Staff
Nancy Olson
As executive director of SCLN, Nancy Olson sets the strategic direction and manages day to day operations organization. She also serves as vice president, Leadership Programs with the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.
Olson formerly served as the executive director of Volunteer Los Angeles, engaging thousands of volunteers who served over a million hours each year. Prior to her work there, Olson was director of volunteer action at California Volunteers with the Governor’s office, leading statewide efforts with business, nonprofit and government partners to expand civic and community engagement. She has also served as private sector campaign director at two United Ways and as account executive for Masterworks Associates. In addition, Olson spent eight years working in Haiti with organizations including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She received her Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from George Fox University, a certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and a Master of Arts in Leadership from Woodbury University. Olson is also a graduate of SCLN’s 2013 Leadership L.A. fellowship.
Erin Tanenbaum
Erin Tanenbaum oversees the design of relevant and creative content, speaker recruitment and implementation of SCLN fellowships. Tanenbaum also leads the development of SCLN Alumni programming and serves as the liaison to the SCLN Alumni Council and Program Committee.
Tanenbaum joins SCLN with more than 15 years experience in providing leaders from the public, private and community sectors with opportunities to best leverage their human and financial resources as stewards of change. Most recently, she served as associate director of business and program development at the Milken Institute where she conceived, planned and implemented initiatives to engage leaders and cultivate support to address issues ranging from aging to global health to food insecurity to enhancing job growth in California. Tanenbaum has also developed awareness campaigns, raised funds, and created strategic partnerships for various organizations, including the California Community Foundation, International Medical Corps, Southern California Grantmakers and the Venice Family Clinic. She earned a BA in political science from the University of California, San Diego and has completed coursework at the Masters level in holistic nutrition and human development. Tanenbaum began her career running summer respite programs in Croatia for children who survived the Bosnian war. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband Todd, whom she shares a passion for politics, policy and civic engagement, and their boxer Orchid.
Blanca Zarate
Blanca Zarate manages SCLN’s fund development strategy in partnership with the executive director, leads the recruitment and selection activities for all SCLN fellowships exceeding recruitment goals for the past two years.
Prior to joining SCLN Zarate worked with Jumpstart, an educational organization focused on pre-K literacy and kindergarten preparedness. At Jumpstart, she coordinated recruitment and retention of students and AmeriCorps members. Zarate also provided administrative support to help increase family involvement and promoted skill building through classroom assistance. While attending University of California, Irvine, Zarate worked for the admissions office of the Executive and Health Care Executive MBA Programs at the Paul Merage School of Business where she assisted in the admissions process of potential and incoming students.
Zarate has served for more than five years as a recruitment specialist and has plenty experience in the nonprofit sector. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in business administration with a specialization in general management and a minor in international studies. Zarate also holds a certificate in fund development from California State University, Dominguez Hills. Zarate is passionate about giving back to the community and enjoys traveling.
Samuel Marquez
Samuel Marquez coordinates seminar logistics, as well as assists with the curation and development of SCLN’s fellowship and alumni programming.
Marquez obtained a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a concentration in General Management, from the University of California, Riverside (UCR). While a student at UCR, he worked as a student program assistant in UCR’s Office of Student Life, as well as participated in the University of California’s Washington D.C. Academic Internship Program (UCDC), where he served as a business development intern, and later as an administrative assistant for the Office of the National Director at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency. His passion for history and public policy drive him to be a student of continuous learning, and he hopes to leverage these passions to better serve his community and become more civically engaged.
Kathleen Ramseyer
Kathleen Ramseyer, a former SCLN intern, now coordinates SCLN’s external communications, provides administrative support to the organization, as well as acts as a liaison between the SCLN board of directors and staff.
Prior to SCLN, Ramseyer worked in the nonprofit sector and interned with FAST (Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic), a group dedicated to easing gridlock in the greater Los Angeles region. Ramseyer is an alum of California State University, Los Angeles, where she graduated with honors and obtained her bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis in social change and rhetoric. Ramseyer is sculpting a career path to better learn how to serve her community while continuing to develop her strong interests in social change and lifelong learning. In her spare time she partakes in a wide array of activities ranging from recreational sports leagues, knitting and crochet, dining at new restaurants and exploring everything L.A. has to offer.
Asia Jackson
As administrative assistant, Asia Jackson, provides support for Southern California Leadership Network by assisting with recruitment and admissions, fellowships and alumni events, supporting seminars and event logistics, maintaining program-related spreadsheets and additional office support as needed.
Jackson has extensive customer service experience working in the retail environment at Whole Foods Market, providing holistic health advice and selling natural products. Previously, she was a student assistant at California State University, Los Angeles to help contact Alumni and parents to raise support for the Cal State LA Annual Fund. Jackson also provided administrative support for UC Berkeley Upward Bound, helping to provide a smooth flow summer program for students and parents. Jackson is an alumni of California State University, Los Angeles, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communication.
Jackson always had an interest in working in office environments and with other professional peers that are willing to work hard to make the community a better place. SCLN attracted Jackson because her aspirations to learn more about helping diverse companies grow professionally aligned with her ability to provide assistance and creativity. In her free time, Ms. Jackson likes to travel to her family in Northern California, take her dog Tiffany to the dog beach and spend time at food festivals because she has an appetite of delicious food.
Senior Consultants
Kevin Groves, PhD
Kevin S. Groves is an assistant professor of management at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, and the founder and managing principal of Talent Management Solutions, a consultancy that helps organizations develop talent through leadership assessment, development, and succession planning systems. Groves’s ongoing consulting work helps organizations design customized solutions for enhancing leadership bench strength, creating viable succession plans, reducing high potential turnover, and maximizing employee engagement. Prior clients include Kaiser Permanente, FritoLay, Inc., Mayo Clinic, PepsiCo, Midland College, and Witt/Kieffer, Inc, among others.
Groves teaches a range courses at the Graziadio School, including leadership competency development, organizational behavior, organization design, and organization development and change. His prior experiences in academia include a stint as Director of the PepsiCo Leadership Center at California State University, Los Angeles, where he managed a $1.45 million PepsiCo Foundation grant for the purposes of developing the leadership competencies of students, community members, and local business leaders.
An active leadership scholar, Groves currently holds the Julian Virtue Professorship at the Graziadio School, which supports his research on leader values and exemplary leadership practices. He is widely published in the business management journals, including Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Academy of Management Learning & Education, Human Resource Development Quarterly, and Journal of Management Development. Groves is currently working on a book that summarizes his research on talent management best practices in the healthcare industry.
Groves received a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Claremont Graduate University. He and his wife reside in Hermosa Beach.
Jeremy Hunter, PhD
Jeremy created The Practice of Self Management, a series of challenging and transformative executive education practices and programs dedicated to managing oneself. He teaches in the Executive Management and MBA programs at the Peter F. Drucker School of Management, where he has been affiliated since 1999.
Hunter’s courses are among the first to introduce mindfulness practice, a rigorous form of mental discipline, attention training and emotional management, in a management context. They incorporate state of the art findings in neuroscience, psychology, medicine and the arts. Hunter’s work is informed by his life experience of living with a supposedly terminal illness for 17 years. When told he needed life saving surgery, more than a dozen of his former students came forward as organ donors. He received a new kidney from one of them in December of 2008.
He is also a founding partner of CoreWorks Consulting, with Drucker alumnus Scott Scherer. Coreworks coaches and consults with professionals and organizations to develop their managerial capacities. They help their clients perform more effectively, have greater clarity and resolve in decision making, as well as manage reactive emotions and improve the quality of their professional relationships.
His clients have included Toyota Motor Sales, Northrup Grumman, the Los Angeles Police Department, John Laing Homes, Starbucks, The Museum of Contemporary Art, First AME Church of South Central Los Angeles, Red Mountain Retail Group, Kaiser Permanente, Southern California Housing Development Corporation, The University of Southern California and the California Well Being Institute. He has lectured at Brown University, the University of North Texas, the University of California at San Francisco, University of Southern California, and Wittenberg University. He is also an Executive Coach with Corporate Coaching International.
Hunter received his Ph.D. from University of Chicago, an M.P.P. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Wittenberg University. He consults internationally, speaks Japanese, and loves to eat. He lives in Los Angeles.
