Team – Empower Oakland

Our Team

We’re a volunteer-led organization of Oakland citizens working in education, technology, non-profits, media, development, and government. We’re united in our mission: to serve voters with rigorous information for the critical November election and beyond.

Endorsement Committee

Isaac Abid

Isaac Abid is the founder and managing partner of Lakeside Group, an Oakland based real estate company focused on commercial investment opportunities across Northern California.

Alongside his work at Lakeside Group, Isaac has an eye towards increasing safety and vibrancy in Oakland, CA, his hometown. This includes starting the Downtown Partnership and the Northlake District, as well as sitting on the board of the Oakland School for the Arts.

Isaac graduated from Columbia Business School with an MBA in Real Estate Finance, as well as a Masters of Science in Urban Planning. Isaac also has a BA in Political Science from UCLA.

Isaac Abid
(Proxy: Chris Moore)

Megan Bacigalupi

Megan Bacigalupi is an attorney and Chief of Staff at Lighthouse Community Public Schools. She was the co-founder and first Executive Director of California Parent Power. She is the mom of two OUSD students, a 6th grader and 3rd grader, and given her own child's experiences is a passionate advocate for special education students.

Megan Baciagalupi

Jessica Chen

Jessica Chen was born and grew up in Taiwan. She is working as a Branch Manager and Business Development Officer at Metropolitan Bank, a community bank based in Oakland. She has been involved in Oakland and Asian communities in the East Bay for more than a decade with different roles. She was a World Journal reporter, City of Oakland Councilmember Community Liaison, and the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce Executive Director. She is now also serving on 2 NPO boards in Oakland Chinatown.

Jessica Chen

Arielle Fleisher

Arielle Fleisher is a transportation strategist with a unique combination of public health, design thinking, and urban planning expertise. With extensive experience in public policy across the private, public, and non-profit sectors, Arielle is dedicated to improving government by bringing innovative approaches and diverse skill sets to government practices. Her primary focus is on transportation, and she has worked tirelessly to improve the quality of the Bay Area's transportation system, including initiatives to make Oakland’s streets safer.

A committed community leader, Arielle recently ran for the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee. Though she didn't win, the experience underscored for her the importance of civic and community engagement. She's also the founder of the Pandemic Mom's Club, a neighborhood group that blossomed from offering support to new mothers at the height of the pandemic into a vital source of connection and resources. Arielle serves on the Steering Committee for UCLA’s Center of Excellence on New Mobility and Automated Vehicles and is an ITS Senior Fellow at ITS Berkeley.

Arielle’s strength lies in her ability to bring people together to tackle complex challenges and drive meaningful change. She is excited to bring her policy expertise and passion for improving government practice to Empower Oakland.

Arielle Fleisher

Harold Lowe

Harold Lowe is a Bay Area native whose family has 100-year roots in Oakland and Berkeley. Harold has decades of sales, marketing, and management experience in seven industries. A former Executive Director to the National Association of Minority Contractors, Northern CA, he is also a licensed financial planner. With this varied background, he has been able to support diversity engagement and outreach initiatives using a wide lens. Harold has served on more than two dozen Boards and Committees, and currently serves with the Oakland Unified School District, the Calculus Roundtable, Oakland Rotary #3, the Boy Scouts of America, and Oakland Lacrosse. He is a graduate of the African American Studies program at UC Berkeley, and a MPA, Public Policy at CSU East Bay.

Harold Lowe

Tyfahra Milele

Dr. Tyfahra Milele is the CEO of Humanize Us All, a company committed to culture transformation through comprehensive culture audits, customized training, and strategic coaching. With a deep passion for fostering inclusivity and equity, she leads initiatives that integrate these principles into organizational practices.

An expert in strengths-based leadership development, Dr. Milele has dedicated her career to enhancing workplace environments and community engagement through innovative approaches. Her work not only shifts organizational cultures but also empowers leaders to enact sustainable change.

Dr. Milele's leadership extends beyond her organization as she actively contributes to various community-oriented projects and dialogues and proudly serves as the Executive Director of Camp Phoenix, a no cost sleepaway summer camp for Oakland youth from low-income backgrounds.

Tyfahra Milele

Garrick Monaghan

Garrick advises values-oriented investors to support housing solutions in their region. He is a founding member of Abundant Oakland, an outcome-oriented advocacy organization focused on advancing structural solutions to chronic, unsolved issues affecting families in Oakland. Prior to his current work, Garrick co-founded city3 in order to develop innovative financial models to stimulate economic development and investment in impoverished neighborhoods, and was Chief of Staff at Riaz Capital, an Oakland-based workforce housing developer.

Garrick Monaghan

Jessica Ramos

Jessica Ramos is an aspiring future researcher from Oakland, California who wants her work to be centered in uplifting community experiences. She is interested in researching surveillance technologies, their impact on racialized communities, and community organization/activism. She seeks to empower future academics in the fields of sociology, science and technology studies, and media studies, working towards demanding accountability and resistance from data driven technologies. Ramos earned a BA in sociology and media studies with a minor in ethics studies from The University of California Berkeley. Ramos completed a senior honors thesis, “Out of the Shadows: A Case Study on Oakland, California Resistance Against Technologies.” Through a case study of Oakland, California, her research examined the local resistance against big data technologies. Her research findings illustrate the need for an alliance between ambassadors and creators of innovations and technologies alongside policy makers and local governments in order to achieve trust and transparency.

Jessica Ramos

Loren Taylor

As a third-generation son of Oakland, Loren Taylor has seen the life transforming potential of our amazing city. The Town equipped him to become a biomedical engineer, an entrepreneur, an Oakland city councilmember, and now CEO of Zaru Systems, a social impact startup company focused on generating $1B of Black wealth.

Despite Oakland’s potential, Loren, like everyone else, has seen our city flounder due to ineffective leaders and bad policies. But his years fighting for Oaklanders on the city council and as a Mayoral candidate showed Loren the path by which authentic Oaklanders can reclaim our city.

Losing Oakland’s mayoral election by only 677 votes (despite being outspent by more than $850K) showed Loren that Oaklanders CAN overcome the overwhelming impact of outside money with authentic relationships, consistent engagement, and in-depth voter education. Supported by a diverse cross-section of Oakland residents, all eager to see the conditions in their city improve, Loren is guiding the efforts of Empower Oakland to support real change in our home.

Loren Taylor

Hae-Sin Thomas

Hae-Sin Kim Thomas is a Founding Partner at Acacia Partners and an experienced programs and strategy leader in education. She was previously the President of Propel Pathway at Ed Farm, a nonprofit organization based in Birmingham, Alabama, focused on increasing the number of Black leaders in high wage tech careers. At Ed Farm, she was responsible for all K-12 and workforce programming, and she was charged with developing a career and college readiness program for high school graduates unprepared for either. Prior to Ed Farm, she was the 10-year CEO of Education for Change Public Schools, a charter management organization in Oakland, California focused on accelerating learning outcomes for over 3,000 students across 7 schools.

She led the launch of two nonprofit community advocacy organizations, an education fund, and a political action committee focussed on Oakland. Hae-Sin worked for the Oakland Unified School District as a teacher, principal, school developer, and executive officer for over 15 years. She led a team charged with designing and leading two foundational tenets of OUSD's nationally recognized reform effort, creating quality school options for families in every neighborhood and ensuring high-performing, more personalized communities of learning for children. She led the design and opening of 22 new schools, replacing 18 chronically failing schools.

She holds a Bachelor's in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master's in curriculum and instruction from the University of San Francisco, and a Master's in administration, planning, and social policy from Harvard University. She is a Fellow of the second class of the Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, a member of EdLoC, and a mentor/advisee for leaders of color as part of the Tipping Point Community.

Hae-Sin Thomas

Trishala Vinnakota

Trishala started her career in building software for Clover point of sale. She stepped away from her fintech career to work on gubernatorial, congressional, and municipal campaigns to help elect a new generation of Democratic leadership. She is passionate about cultivating leaders with private-sector experience, supporting local journalism, and increasing electoral engagement.

Trishala Vinnakota

Sarah Yoell

Sarah Chavez-Yoell serves as Local Government Affairs Manager for Pacific Gas & Electricity’s Greater Bay Area Region where she works with local elected officials, developers, private companies and community-based organizations to connect the nation’s largest utility company with regional stakeholders. Most recently, Sarah served as a Community Outreach, Government Relations and Communications consultant, where she provided support to local businesses and non-profit organizations.

Sarah is from East Oakland, a graduate of Castlemont High School, and the first in her family to go to college. Sarah has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from California State University East Bay. Sarah was born to a teenage mom, and grew up living in poverty, receiving food and clothes from her local church and food bank. The importance of local community based organizations stuck with Sarah as an adult because of the impact they had on her adolescence. While a student at Castlemont High School Sarah was active in Youth Alive’s Teens on Target program and in Youth Together where she learned leadership skills and how to speak up not only for herself but also for her community. Sarah currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Youth Alive! She also serves on several other non-profit boards including Community Education Partnership, Peralta Community Colleges Foundation and The Unity Council.

Sarah Yoell

Digital Leadership

Gagan Biyani

Gagan Biyani was born and raised in Alameda County (Fremont, CA) and graduated from UC Berkeley. He has lived in the Bay Area for 32 years and has founded multiple businesses in the Bay Area, including Udemy, Sprig and Maven.

After spending 5 years outside the Bay, he and his wife decided to settle down in Oakland because they love the people, culture, weather, location and food. He's passionate about bringing his digital marketing experience to help Empower Oakland with its mission to educate Oakland voters.

Gagan Biyani
Digital Director

Reze Wong

Reze Wong manages the Empower Oakland newsletter. He’s currently an operating partner at Khosla Ventures, where he helps startup founders with communications and messaging.

He moved to the East Bay more than 15 years ago, and has lived across Oakland for more than a decade, including in West Oakland, Lake Merritt, and Rockridge. Reze graduated from UC Berkeley.

Reze Wong

Editor-in-Chief

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