Vice President of External and Government Affairs for Green Dot where she is responsible for their public policy agenda, strategic partnerships and external and government affairs. The architect of the community engagement and parent organizing framework for small school reform led by Green Dot, Alma has played a pivotal role in the education reform movement in Los Angeles. Prior to joining Green Dot, Alma was a Program Officer at First 5 LA where she managed a portfolio of $150 million for early childhood education and grew to appreciate its impact in eliminating the achievement gap. Alma was also a consultant to the L.A. County Office of Education and L.A. County Children's Planning Council to create equitable pathways for educational excellence through diversity, strategic planning and community engagement. Alma is both a product and survivor of LAUSD schools. As a teen, she organized with ALYS: the African Latino Youth Summit to create safe and critical thinking spaces for youth of color. In 1992, she was appointed to the Warren Christopher Commission after the Los Angeles Civil Unrest. In 1995, President Clinton awarded her the White House Presidential Community Service Award. Among her awards, she is most proud of being honored by Mayor Tom Bradley, Assembly Majority Leader Marco A. Firebaugh as Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, being a national finalist for the Michael Schwerner Activist Award and recognized by the March of Dimes for her work to help save babies' lives. Alma is also a graduate of the Hispanas Organized for Political Equity (HOPE) Leadership Institute. Alma graduated from Occidental College with a bachelor's degree in English and Comparative Literary Studies and received the highly coveted HUD Community Builders Fellowship while pursuing her Master's degree in Urban Planning with a focus on Social Policy, Community and Economic Development from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
