The CCSF Board of Trustees is composed of seven members elected by the voters of the Community College District and a student representative. The Board of Trustees assumes full responsibility for the general control and direction of the San Francisco Community College District.
Shanell Williams is the Director of Community Engagement for the California Preterm Birth Initiative at UCSF and a member of the Board of Trustees at City College of San Francisco. Over the past 20 years, Shanell has served thousands of San Franciscans as an informed, passionate and dedicated public advocate, nonprofit leader and community organizer. From mentoring youth trapped in cycles of incarceration—to saving city college from a near loss of accreditation and closure for the past eight years— Shanell has worked tirelessly to improve all San Franciscan’s quality of life. She has worked for numerous nonprofit agencies and labor organizations dedicated to serving marginalized, low-income communities such as: the Center for Young Women’s Development, Youth Leadership Institute, UNITE HERE Local 2, Jobs with Justice SF, and Urban Services YMCA to name a few.
Shanell is a 2005 Jefferson Award recipient and was honored for her work in co-founding Youth Treatment and Education Court Leadership Fellows, as she helped develop a curriculum to train court administrators, judges, probation officers and thousands of service providers nationwide in culturally competent treatment for youth in the system. She also received the 2013 San Francisco Bay Guardian Local Hero Award for her CCSF advocacy, as well as the Harvey Milk Democratic Club’s “City College Champion” Award in 2014. Shanell is a graduate of Women’s Policy Institute, the Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment, an Emerge California 2016 alumna, and has served on the San Francisco Youth Commission, the Juvenile Justice Commission and other community boards.
Tom Temprano was elected to the Board of Trustees in November 2016. As Trustee, his top priorities are to create a common-sense budget that prioritizes getting resources into our classrooms, to get San Francisco students into City College by rebuilding the relationship with the San Francisco Unified School District and to ensure that City College has the classes and programs that students want and need to be successful.
He is a proud small business owner and long-time community activist. Born in Ventura, California, he is the son of a public school teacher and public health nurse. He attended public schools in California from grade school through college, moving to San Francisco in 2004 to attend San Francisco State University.
Tom served as President of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club in 2013 and 2014. As President, he ensured that the club was the first LGBT organization to join the Save City College Coalition and met with numerous elected officials to demand that they act swiftly to preserve City College’s accreditation. Among the club’s victories under his leadership was the successful outcome of the 2013 BART strike, in which the club played a strong community role, the preservation of many of LGBTQ nightlife venues and electoral successes for progressive candidates and causes including the passage of the 2014 City College Parcel Tax.
He and a business partner opened Virgil's Sea Room, a neighborhood bar in San Francisco's Mission District in June of 2013, and it has quickly become an anchor small business for a growing and diverse neighborhood. Tom is an outspoken advocate for San Francisco’s small businesses as the small business community representative and past co-chair of the SOMA Community Stabilization Fund Community Advisory Committee. He is a founding board member of San Francisco’s Mission-Bernal Merchants Association.
Tom is excited about the opportunity to serve the students, faculty, and staff of City College and welcomes comments and feedback at ttemprano@ccsf.edu.
Aliya Chisti was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2020. She is the first-Muslim woman to hold an elected position in the history of San Francisco. She was born and raised in San Francisco and is a graduate of San Francisco’s public schools.
Aliya is an educator, advocate, and policy analyst. Her deep commitment to education stems from her experiences overcoming barriers to pursue her academic dreams. She is a former educator and has over a decade of experience working in schools or on policies that impact schools. She also has experience in advancing policies to improve educational equity at the local and federal levels.
She earned an M.A. in Education Policy from Columbia University, where her thesis emphasized the need for higher education reform to reduce the student debt burden on college students. In 2016, Aliya was nominated by the U.S. Department of State as a Fulbright Scholar to teach English and study higher education policy in North Macedonia. She holds a B.S. in Nutrition Science from the University of California of Davis.
Aliya is excited to serve the City College community and welcomes comments and feedback at achisti@ccsf.edu.
Brigitte Davila has served on the City College Board of Trustees since 2015. Dr. Davila lives in, works in, and loves San Francisco. She is originally from Los Angeles with roots in Colorado and New Mexico. She came north to study at UC Berkeley and earned a B.A. in Rhetoric and J.D at Berkeley Law. Dr. Davila has taught in the Raza Studies Department at San Francisco State University for the last eighteen years. Among her classes are Government & Constitutional Ideals, Community Organizing, Critical Thinking, and Community Law. Currently, her area of focus is political education and policy, with an emphasis on community activism.
Dr. Davila serves as a member of the California Faculty Association’s statewide Political Action and Legislation Committee.
John Rizzo was elected Board Vice President in 2010. He was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2006. He chairs the Board’s Facilities, Infrastructure and Technology Committee, and is a member of the Planning and Budgeting Committee.
Trustee Rizzo has been active with City College promoting clean energy and environmental initiatives. He co-authored a resolution passed by the Board that commits City College to create a sustainability plan and to study green jobs training programs. Until recently, he served as the chair of the Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter, made up of 40,000 members in four counties. His work with the Sierra Club includes fighting global warming, conserving water resources, and working for better public transportation. He has helped to pass ballot measures that fund solar energy and that require Muni to buy cleaner city buses. Before he was elected, Rizzo served on City College’s Bond Oversight Committee, working for fiscal responsibility and accountability in the spending of public bond funds.
Rizzo also serves the city as a Commissioner on the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority. He has worked for improvements to public safety, the lowering of speed limits in the park, and the creation of crosswalks and bicycle lanes. John Rizzo is an author, writer, and content publisher, writing about computer technology and enterprise systems. He has written a number of books about computers, has taught adult education and has written educational materials. John also appears at industry conferences to speak about technology issues. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Rutgers University.
Trustee Rizzo welcomes feedback, comments, and suggestions by email at jrizzo@ccsf.edu.
Thea Selby was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2014. Trustee Selby served as Board Vice President in both 2015 and 2016, and Board President in 2017. Trustee Selby is eager to work with the board to continue City College’s accreditation, to increase enrollment, and to move City College forward towards a sustainable, equitable, and accessible educational institution.
When Thea and her family moved to the Lower Haight 1999, she became concerned with safety issues with her neighborhood and co-founded the Lower Haight Merchant + Neighbor Association to fight for a safe and inclusive neighborhood. To activate the neighborhood and to help the merchants, she developed quarterly ArtWalks, spearheaded a block-long mural with over 30 muralists, and helped raise $50,000 to create a 10’ bronze Silly Pink Bunny in the 440-unit development 55 Laguna.
To learn more about how government and large capital infrastructure projects worked, she applied and was appointed to a position on Citizen’s General Obligation Bond Oversight Committee and served as its Chair. During her tenure, she increased the number of times the committee met to oversee $7B of city bonds and established subcommittees by bond for better oversight.
As a mom with kids and no car, she depends upon Muni to get around. She was one of the first members of the San Francisco Transit Riders Union (www.sftransitriders.org) and is the current interim Chair. She fought for Free Muni for Youth and recently worked with a coalition of groups to pass a $500M transportation bond, and a measure that requires Muni funding to grow with the population. Building on her experience with large capital projects and transportation, she applied and was appointed in 2014 to the state-wide California High-Speed Rail Authority, the governing body for the $68B infrastructure project that will bring High-Speed Rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
In the midst of this, she continues to fight for women. She is a former board member of the SF Women’s Political Committee (SFWPC) and co-wrote legislation with then-Supervisor David Chiu that would make the Mayoral appointment process more open and transparent to encourage a more diverse range of applicants for appointments to commissions and committees. She is co-founder of Exceptional Women in Publishing (www.ewip.org), and started the annual EWIP Women’s Leadership Conference for women in media 7 years ago in San Francisco. She is a proud 2010 graduate of Emerge, a program that teaches Democratic women to run for political office.
Trustee Selby is the Principal of Next Steps Marketing, a call-to-action digital marketing company that builds and engages audiences. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a degree in Soviet Studies and received her MBA from the University of Oregon in International Business and Marketing. She is married and has two children soon to go to college.
Alan Wong was born in San Francisco, California. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San Diego and a master’s degree from the University of San Francisco. Wong’s career experience includes working as Education Policy Advisor for San Francisco Supervisor Gordon Mar and as a union organizer for homecare and healthcare workers.
Wong’s community service experience includes serving as a delegate for the San Francisco Labor Council. He has also served on leadership panels for the following organizations:
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, San Francisco Chapter;
American Red Cross, Bay Area Chapter; and
Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs, San Francisco Chapter.
