Directors

Joanne Hobbs

Joanne Hobbs, M.S. has a Masters of Science in Psychology, a community college teaching credential in psychology and a K-12 digital media credential. She is a published, award-winning author (The Voice of the Infinite in the Small, Shambhala, 2002) digital photographer, teacher, environmental educator and international lecturer. She is also the founder and Executive Director of eleven year old Catalyst for Youth, a public charity and educational California 501 (c) 3 corporation that offers art and garden programs to incarcerated youth in the Santa Clara County Juvenile detention facilities. She currently teaches full time at Burnett Middle School and part-time at the Art Institute Sunnyvale and when she is not teaching or mentoring teenagers and young adults, she is working on a book applying the metaphors of new science to how students grow and thrive entitled Teaching at the Edge of Chaos: Tending Youth on Fire and pursuing a doctoral degree in Transformative Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Marcy Lauck

Marcy Lauck,M.A. Organizational Development, is Supervisor of Continuous Improvement Programs in San Jose Unified School District and associate of Education for the Future (California State University at Chico), Marcy supports the implementation of strategic institutional change and data-based quality management processes throughout the district. Her responsibilities include the development, administration and expansion of the district’s School Recognition Program, the district’s data warehouse initiative, annual School Climate Surveys (45,000 surveys per year) as well as support for the district’s Baldrige initiative and the annual districtwide Community Conversations. As the district’s schools focus on student achievement, assess their progress and document their successes, Marcy helps them create coherent processes at every level and prepares them for the California Distinguished School and the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program. Under her leadership in the past five years, 29 SJUSD schools have been named as California Distinguished Schools and 11 as National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence.

Dorian Dreyfuss

Dorian Dreyfuss, J.D. M.A.’s interest in child advocacy stretches way back to high school when she convinced a probation officer at the Los Angeles Department of Social Work to allow her to mentor an at risk child. This continued through College at Berkeley and Law School. In graduate school at the University of Illinois she earned her degree in Criminal Justice with a speciality in Juvenile Justice, writing her thesis on how the Juvenile Court managed child sexual assault cases. She also was Assistant Director of Illinois Crime Victims Assistance which took her all over the State interacting with local Law Enforcement. After moving to California she began teaching at San Jose State in the Department of Justice Studies and representing minors through The Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County. Somehow three children were raised in the process, her eldest is in biomedical research at USC, her daughter is finishing three years with the Peace Corps and will enter Law School in the fall and the youngest will graduate from Davis this Spring. Dorian is also associated with Catalyst as the Program Director of Freedom Readers, a literature group that works in the Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall. Her goal is to create a library in the Juvenile Hall to provide minors with continued access to literature, guest authors and writing classes.

Glenn Harris

Glenn Harris has a Master’s degree in educational counseling, and credentials in Special Education, Educational Counseling, and multiple subjects. Glenn has worked with at risk children and teens for 25 years and has been a mentor and an advocate for community building. He has helped create a new charter school for at risk high school students– Pathfinder High School– where he was principal and currently teaches at Branham High School.

Liz Alameda

Liz Alameda retired from Probation after serving over 25 years in Juvenile Hall as a Supervising Group Counselor with a brief stintas the head of a Woman’s Residential Treatment Center. As a program director in the hall she brought in nationally aclaimed programs such as The Beat Within, FLY and the weekly art program offered by Catalyst for Youth. Today she teaches Domestic Harmony classes to court ordered perpetrators, running both a weekly men’s group and a woman’s group. She is a certified practicioner of 3 Principles, a highly regarded mental wellness program and is the founder and president of Connecting Prnciples which offers a variety of court-mandated life enhancement classes.

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