Board

Alexander Tran works at the intersection of social entrepreneurship and the application of technology for social impact. He is very excited to be an active member of the LGBTQ youth activism community through involvement with the board. A graduate of the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs, he has worked on capacity building and technology projects for diverse public institutions such as the Port of Oakland and the San Francisco Department of Public Works. At ZeroDivide, he supports social enterprise programs and philanthropic partnerships. Alex holds a B.A. from Pomona College.

Jamie Lee Brandi, Board Treasurer,joined the LYRIC Board in November of 2008 and is infinitely inspired by the organization’s mission and the courageous LGBTQQ youth it serves.  Originally from frigid New England, Jamie has now calls sunny Oakland home.  She works for Kaiser Permanente in the area of Medicare Compliance. In her spare time, Jamie enjoys live music, watching baseball, cooking, and spending time exploring the Bay area. Jamie holds a Masters of Public Administration from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, where she also completed her bachelor’s degree.

John Viet grew up in the South Bay, and after graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in Architecture, he shifted paths to the non-profit world.  He served 2 years in an AmeriCorps program called Public Allies and is currently working with Our Family Coalition working in elementary school advocacy and communications.  After meeting all the queer headed families, he can’t wait to have a family of his own. He recently moved to the city, and can’t wait to explore it with new friends and his partner of over 3 years.  He will be starting graduate school this fall at San Francisco State University in the Masters of Social Work program and is excited about supporting LYRIC in any way that he can. John isn’t currently out to his very traditional Vietnamese Catholic family, so if anyone stumbles upon this by googling his name…surprise…and let’s talk!

Julia H. Rhee is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Retrofit Republic, a styling firm and vintage retailer with a social impact. In her role, she supports individuals, changemakers, and brands to look good and do good in the world. Prior to starting a small business, Julia worked as a community organizer for low-income populations and communities of color with over a decades’ worth of youth work from New York City, Oakland, CA, and Tacoma, WA. Currently, the Washington native serves as the Executive Committee Co-Chair for the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum- Bay Area. Her community and creative work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Magazine, 7×7 Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Audrey Magazine, Hyphen Magazine, The Bold Italic, ColorLines Magazine, The Global Grind, AlterNet in addition to on-screen and radio appearances on CBS-5, Huffington Post Live, MyX TV, KPFA Morning Show, APEX Express, and Radio Hankook. Recently, she was recognized as one of the Top 40 Under 40 Emerging Global Leaders Awards by NAAMBA, the National Association of Asian American MBAs. When she’s not dissecting the building blocks of quality Asian noodle soups, she teaches beginner yoga for LGBTQ & youth of color in the Tenderloin of San Francisco. 

Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, Board Chair, is a queer Xicano born in San José, CA and raised in Chihuahua, MX. Having worked with queer communities of color across Texas and nationally, he is currently the Associate Director of Justice Matters, a national racial justice education policy organization. Lorenzo has served in multiple boards of social justice organizations working covering a spectrum of progressive issues. Lorenzo holds a Masters in Liberal Arts and is a Masters of Science candidate in Organizational Leadership & Ethics, both from St. Edward’s University. The author of a Lambda Literary Award Nominated Santo de la Pata Alzada: Poems from the Queer/Xicano/Positive Pen (Evelyn Street Press), he is also the editor of Queer Codex: Chile Love and Queer Codex: ROOTED (allgo/Evelyn Street Press). A Macondo Workshop writer, he appears in Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press), and is a regular contributor to Change.org‘s Race in America cause.

Mark Sanchez joined the LYRIC board in 2011. He is the principal at Cleveland Elementary School in San Francisco’s Excelsior District. Before becoming an administrator, Mark served on the San Francisco Board of Education from 2001-2009. Prior to that, he taught 4th and 5th grade at several San Francisco schools. Mark co-founded Teachers 4 Social Justice in the late 1990′s and is the chairperson for the organization’s advisory board. Outside of being utterly consumed by public education issues, Mark likes to continue to explore San Francisco so that one day he can declare that he is a true soul of the city, in a sense graduating from his Santa Monica roots.

Tracy Zhu, born and raised in San Francisco, studied Environmental Studies (concentration in Urban Environmental Justice) at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. As a youth, she benefited from programs like LYRIC, Summer Search, and Meritus College Fund, all organizations with which she is currently engaged to build community among former participants. Her work experience includes environmental education, program development, and green building maintenance and operations, and aspires to be a community/urban planner. She likes to build community, bike, and hike and enjoys being an educator, critical thinker, and an active member of local community development and politics. She is an Associate at Ditching Dirty Diesel Collaborative.

Thom Lynch.