CBO’s Talk Recovery: Partnering to Support Students, Teachers, and Families

Michele Broadnax joined LAEP as chief executive officer in January 2019, bringing with her over 25 years of experience in successfully designing and implementing fundraising, public relations, and program development initiatives for nonprofit, for-profit, and public institutions.
Prior to joining LAEP, Michele worked as a consultant for the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), San Bernardino City Unified School District, and the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, as well as several local nonprofit organizations. Throughout her tenure with other organizations – most notably Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles, Child 360 (formerly LAUP), and Fontana Unified School District – Michele has built and refined a robust fundraising and advancement skill-set that includes business development, public relations, program development, and strategic planning practices.
Michele earned her B.S. degree in management from Azusa Pacific University and her MBA from Claremont Graduate University, with emphases in management, strategy, and leadership.

Randy Barth founded Think Together in 1997 after a gang shooting in Costa Mesa, CA to help meet the needs of a specific neighborhood. He invested personal funds and bootstrapped the organization as volunteer Board Chair while tending to his day job as a stockbroker and later as a corporate CEO. After a successful 20-year business career, Randy began to apply his entrepreneurial skills to education as CEO of Think Together in 2004.
Since then has scaled the organization to $85 million in revenue and 3,000 employees serving more than 200,000 students in over 600 programs across CA. He diversified the organization into a variety of direct service programs for students and professional services for teachers and administrators around a specific school turnaround model that is data-driven and people-centric, which produces transformational results for schools (think Moneyball for education). In a little more than two decades, Randy built one of the largest education social enterprises in CA, with a current year growth rate of more than 40%.
Randy, along with former LA Times report Jennifer Delson, is the co-author of the book, Think Together, How YOU Can Play a Role in Improving Education in America. He serves on various boards and as a Senior Fellow at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Randy graduated from UCLA in 1981 with a BA in Economics and studied under Peter Drucker at Claremont Graduate University. Randy lives in Santa Ana, CA with his wife Mary and has two adult daughters, Katie and Emily.

Originally working at HOLA from 1993 to 1995, Tony became a teacher, Athletics Director and had a career in the sports business before returning and becoming the Executive Director in 2006. Since then, Tony has led the sustainable growth of the organization’s operating budget from $2.3 million to more than $7 million annually, reaching 74% more underserved young people with high quality programs and wraparound supports. Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards to include the 2012 LA Business Journal Leadership Award, Bank of America's Local Hero award and he was named to Town & Country's Top 50 Philanthropists list in 2015. In 2017, he was awarded statewide by the James Irvine Foundation for Leadership Innovation.

Tony holds a BA from Loyola Marymount University, an MS from the University of Tennessee, and was a Stanford University Fellow in the Business School's Social Innovation Program for Non-Profit Leaders. Since then, he served on an Advisory Board for Scripps College and was also President of the Dean’s Board of Advisors at the University of Tennessee. For his exemplary service, Tony has been named as a Distinguished Alumni by both Loyola Marymount University and the University of Tennessee. Tony served on the Leadership Council for L.A.'s Promise Zone and is an appointed Commissioner of the California Senate Rules Committee as one of twelve Commissioners working at the state level to provide information and advice to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Secretary for Education, and the State Board of Education regarding state and federal policy and funding issues affecting before and after school programs. Tony is dedicated to promoting legislative and administrative policies, both state and federal, that enhance the quality and accessibility of after-school programs in California as a CA3 Advocacy Steering Committee member and he is also the Advisory Board Chair for LA's very first after school Intermediary, Expand LA.

Stu Semigran has more than 30 years’ experience as an educator, developing and facilitating training programs for youth and adults in educational settings worldwide. He has trained thousands of young people, professionals, educators and parents in leadership development, dropout prevention, conflict resolution, violence prevention, team-building, self-esteem, and service-learning programs.
Under Stu’s leadership, EduCare has grown to serve more than 30,000 students each year. From 1995-2000, he was instrumental in implementing school reform at over 70 schools and children’s centers through the Annenberg Project’s LEARN Reform of the Los Angeles Unified School District. He currently serves on the steering committee for Los Angeles Unified School District/Beyond The Bell Branch’s Take Action Campaign.
In 2012, Stu was a Humanitarian Award recipient, given by the David Chow Humanitarian Award Foundation in recognition of his service to youth. He is also the author of Making the Best of Me: A Handbook for Student Excellence and Self-Esteem.
Mr. Semigran holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, a California Lifetime Teaching Credential, and a Master’s Degrees in both Theology and Psychology.