Trustees
Trustee
Having children motivated Lauren to return to graduate school, where she earned a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology to better understand the mental health challenges teens and parents face. As an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist (AMFT #135201) at a group private practice, her passion lies in helping parents improve communication with their children, as well as finding ways to support teens in today’s results-driven academic environment. Lauren remains active in her community — volunteering at her children’s schools and advancing the conversation around diversity, equity, and inclusion, especially for LGBTQ+ youth and their families.
After graduating from Cate, Lauren attended Skidmore College, played on the women’s soccer team, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in French and Art History. A lifelong learner, she returned to Los Angeles and obtained a Master of Science in Gerontology and a Master of Health Administration from USC. She moved to Washington, DC, where she worked as a health care policy analyst for several institutions, including AARP, and the American Heart Association. She and her husband, Michael, live in Pasadena with their two children, Alexander, ’21, and Maggie, ’25.
Trustee
During Calgary’s years at Cate she was a varsity soccer player, Head Prefect, a Human Development Teaching Assistant, and recipient of the Biddle Cup. She graduated from Georgetown University ’98 with a major in English Literature and a minor in Women’s Studies.
Calgary moved to London in 2000 and worked her way through the ranks of British Vogue as the assistant to the editor-in-chief, beauty editor, wellbeing editor, and ultimately, executive fashion director and digital project director until 2013. Avansino left her full-time role at Vogue in 2013 to become a contributing editor. She then wrote a weekly column for The Sunday Times Style and wrote the nutrition book Keep It Real, which was published in February 2016.
Calgary now lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children.
Trustee
Ryan MacDonnell Bracher grew up on the peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, she runs Round Pond Estate, her family’s Napa Valley winery, vineyard and farm. Round Pond specializes in fine wine, artisan foods and experiences at the estate. Ryan manages her family business with her brother Miles, also a Cate alumni. Ryan spent ten years working and studying outside the winery at Goldman Sachs and the Hewlett Foundation before joining her family at Round Pond Estate in 2003.
In addition to graduating from Cate in 1990, her educational background includes a JD from Stanford Law School and an undergraduate degree in Political Economics from University of California, Berkeley.
Ryan lives on the Round Pond property in Rutherford with her husband, Charles Bracher, and their children Ava ’23, Adeline ’25 and Genevieve ’27.
Trustee
Daniel is a proud Cate graduate, Class of 1996. While at Cate, Daniel ran track and led the Cate varsity boys basketball team on a magical run deep in the CIF Playoffs. With the help of some amazing Cate students and faculty (and a special guest appearance by the late great Mrs. Coretta Scott King and her daughter Yolanda King), Daniel spearheaded the annual Mesa celebration of diversity and inclusion, honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s federal holiday.
After graduation, Daniel received his B.A. from The University of Pennsylvania. While in college, Daniel helped build the cult classic basketball brand AND 1.
Daniel is currently SVP & General on the Adidas Originals, Basketball, & Partnerships team, based in Los Angeles. Prior to joining adidas, Mr. Cherry served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of DC Comics global publishing businesses and multi-media brand – a division of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Daniel is an award-winning marketing executive and brand innovator. With an extensive career in advertising, marketing, and business development, Daniel’s work has impacted popular culture for more than 20 years.
Daniel has served as the Chief Marketing Officer at Activision Blizzard Esports, where he led global marketing, strategy, & communications duties for Activision Blizzard’s portfolio of esports franchises. He was the Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer for the 3-time Stanley Cup Champion New Jersey Devils. He also served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Diageo, where he managed the largest alcohol beverage portfolio in the industry. Daniel’s extensive creative and brand innovation tenure includes serving as CMO of the legendary soccer club The New York Cosmos.
His love of music led to his appointment to the GRAMMY Foundation Board for several years and eventual Founding Executive Developer of the GRAMMY Museum Experience Prudential Center, which opened in 2010. He also actively supports several social justice and educational causes in the local community and in his hometown of Alliance, Ohio.
His work has been recognized with numerous awards and recognitionincluding a Grammy nomination, a Cannes Gold Lion, Sports Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40, an Adweek Vanguard Award, an EBONY Power 100 List nomination, and several Effie Awards for advertising effectiveness.
Most importantly, Daniel is a lucky husband to Melanie Cherry and father of two amazing daughters, Sidney and Sienna.
Trustee
Lynn Wood Harwell is an experienced leader and brings broad management experience having served in senior level roles in various sectors. Her well-honed operations and people management skills, along with her insightfulness and deep knowledge, drive effective performance and transformation for the better.
Lynn and her family (husband and two daughters, including a Cate 2024 student) live in San Francisco, California after spending several years in Boston, Massachusetts. Lynn continues to be bicoastal working in a senior leadership role at the Barr Foundation, a Boston-based foundation committed to advance human, natural, and creative potential. Lynn serves as a Trustee at the Dana Hall School (Wellesley, Massachusetts).
Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Lynn received a B.S. in Business Administration from Boston University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Trustee
After graduating from Cate in 1990, Sheila Marmon Heuer received a B.A. from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. As founder and CEO of Mirror Digital, an interactive media, and advertising company, she helps Fortune 500 brands tap into the multicultural market, working with clients that include General Motors, Sony Pictures, Verizon, Marriott, and Macy’s.
She has assisted with the launch and operation of many new businesses in the digital media industry, and she has occupied leadership positions in operations, new ventures, and finance at Time Warner and Morgan Stanley. Sheila is a founding member of the National Advisory Council of A Better Chance and serves as an advisor for MOUSE, a group that empowers underserved youth to learn, lead, and create with technology. Sheila has lived abroad and traveled extensively, and she currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
Trustee
Adam S. Horowitz ’99 is President of the Horowitz Group, a single-family office based in Newport Beach, California. The family’s roots are in the ready-mix concrete business, but today the family office invests opportunistically across a variety of industries and asset classes.
In the private equity arena, Adam has overseen several consumer retail and healthcare investments, including Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM) and Lemonade Restaurant Group, as well as Oceans Healthcare and Tarsus Pharmaceuticals. In the commercial real estate arena, Adam oversees a portfolio of stabilized commercial and multi-family assets, primarily in the Western U.S. The Horowitz Group also invests with a stable of alternative managers and actively looks to partner with emerging sponsors.
He serves on the Board of the Orangewood Foundation, which serves foster and community youth in Orange County. He earned his B.A. from Stanford University and his M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Adam and his wife Erin live in Newport Beach with their two boys, Henry and Freddy.
Trustee
Athena Jones serves as a CNN national correspondent based in New York. She was formerly a CNN White House correspondent, covering President Trump and his administration for all of the network’s programs and platforms.
Jones started with the network as a general assignment correspondent in 2011. She has reported on politics and on a wide range of general news stories for programs across the network from breaking news to national stories. She has covered debates over immigration reform, the Affordable Care Act, the war against ISIS and debt and budget issues, in addition to protests against police brutality, Ebola, the COVID-19 pandemic, the #MeToo movement, Supreme Court decisions, weather events and the arts.
Previously, Jones was a White House producer with NBC, where she wrote packages, produced story segments and reported on air for MSNBC and NBC News. Jones covered the presidential campaigns of then-Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the 2008 election cycle for NBC and the National Journal. Prior to her work at NBC, Jones served as a freelance segment producer for CNN. In addition, from 2001 to 2003, she worked as a reporter for Reuters based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she covered the Argentine presidential elections, the farm industry, the collapse of the country’s economy and other general news stories. Prior to Reuters, Jones reported on politics and the economy in both Chile and Argentina for Bloomberg News.
Jones graduated cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in Government and earned her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. She studied Spanish language, literature and arts and European politics at the University of Madrid Complutense in Madrid, Spain; and Islamic studies at the American Research Center in Cairo, Egypt, with Duke University.
Trustee
Alumni Leadership Council President
John Kearney was born and raised in Ventura, Calif. After graduating from Cate in 2000, John attended Bucknell University where he played water polo. After two winters in central Pennsylvania, John transferred to Pepperdine University where he graduated in 2004 with a bachelors in business administration. John moved to Palm Desert, Calif., and worked for Pulte Homes after Pepperdine. In 2005, John moved to Laguna Beach, and began working at Merrill Lynch as a financial advisor. He successfully completed the trainee program and graduated a year early and decided to move back to his hometown of Ventura and join his dad’s team. John continues to work at Merrill Lynch as a Managing Director.
John is active in the local community sitting on boards at Casa Pacifica, Ventura County Community Foundation, and Ventura County Fair Foundation. He is excited to serve as President of Cate’s Alumni Leadership Council and looks forward to reconnecting with fellow alumni and being an ambassador for Cate. John lives in Ventura with his wife Patty, and two wonderful daughters, Aida (4), and Lamia (2).
Trustee
Patrick Ko grew up in Taipei, Taiwan. After graduating from Cate in 1997, he earned dual degrees; a Bachelor of Applied Science in Systems Engineering and BA in Economics from The University of Pennsylvania. He later earned his MA in Education Leadership from The Klingenstein Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Patrick is the Founder of Paradigm Education, a social enterprise that focuses on collaborating with schools to provide better education in Taiwan. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Patrick was an educator for twelve years, most recently as the Director of the Center for Innovative Learning at the Junyi School in Taidong, Taiwan. Patrick has a wide range of teaching experiences – he has taught mathematics at the Fay School, and led the bilingual department at the Taipei Fuhsing Private School as Director of Curriculum and Teaching. With global experiences both as a student and a teacher, Patrick is passionate about enabling people’s greatness. He also serves on the board of several charitable and educational non-profit organizations in Taiwan.
Cate’s Servons motto and its outdoor program deeply helped form Patrick’s values and interests. He volunteered in rural Taiwan, Thailand and Nepal, where he fundraised and oversaw a new campus construction for a boarding school in the Himalayas that currently serves 700+ students, from grades K-11. He loves spending time outdoors, especially in the wilderness. Patrick lives in Taipei with his wife Lesley Hu Ko and their two daughters, Mira and Skylar.
Trustee
Casey McCann worked in the financial services industry for ten years—first as an analyst for Beacon Hill Financial in Boston and then for the Private Bank at Wells Fargo in San Francisco—before becoming vice president of Hazelwood Allied Van Lines and McCann Mini Storage.
After graduating from Cate, he attended Middlebury College and later Dartmouth’s Tuck Business School Bridge Program. Casey lives in Santa Barbara.
Trustee
After graduating from Cate in 1984, Jay went on to earn his B.A. from Brown University, his M.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design, and his Ph.D. from Illinois Tech. In his professional career, he has worked to bridge the arts and engineering, lecturing in sociology, design, and product development in the U.S., Italy, and Denmark. He was a founding member on the board of directors at the Institute of Play and currently serves on the board of Maker Education Initiative.
Born outside Detroit, Jay lived for significant periods of time in California, New England, and the Midwest before settling in wine country outside Portland, Oregon. He currently manages a small company that produces educational technologies – including Makey Makey – and the associated R&D laboratory.
Trustee
Rosalind (Roz) received her B.A. from Dartmouth and M.Ed. from Columbia University. She is currently a strategic advisor for Kid Basix, a manufacturer of eco-functional kids products.
Roz is a stalwart Cate School donor and volunteer and has attended dozens of Cate alumni events since graduating in 1989. She has volunteered for several years for the Cate Fund phonathon, was a panelist at the 2000 Entrepreneurship and Technology Event in Silicon Valley, served as a Class Agent from 2004-2009, participated as a member of the Technology committee, and chaired her reunion committee in 2009 and 2014.
Roz is a founding member of the Cate Alumnae Network (CAN) and hosted events for the group at her home. She participated in the naming of the Early Learning Center on the Mesa. Her involvement at Cate represents a broad and deep commitment to the School. Roz has three siblings who attended Cate: Dan ’87, Morgan ’99, and Tyler ’01. Her father, Dan Emmett, is a Life Trustee, and mother, Rae, is an involved alumni parent. Roz lives in Pacific Palisades with her husband and four children – Frankie, Wade, Mack, and Ruby.
Trustee
Monique Parsons is an independent radio producer and freelance journalist based in Chicago. She specializes in writing about religious trends, issues, and diversity, with a special focus on Islam in America. Her stories have aired on NPR’s Morning Edition, Day to Day, and All Things Considered, as well as on WBEZ (Chicago Public Radio) and Interlochen (Michigan) Public Radio.
She’s written for Religion News Service, Beliefnet.com and various newspapers from coast to coast. A graduate of Cate School, Class of ’84, Monique earned a bachelor’s degree in religion from Princeton University and holds master’s degrees from Harvard Divinity School and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. A native of Carpinteria, she now resides in the Chicago area with her family.
Trustee
Elizabeth is a graduate of Boston University where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in History, and later earned her MBA from Pepperdine University, and a Master of Arts from Pacific Graduate Institute.
Her professional background includes work in non-profit management (with an emphasis in fund development) and private foundation management. She currently serves as a trustee of the Thornton Foundation in Los Angeles. Additionally, she has served on the boards of Flintridge Preparatory School and St. Matthew’s Parish School and several other non-profit boards in Los Angeles.
Currently, Elizabeth works as a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice. She and her husband, Tom, live in Santa Barbara. Together, they have four adult children.
Trustee
After graduating from Cate in 2002, Leone received an A.B. from Harvard College. She then moved to New York where she spent several years working in investment banking at Citigroup before joining Brookfield Asset Management’s Private Funds Group, where she is currently a Vice President based in Los Angeles.
In addition to being a Cate supporter and member of the Cate Mesa Association, Leone has a long history of volunteering for numerous charitable organizations, including New York Cares (where she was a member of the fundraising committee), Streetwise Partners, A Better Chance, and the Junior League of Los Angeles.
In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, running 5Ks, and traveling around the world. Leone lives in Santa Monica, California.
Cate Parent Organization (CPO) President
Gweneth Rehnborg has a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, but she is neither a lawyer, nor a diplomat. While her past professional roles have included humanitarian relief primarily in Africa for international NGOs, USAID and UNICEF, Public Relations for BSMG Worldwide in both NYC and Los Angeles, and Director of the Nutrilite Health Institute Center for Optimal Health, Gwen has spent the majority of the past two decades navigating school admissions, parenting and family logistics for three children in Los Angeles, London and Hong Kong. Additionally, while living in Hong Kong, Gwen served on the board of Bring Me A Book, wrote a monthly column in the South China Morning Post focused on adolescent literacy and launched a women’s hiking group.
Gwen has served on several different parent volunteer boards and in many organizational roles in international and domestic, private and public schools, and is looking forward to taking on the role of CPO President in this year of transition at Cate.
Originally from Pennsylvania with a BA in International Relations from Bucknell University, Gwen now splits her time between Southern California, Colorado and a family farm project in Oregon where Gwen and her husband focus on soil health, vineyard management and launching their new wine label.
Trustee
Ted Simpson ’86 received his undergraduate degree in politics and economics from Princeton and his M.B.A. in marketing and strategy from the Kellogg School at Northwestern.
For the last 18 years, he has been working in institutional sales and client services for Dimensional Fund Advisors, a $500B investment management firm. Ted’s older brothers, Irv ’79 and Ken ’81, are also Cate alumni. His daughter, Kennedy, is Cate class of 2022 and his son, Palmer, is Andover ’23.
Ted has been a class agent for twenty years and has served as reunion chair a number of times. Ted lives in West Los Angeles with his wife Kandus and their youngest son Beckett.
Trustee
Jiwon Choi Song ’00 is the Managing Director of Axle Companies. After graduating from Cate, Jiwon studied Hospitality Management at Cornell University and worked for Starwood hotels in New York City until she joined Axle Companies, which is her family office in Los Angeles. Jiwon leads acquisitions and asset management departments overseeing the company’s hospitality properties. In addition, she has been an active supporter of animal rights and investor of plant-based food companies.
Originally from South Korea, Jiwon and her husband Steven are living “abroad” there this year with their daughters Josie (11) and Elena (9); they call Los Angeles home. Steven and Jiwon are on the board of the Hammer Museum and SCI-Arc. Steven has an architectural practice based in the US, South Korea, and Japan.
Jiwon has served on Cate’s Alumni Leadership Council. Having attended multiple boarding schools since early age, Jiwon is well aware of the challenges incoming international students may face and wants to help foster inclusivity and diversity at the school.
Trustee
Brian grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from Colgate University with a B.A in Molecular Biology. After graduation, he moved to Hong Kong where he has lived for the past 30 years. He and his wife have three children, two of whom attended Cate.
As an entrepreneur, he has founded several companies in the technology and consumer product sectors with a geographic focus on Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. He is currently involved in a diverse range of businesses spanning technology, financial services, investments, and real estate.
Trustee
Sylvia was born and raised in Boyle Heights and was among the first class of girls at Cate. She earned the first college degree in her family, graduating from Harvard University with an A.B. in Government, and her law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
Sylvia is a transformational operations and legal executive with strong leadership and management experience that includes leading a state-wide regulatory agency, significant non-profit organization programs, and legal and trial teams. Sylvia is also a fearless and tenacious trial lawyer, deeply rooted in civil rights and social, racial, gender, environmental, and economic justice. For decades, she has fought for the most oppressed and underserved, litigating against the toughest odds, with a reputation as a force for justice. She has achieved exceptional results in federal, state, criminal, and civil cases and over forty federal trials. She is now the Director of Litigation for the Disability Rights Legal Center.
Sylvia is a staunch advocate for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging and is passionate about education, community, and creating change through policy. Her commitment to service includes serving on the Oakwood School Board of Trustees and the Equal Rights Advocates Board. Sylvia lives in Los Angeles with her two daughters, Chloe and Gabby.
Trustee
David Tunnell grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Business School.
He and his wife live in San Francisco and are parents to three daughters, two of whom attend Cate School. David is a Partner and member of the Investment Committee at Hellman & Friedman LLC, a global private equity investment firm based in San Francisco.
He originally joined H&F in 1994 and leads the Firm’s efforts in the tech and insurance sectors.
