Maria Salguero – President
Maria Salguero is a first-generation, Mexican-American attorney originally from the Salinas Valley in California. She has dedicated her life to serving immigrant communities and breaking barriers to access to justice for all. Maria formally served as executive board member to Volunteer Attorney Services, a non-profit organization in Central Washington State that coordinates county-wide pro bono attorney efforts. Maria currently serves as Staff Attorney for the Santa Barbara County Immigrant Legal Defense Center as a removal defense litigator, representing indigent immigrants in federal court. In her leisure time, Maria enjoys mentoring at-risk youth and practicing calligraphy.
Mary Stern- Vice President
Mary Stern is a retired human resource executive who worked for most of her career at Baxter Healthcare. She is a principal at Monument Consulting and Publishing Company. She is the author of a series of children’s illustrated books in the Cowboy Dog Series; a book on job search – 6 Steps to Land the Job and the new series: The Marble Girl Mysteries – Marble Girl and Cuppa JO. She is the president of the board of directors at Transition House and on the family selection committee for Habitat for Humanity. She and her husband have a lemon orchard in Santa Barbara, California.
Bahati Nepa – Treasurer
Bahati Nepa is an MBA and Doctorate Candidate in Health Care Administration. She has over 24 years of experience in Finance and Business Administration and believes that homelessness should not be the norm in our country.
Paul Markovitz M.D., Ph.D. – Secretary
Dr. Markovitz simultaneously received his M.D. and Ph.D from Case Western Reserve University as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in human genetics at the Veterans Administration in Cleveland, followed by an internship in psychiatry at University Hospitals of Cleveland. Dr. Markovitz was then awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship for study at Oxford University in neuropsycho-pharmacology. He returned to the United States in 1987 and completed his residency in psychiatry at The Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals of Cleveland. He served as a professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University through 2000. He ran the Mood & Anxiety Research Center in Santa Barbara, which conducts Phase I, II and III psychiatric and pain clinical trials through May 2021. Dr. Markovitz has published extensively in the areas of depression, anxiety, somatization, and personality disorders.
Ian Silverberg – Board Member
- Advisor, Investor, Business Owner, Real Estate
- Other board affiliations – Served on the Board for Cal Coastal Small Business Development Center.
Mr. Silverberg has over 25 years of experience in both commercial and residential real estate investment/syndication and has managed successful real estate ventures in Monterey, California, Santa Barbara, California Park City, Utah, Merced, California, Crested Butte, Colorado, Austin, Texas, Costa Rica and New Zealand. Mr. Silverberg additionally has over 25 years of business ownership, management and consulting experience in various capacities, including overseeing the acquisition, development, management, and successful sale of a 30,000 square foot premier athletic club in Santa Barbara, California; founding Affinity Medical Fitness, Inc., a medically integrated wellness/physical therapy clinic; founding Silverberg Management, Inc., a strategic consulting and management company, and recently stepped down from a 5 year term as CEO of Foundation Training. Mr. Silverberg has been actively involved in the non-profit sector for over 10 years, having sat on the Board of Cal Coastal, The C3H Coordination Committee, and as a member of Social Venture Partners in Santa Barbara. He has been awarded two patents, and is an active investor, business mentor and philanthropist, a private pilot, an avid health/wellness enthusiast, and resides in Santa Barbara, CA with his wife Courtney and two children Lauryn (9) and Ashton (5). He and his family spend time in both Costa Rica and New Zealand where they have ongoing community building projects.
Ian has been involved since the inception of the program and will continue to provide guidance on strategic, operational and growth-related issues.
Jennifer Weisman – Board Member
Jennifer was born and raised in Santa Barbara. She graduated from Hawaii Pacific University in 2007 with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting and Finance, She also holds a Master of Arts in Applied Economics from San Diego State University. Jennifer started her career in Audit at KPMG. She holds a CPA license in Pennsylvania since 2011 and a California Real Estate Salesperson license since 2016. Jennifer is currently Affiliated with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California and serves on the Board of Directors for the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum.
Krystal Freedom – Board Member
Krystal was born and raised in Santa Barbara, however, had an alternative lifestyle. For her first 18 years, she lived in an RV with her parents. They chose to live in an RV because Santa Barbara’s rents were already out of their reach in the 1980s, a situation that has only worsened since. Both her parents are well-known Santa Barbara homeless activists and saw the benefits of living a more simple life. With their extra time, they were able to dedicate their lives to volunteering and supporting the homeless issues in the Santa Barbara community without fear of losing their housing. As a child, Krystal had aspirations of being an actress and singer, but most of all, she just wanted to live a normal life in a home of her own. At 25, she purchased her first home in Goleta, which was only possible due to the huge crash of 2008. Owning a home was a huge deal for her and it gave her that sense of stability she had always been missing. She was the first in her family to graduate college and then she pursued a Masters in Business Administration. Her corporate experience includes 10+ years of Government Contracting and 5 years in executive support and Business Operations at a dental equipment company. In 2020, she lost her job due to COVID and she decided to take the opportunity to expand her small side business into a full time property management business. She now offers investment consulting, real estate sales and does property management for between 40-50 units year round. She is now starting her own personal journey to giving back and is the President of the Committee for Social Justice, which helps houseless people fight the criminalization of homelessness. Being on the Board for Partners in Housing is something she is now looking forward to, in order to use her unique experience to help the organization understand the motivations of both the houseless and property managers/owners that would be working together to find alternative housing solutions in Santa Barbara county.