Our Board

Oliver Bajracharya

Chair Board Member, Audit Committee Chair, Governance Committee, Leader Support and Evaluation Committee Chair

Attorney, Christie, Parker, Hale, LLC

As a patent and trademark attorney, Mr. Bajracharya counsels clients with respect to their intellectual property assets and helps them manage and grow their portfolio. He has worked extensively with domestic and international companies specializing in various areas of technology, including medical devices, consumer electronics, sporting equipment, and apparel. Mr. Bajracharya works at Christie, Parker & Hale, a Pasadena law firm specializing in intellectual property, and in his spare time he enjoys playing soccer and cooking. Mr. Bajracharya received a BS in Mechanical (Biomedical) Engineering from Cornell University and a JD from Tulane Law School.

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Prabhu Reddy

Board Member & Treasurer, Finance Committee (Chair), Facilities Committee

Operator in Residence, Charter School Growth Fund

Prabhu Reddy is an Operator in Residence at the Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit that identifies the country’s best public charter schools, funds their expansion, and helps to increase their impact. At CSGF, Prabhu spends his time solving challenges related to building and financing school facilities. Before joining CSGF, Prabhu was Chief Financial Officer of KIPP Bay Area Public Schools, a network of high-achieving public charter schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he helped lead the organization’s growth from seven to fifteen schools. In his role, he was responsible for developing a best-in-class finance team, financial strategy and planning, financial stewardship, and real estate financial strategy. Prior to his role at KIPP Bay Area Public Schools, Prabhu was Director of Finance and Operations with KIPP San Diego. Prabhu began his career as a member of the Investment Team at Pantheon Ventures. He earned a BS in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Tyler Bell

Board Member, Governance Committee Chair, Advocacy Committee

Consultant, Annenberg Foundation

Tyler Bell is a graduate of Morehouse College where he earned his degree in Political Science. After college, Tyler has actively continued to pursue his passions in people, education and technology. He has taught high school, worked on Capitol Hill, and helped lead a startup to achieve incredible success serving as their Head of Talent. Currently, Tyler is serving as a Consultant for the Annenberg Foundation where he is utilizing his skills and background to scale Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion efforts across the Tech and Venture Capital ecosystem in Los Angeles.

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Josephti Cruz

Board Member, Academic Committee, Facilities Committee, Audit Committee

Wealth Management Advisor, TIAA

Josephti Cruz has been a Wealth Management Advisor with TIAA for 6 years, both in in their Los Angeles and New York offices, where she specializes in providing financial planning solutions for her individual clients. Having served In the financial services industry for over 19 years, most notably with AllianceBernstein, Josephti held a variety of client service, marketing, and management roles in their Private Client, Institutional and Retail divisions as a Vice President. Prior to joining TIAA, she was a financial advisor at Chase Private Client and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, where she worked with high net worth individuals to streamline and simplify their financial lives. Josephti holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UCLA. She holds FINRA Series 7, 63, and 65 registrations in addition to maintaining licenses Life, Accident and Health insurance and Variable Annuities in all appropriate jurisdictions.

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Aaron Perez

Board Member, Finance Committee

Director of Strategy and Operations, NFL Media

Prior to the NFL, Aaron Perez spent most of his professional career in management consulting, helping companies develop long-term strategies and align their organizations to achieve its goals. Throughout this time, he also worked directly with several non-profits in Los Angeles and the Bay Area as a volunteer, consultant, and board member. A native of the San Fernando Valley, Aaron earned a BA in Economics from Pomona College and MBA from the UC Berkeley-Haas School of Business.

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Deepa Krishna

Board Member, Development Committee (Chair), Advocacy Committee

Managing Director of Operations, Zinc Collective | DigiDems | Blue Leadership Collaborative.

Prior to working on campaign talent development and retention in Democratic politics, Deepa spent more than 15 years specializing in business operations in the media and entertainment industry at WWE, Miramax Films, The Weinstein Company. Deepa holds an MBA and an MS in Information Systems from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

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Catie Langston

Board Member & Secretary, Resource Development Committee

Consultant

Catie Langston is a professional fundraiser and non-profit consultant in the Los Angeles area. She began her career at Polytechnic School, a K-12 independent day school in Pasadena, CA. For 9 years, she helped build and launch the School's $93 million anniversary campaign, which included growing a broader base of donors, organizing special events, managing direct mail campaigns, and engaging in personal solicitation of major donors. Catie shared this knowledge and experience with another Los Angeles independent school by joining the Pilgrim School team in 2012 and then lead them through 7 years of transformational growth, including a major capital campaign and campus renovation. Catie is a mission-driven leader who believes in transforming communities through relationships. Her desire to connect and help people has led her to a new path of helping women through wellness/accountability coaching and personal styling. She lives in Los Feliz with her husband, two children, and their beloved rescue dog, Moonee the Magical Unicorn.

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Alyssa Santino

Board Member, Academic Committee Chair

Alyssa Santino

Program Officer, Joseph Drown Foundation

Alyssa Santino is the Program Officer of the Joseph Drown Foundation, a private foundation that distributes approximately $4,000,000 annually to nonprofits in the Los Angeles area. The primary focus of the Foundation is education, with a particular interest in supporting strong K-12 public schools and college access programs. The Foundation believes that equity and opportunity are best addressed through quality public education and supports programs that work toward solutions for the myriad of existing problems in Los Angeles area schools. She has been at the Foundation for twelve years.

Alyssa is a native of Colorado and a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles with a major in Dance and a minor in Comparative Religious Studies. She previously toured internationally with a modern dance company and constructed educational curriculum for the organization to bring dance into schools that connected movement to core subjects. With a background in dance performance and education, it is a deep curiosity, desire to connect to others and dedication to continuing to learn that have remained common threads throughout her work.

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Brett Snyder

Finance Committee

Founder, Cranky Flier LLC

Mr. Snyder is the founder of Cranky Flier LLC, a company focused on assisting air travelers via its Cranky Concierge (crankyconcierge.com) air travel assistance service and CrankyFlier.com website. He has an extensive background with the travel industry, having worked for USAir, America West, Eos, and United in the areas of revenue management, marketing, sales, and strategy. Prior to founding his own company, Mr. Snyder worked for PriceGrabber.com, a comparison shopping site with more than 24 million unique users per month, where he built and managed the travel site in addition to managing new products for the site and community efforts. In his younger days, he was the youngest known travel agent in the United States at the age of 12. Mr. Snyder has a BA in Marketing and Tourism Studies from The George Washington University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Kim Ishikawa

Development Committee

Director of Annual Giving, LACMA

Kim Ishikawa is the Director of Annual Giving at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She has the privilege of connecting with the museum’s supporters to share the impact of their philanthropy and engage them with LACMA’s collection and exhibitions, curatorial projects, and educational programs. During her four years at the museum, she has helped raise over $8 million in revenue. Kim is a native angeleno with a career in nonprofit development, previous organizations include National Public Radio (NPR) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). Kim holds a BA in Political Science from UCLA.

Carlos Zamora

Development Committee

Marketing Associate, Multiquip

As a firm believer in education, Carlos Zamora welcomes the opportunity to join Equitas Academy’s Development Committee. He previously volunteered at UCLA assisting a Development team raise funds to provide scholarships to underprivileged students, medical services to downtown’s impoverished community and renovation to school facilities. He majored in Communications at Chapman University and is interested in pursuing a postgraduate degree in the future. Carlos has worked on marketing teams and ad agency accounts across Los Angeles including Sony Pictures, Boeing and Princess Cruises. Currently, he is Marketing Coordinator at Multiquip, an international construction manufacturing and distributing firm. In his free time, he enjoys learning more about his field of study, playing guitar and reading. With family living in Pico-Union since the 80s, he is happy to serve the community.

Frank Spindler

Board Member

Fixed-Income Portfolio Strategist, Payden & Rygel

Frank Spindler is responsible for developing and implementing investment strategies in core and strategic income bond portfolios for corporations, healthcare organizations, pension plans and insurance companies. Frank manages portfolio strategy and macro investment themes for multi-sector income portfolios and is a member of the Balanced Account Strategy Team.

Prior to joining Payden & Rygel, Frank worked as a Compliance Analyst for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in Los Angeles and investment analyst for a CBIZ Financial Solutions, a wealth management firm in San Diego, CA.

Frank is a CFALA member and chairman of the CFALA program planning committee.

Frank earned a BS in business finance at California State University, Northridge.