Our Board of Directors
Nnenna Akotaobi Board Member
Nnenna Akotaobi, EdM., is the principal and founder of 122 Consulting Group LLC, a firm based in Philadelphia, PA whose mission is to foster culturally inclusive organizations and leaders. Nnenna also serves as the Sr. Director of Talent & DEI at Springboard Collaborative, and formerly served as the Executive Director of the Black Women in Sport Foundation. She works as a freelance diversity and leadership consultant, speaker, and facilitator. Prior to transitioning to consulting and nonprofit work, Nnenna served in higher education for more than a dozen years.
A native of Thornton, Colorado, Nnenna is a graduate of the University of Denver, where she was a standout student-athlete on the Pioneers’ Division I basketball team during her four-year playing career. She completed her master’s work with a concentration in diversity and equity in education (DE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign program for Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership.
Alyssa Atan Bowlby Co-Founder And Executive Director
Alyssa has been professionally teaching/tutoring the SAT® exam since 2006 and the ACT since 2008. She also worked as an IEP tutor in the Bronx from 2006-2011, specializing in basic skills acquisition, where she got extensive experience working with students with diverse learning challenges. She has worked in both teaching and curriculum design and is currently active in both dimensions as Executive Director of both Socratic Summer Academy and the Yleana Leadership Academy. She holds an undergraduate degree, which she received magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with Departmental High Honors, from Haverford College. She earned her masters degree in Voice and Opera Performance at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where she was Pi Kappa Lambda.
Carmen Bryant Board Chair
An international speaker and strategic marketing leader, Carmen has 20+ years of marketing experience translating organizational and marketing goals into revenue opportunity by mobilizing and changing the hearts and minds of customers through multidisciplinary and multichannel approaches.
Carmen was born in Mississippi, went to college at Harvard, and has built her life in Brooklyn, NY. She was most recently Head of US Marketing at Indeed and has held roles at other companies such as NBCUniversal, Time Inc., and L’Oreal. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and son.
Daniel Hammond Co-Founder
As well as being a co-founder of Yleana, Dan served as Chief Compliance Officer of Alerian Capital Management, LLC from 2005-2010. He was also a member of GKD Index Partners.
Priya Kambhampati Board Member
Priya grew up in Michigan and earned her undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. Currently, she is the Director of Global Head Mortgages, Securitized Products & Structured Credit Trading Technology at Citi Bank. She is deeply passionate about women empowerment, education, and poverty alleviation.
Kristin Kramer Board Member
Kristin is a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs & Co., where she heads the US Capital Introduction team and is a member of the Global Markets Division Sustainable Solutions Council. She earned a BA in History, magna cum laude, from Columbia University. Kristin is a native New Yorker who is passionate about education, closing the opportunity gap, and sustainable investing.
Katherine Macleod Board Member
Katherine Macleod is a senior vice president of D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P. and a senior member of the D. E. Shaw group’s Risk unit, where she leads the risk analyst team. Prior to joining the firm in 2019, Ms. Macleod spent seven years at Senator Investment Group LP, where she served as a managing director and head of risk management. Before that, she spent ten years at Goldman Sachs & Co., where she last served as a vice president in that firm’s prime brokerage risk management group.
Ms. Macleod received her B.S. in mathematics/economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an M.B.A. from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. She holds the CFA Institute’s Chartered Financial Analyst® designation and the Professional Risk Manager designation conferred by the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association.
Paula McCree Board Member
Paula McCree is Managing Director of the Mass General Hospital Healthcare Transformation Lab where she oversees development of early-stage health-tech innovation projects aimed to improve the experience of providers and patients in the healthcare delivery system. Influenced by her training as a yoga instructor and stress management and resiliency program facilitator, she brings a mindful perspective to her role in organizational development and creates purpose driven work environments where people bring their best selves and creativity flourishes.
Okwudiri Onyedum Board Member
Okwui has a strong interest in non-profits and education, as well as advising historically underrepresented students of color. He designed and implemented “Yleana on Wall Street” - a day inside finance at Mizuho Bank - in 2016 and has been involved with Yleana ever since. Okwui works in finance and oversight in his current role as Managing Director, Debt Capital Markets at Mizuho Securities.
Jessica Patel Board Member
An innovator and strategist, Jessica has extensive experience in driving growth and impact within the organizations she works with. She is passionate about education, closing the opportunity gap, and cancer-related causes.
She is currently Senior Vice President of TripArc, an innovative travel technology company. She has prior professional experience at Expedia Group, Airside, American Express and KPMG. She also sits on the board of National Cancer Center. Jessica holds an Executive MBA from Columbia Business School, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance and International Business from NYU Stern.
Jacob Max Rosen Co-Founder
Max brings over 15 years of summer program counseling, administrative, and tutoring experience to his role. He founded the Socratic Summer Academy in 2010 and co-founded Yleana Leadership Academy in 2013. He graduated valedictorian of Harvard Law School in 2015 and presently works for a law firm in San Francisco.
Ann Taylor, M.D. Treasurer and Board Member
Ann has spent her career in academic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, most recently being Chief Medical Officer for AstraZeneca. Throughout her career, she has seen the inequities in health care based on access and seen the great impact that diversity in health care professionals brings to patient care. She is committed to increasing opportunities for everyone who comes from a disadvantaged background.
Are you interested in joining the Yleana Leadership Foundation Board of Directors? Candidates may apply on a rolling basis by contacting Alyssa Bowlby at alyssa@yleana.org.
We encourage applications from all backgrounds, communities and industries, and are committed to having an active Board of Directors made up of diverse skills, experiences, and interests, provided you are committed to and passionate about our mission of closing the opportunity gap for underserved and underrepresented students. Serious candidates only, please.