About Us

After ten years of actively working with underserved youth, a passionate group of us decided to elevate our impact by starting the Bay Area Bright Futures Foundation. This not only broadens our reach, but also provides more permanent funding for underserved youth in San Francisco, Oakland, and the Bay Area. Our Foundation provides grants and services to nonprofit partners that provide key services in line with our core values.

Meet the Team

  • William Wang

    President

  • Taylor Choi

    Secretary

  • Patrick Hanlon

    Treasurer

  • Derek Smith

    Board Member

  • Brandon Child

    Board Member

  • Jake Mizrahi

    Board Member

Board of Directors

William Wang

William Wang serves as Board Member and President of the Bay Area Bright Futures Foundation. William has extensive community experience including as a member of the Milken Institute’s Young Leaders Circle, and most recently as the Board Secretary of Rainier Valley Leadership Academy. Prior to that he held leadership roles as an Ambassador at Green Dot Public Schools and as a Community Board Member and Speaker for the Youth Business Alliance.

Professionally, William is a Principal at Golden Gate Capital where he leads the firm’s investments within corporate bonds and loans. William was previously at Angel Island Capital as Director of Research. Prior to that, William was a credit analyst at Oaktree Capital Management where he led the formation and growth of the standalone Senior Loans group. Earlier in his career, he worked at The D.E. Shaw Group, and at Rothschild Inc. William received an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia where he graduated with Distinction.

William is married with one son and one Australian Shepherd and lives in Belmont, CA.

Taylor Choi

Taylor Choi is a Board Member and Secretary of the Bay Area Bright Futures Foundation. She brings over 20 years of diverse sales and marketing experience across retail, experiential, entertainment, lifestyle, and tech sectors.

Taylor’s career began in New York City at NBCUniversal (working on “NBC Olympics” and “Saturday Night Live”) and Bain & Company, where she founded her own consultancy firm. Later, she moved to Los Angeles and joined entertainment brand marketing agency PMK*BNC, where she helped launch the Samsung GALAXY smartphone brand in the US. In 2017, Taylor joined Google and led the introduction of the Google Pixel smartphone in US carriers. She is currently the Pixel Category Business Manager for North America and serves on Google’s Global Social Impact Board for Devices & Services.

Taylor’s non-profit work includes serving as Communications Director for GiveLove.org, founded by actress Patricia Arquette and Rosetta Getty, which promotes ecological sanitation and composting solutions in water-scarce regions.

Having lived in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, Taylor now resides in San Francisco with her partner Jeff, continuing her impactful work with the foundation.

Pat Hanlon

Pat Hanlon is a Vice President at the global real estate firm Lendlease where he oversees new ground-up commercial office and residential projects for the company. Prior to this, he worked as both a development manager and asset manager for Shorenstein Properties in San Francisco and New York.

In addition to his role at BABFF, Pat is currently serving as a Board Member and Vice Chair of the Civic Center Community Benefit District in San Francisco, which improves and promotes the Civic Center through a host of planning, policy, and public programming initiatives. He has previously been engaged in numerous youth advocacy and/or public policy organizations including Building Tomorrow, Right to Play, iMentor, the Garment District Alliance, and Urban Land Institute.

Pat grew up in Virginia but has made San Francisco his home, where he lives with his wife Alexandra and their dog, Sunny Delight. He enjoys travel, golf, wine, live music, and packing in as many Giants and Warriors games as his wife will allow.

Pat holds a B.S. from the University of Virginia and an M.S. from Columbia University.

Derek Smith

Derek Smith is the founder and managing member of Marinship Development Interest, a California African American Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) leading heavy building and construction innovation for civil and energy infrastructure projects. MBE certification benefits minority-owned entities in California by enabling access to many business opportunities and connections, such as prospective buyers, government agencies, and procurement professionals.

Derek has expertise in accessing programs that provide professional connections and resources that help create strong bonds that strengthen small businesses.

Brandon Child

Brandon joined Costella Kirsch in 2018 with a background in entrepreneurship, sales, and finance. Prior to CK, Brandon worked as an Account Executive at two venture-backed cloud software companies: Adaptive Insights (acquired by Workday in 2018) and Hightail (acquired by Opentext in 2018). Earlier in his career, Brandon spent five years at Apple, working on financial services products and global expansion amid the roll out and growth of the iPhone, the App Store, and the iPad.

Brandon is an entrepreneur, and co-founded Sir Kensington’s, a CPG company focused on gourmet condiments. Sir Kensington’s grew to become a leading national brand in the all-natural space and was acquired by Unilever in 2017.

Brandon received a BS in business administration from the University of Southern California where he was a member of the water polo team and an NCAA champion. He has an MBA with honors from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and received recognition as a Venture Fellow.

Brandon is a member of the alumni board of Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton and chaired the advancement committee from 2013-2016. He is also an advisor to Youtopia Snacks.

Jake Mizrahi

Jake Mizrahi is a Managing Director and Co-Founder of Oval Partners. He has worked in the Private Equity Industry for over 20 years and has extensive experience across transaction types, including buyouts, build-ups, corporate carve-outs, take privates, equity investments and debt financings. He focuses on making investments in information services, software, tech enabled services, and business and financial services. Jake has had a significant amount of success investing in and partnering with entrepreneurs to help them scale their companies by making acquisitions, generating organic growth, and developing strategic partnerships. His approach is to work with management teams to help them develop long term strategies to dramatically grow and transform their businesses. Prior to founding Oval Partners in 2015, Jake was a Managing Director at Golden Gate Capital, which he joined in 2003. Previously Jake was a founding executive of iPhrase Technologies, which was acquired by IBM. Early in his career, he was also an investment professional at Bain Capital and a management consultant at Bain & Company.

He holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a B.S. in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Phi Beta Kappa).

Jake is married with three children and lives in Menlo Park, CA.