Board of Trustees

Angel Morales | Chair of the Board

Mr. Morales is Founder and CEO of Morales Capital, a single family office that invests across asset classes, with a particular focus on private equity opportunities in financial and other business services. He has over 20 years of private equity experience and was formerly the co-head of BAML Capital Partners, the internal private equity group of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Mr. Morales previously served as Managing Partner of North Cove Partners, a firm he co-founded to manage and monetize Bank of America’s $6 billion private equity portfolio. Mr. Morales grew up in the South Bronx and has a strong commitment to education, also serving on the Board of Directors of the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund and Go To College NYC. He previously served as a Trustee of The Posse Foundation, the Oliver Scholars Program, and the Bronx Preparatory Charter School. He earned his B.A. and M.B.A. from Harvard University.

Marielys Divanne | Vice-Chair

Starting on March 4th, 2019, Marielys will rejoin United Way of New York City as Vice President, Education. Previously, Marielys was the Senior Director of ReadNYC, United Way of New York City’s Campaign for Grade Level Reading which launched in in 2013 in Mott Haven District 7 in the South Bronx and has driven literacy gains in five partner public elementary schools. During the past two years, Marielys held the role of National Director of Organizing with Students For Education Reform (SFER), during which time she led the team of organizers to launch and win issue campaigns on education equity throughout six US cities. Prior to her work with SFER and UWNYC, she organized with Metro NY IAF for thirteen years, as Lead Organizer with Manhattan Together (MT) and South Bronx Churches (SBC). While with SBC, she successfully led the campaign to build the Mott Haven Schools Campus in the South Bronx, the largest school construction project in the city’s history, which created 2,200 seats for public schools students. Marielys is a First Generation College graduate, with an undergraduate degree from Boston College and earned an MFA from Columbia University.

Kristin Kearns-Jordan | Secretary

Ms. Kearns-Jordan is the CEO of Urban Assembly. She was previously the executive director of the Tortora Sillcox Foundation, which supports both district and charter school models. From 2000 to 2007, she was the founder and director of the Bronx Preparatory Charter School, a SUNY authorized classical, college preparatory middle and high school in the South Bronx. She also serves on the board of the Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM).

Pravin Sathe | Treasurer

Mr. Sathe is a Staff Product Designer at Google leading a cross-functional team of designers working on Search and Assistant features. He holds a Master's degree from ITP at NYU. He received his B.A. from the College of Arts and Sciences at NYU in Politics and Economics. A former NYC Teaching Fellow, he taught Mathematics at Washington Irving High School. He has published research on Microbeam Radiation Therapy (Dr. Avraham Dilmanian, BNL), written about intellectual property, and worked with numerous artists including Tony Oursler, Gary Simmons, Liliana Porter, Rosa Barba, and more. He lives in Brooklyn, with his wife and 2 sons, Ronan and Sachin.

Lindsey Dixon

Ms. Dixon oversees and supports operational excellence at UA’s CTE schools while working to promote the importance of CTE across our network and to local, state, and national audiences. Lindsey is an experienced educator and nonprofit leader. She served as an English teacher and department head for several years in a public CTE high school in the Bronx. Prior to joining The Urban Assembly, Lindsey served as Regional Director at Globaloria, working to bring computer science to K-12 schools across the country, and as Senior Director of Academics & Innovative Learning for Year Up, a national workforce development nonprofit that prepares young adults for college and careers in a variety of technology and business fields.

Ivonne Fleitas-Frank

Ms. Fleitas practiced law domestically and abroad for over fifteen years before focusing on family and charitable endeavors.  The first in her family to attend college, Ms. Fleitas graduated summa cum laude from Florida International University. She then went on to receive her law degree from Georgetown University and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University¹s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Ms. Fleitas began her career as an attorney with the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. After her work at the ICC, she clerked for a federal judge. Ms. Fleitas also worked with the DOJ at the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), where she helped coordinate congressional grants in support of state and local law enforcement.  Ms. Fleitas has worked as a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney¹s Office for the Southern District of Florida and, most recently, served as Assistant Chief Counsel for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in New York City.  At DHS, she provided advice across a wide range of sensitive issues involving national security, immigration and customs.

Kwadwo Nyarko

Mr. Nyarko is a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft responsible for championing and advancing Microsoft’s efforts to develop an ecosystem for startups in NYC. He developed a passion for technology early on, after immigrating from Ghana to the South Bronx at the age of five. His passion led him to MIT, where he received a bachelors of science in computer science and electrical engineering. In his current role as an evangelist, Mr. Nyarko engages the NYC startup and development communities in an effort to help them better understand, utilize, and leverage Microsoft’s vast array of resources, services, and connections. Before Microsoft, he worked as a software engineer at Oracle, and at Shoobx, a Boston based startup. Mr. Nyarko also co-founded and led his own Y-Combinator backed startup as CTO. He is an alum of one of NYC’s early charter schools, Bronx Prep, and has a deep commitment to supporting young people in the Bronx.

Marianna B. Ofosu

Ms. Ofosu is a corporate attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. She focuses on mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and securities law matters and has co-authored the firm’s Nominating & Corporate Governance Committee Guide. Marianna currently serves on the boards of the Yale Law and Business Alumni Association, on the advisory board of the Rhodes Trust and the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee in the United States.  Previously, she served as a trustee of the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation. Marianna received a B.A. summa cum laude from Howard University, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.  She went on to receive a M. Phil from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar.  She completed her J.D. at Yale Law School, where she was a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Marianna was a social entrepreneur in West African countries focused on economic reform and investment issues.

Howard Tsao.

Mr. Tsao is CEO of Muse Games, a New York-based studio and online destination for in-browser, multi-platform 3D Games.  He was previously CEO of Social Sauce, a travel community site focused on documentation and information sharing. He earned his B.A. from University of California Berkeley and his M.B.A. from NYU Stern School of Business.

Cesar Perez

Cesar Perez has served as General Counsel to Premier Home Health Care Services, Inc. since 2009.  Mr. Perez began his legal career at a law firm where he represented domestic and international corporations on all employment, labor law and employee benefits issues. Prior to joining Premier, Mr. Perez held legal and operational roles at a private university.

Mr. Perez received his A.B. from Columbia College, Columbia University and his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. He is admitted to practice in New York and the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

Bethany Crystal

Bethany Crystal is the Network General Manager at Union Square Ventures. In this role, she collaborates with 75 startups in USV’s global portfolio to empower every employee to build a better business by facilitating access to information, resources, and people through cross-company collaboration. Previously, Bethany worked at Stack Overflow, the world’s largest website for software developers, where she advised hiring managers and HR leaders how to attract, recruit, and retain technical talent to their organizations.

Today, Bethany is actively involved outside of work in initiatives that help broaden educational access. In 2015, she co-founded Beyond Coding to help expand the options for new entrants in the tech workforce with opportunities for learning, networking, and earning. Bethany has a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Northwestern Alumni Association.