Steve retired as a partner at Arnold & Porter, an international law firm, after 32 years of law practice. He represented non-profits, private and public companies, and investors in a wide variety of areas, including corporate governance, public/private partnerships and licensing. Steve was nationally recognized for many years as a leading expert in his field.

Steve’s work often involved public policy issues, which led him to retire early to pursue public private partnership work in youth mentoring and career development.

He has been involved in youth mentoring since he was a teenager running a summer youth sailing program, and has been active for decades in youth ministry. Steve is a mentor and volunteers for organizations such as icouldbe, Undaunted Futures and Harraseeket.

Steve has a BA from Dartmouth College and a JD from Cornell Law School.

Leslie is Harraseeket’s Project Director and is responsible for managing and executing curriculum design and career guidance for our workshops and career programs.

The co-founder of Career Exploration Company, Leslie is a Certified Professional Coach (CPC) specializing in coaching teens and young adults in discovering their passion and learning practical skills for navigating their way to fulfilling work.

Leslie has an MBA from American University and a BS in Communications from Boston University and began her career working on management consulting contracts for the Federal Government.

Peter was for many years an Instructor in Religion at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH. One of the courses Peter taught was a course called “Imagining Your Future,” which inspired the development of Harraseeket’s Imagining Your Future program.

Peter, an Episcopal priest who once considered becoming a physician, backed into the study of religion when he was required to fulfill a course distribution in religion or philosophy at college. Philosophy scared him, and he knew nothing about religion. Having come from an “unchurched” family, he had never been introduced to the academic study of religion and found this first course fascinating. Deciding to major in the subject while remaining a pre-med, he was accidentally exposed to the praxis of religion by spending a summer working with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida. His senior year in college brought him into contact with one of the most activist chaplains of that generation, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., and the combination of the study of religion in the classroom and the practice of it in social activism led him to decide to go to seminary and into the ministry.

Lou is responsible for supporting the evaluation and assessment of outcomes for students in Harraseeket’s Career Pathways Program. Lou is a labor economist with a national reputation for using large longitudinal databases, site visits, and surveys to examine: (a) ways to increase the college and career readiness of high school and community college students; (b) pathways leading to completion of college programs that boost earnings; (c) the returns to education, training, and support programs; (d) how report cards and other improvements in information available to students can increase college completion and earnings; and (e) how improved performance measurement systems can increase the incentives of educators and service-providers to help students complete programs and boost earnings.

Dr. Jacobson recently examined the effectiveness of a Florida-wide testing and remediation program aimed at helping high school seniors avoid remediation in college and complete high-return programs by boosting their college readiness. Lessons learned from this study were incorporated in Improving College and Career Outcomes of Low-Performing High School Students for the Hamilton Project, which advocated altering performance measures to give more attention to increasing the engagement of low-performing high school students as well as improving their planning and skills for college and careers.

Earlier, Dr. Jacobson directed studies using administrative data covering all 220,000 members of the Florida HS Class of 2000 to analyze how the returns to career-oriented and academic programs at Florida community colleges and high schools vary as a function of students’ choice of courses, credentials earned, academic performance, socio-economic status, and location. These studies were funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the US Department of Education’s (US-DOE’s) National Assessment of Career and Technical Education (NACTE).

Jim is Harraseeket’s lead mentor recruiter, trainer and source of mentor support. Jim has over 20 years of experience in training and professional development for staff and volunteers serving vulnerable populations. He’s also served at-risk youth through national mentoring programs in secular and faith-based communities and has developed innovative methods for successful outcome-oriented and process-based results in the public, nonprofit, and commercial sectors.

Jim served in the National Resource Center for two Federal mentoring programs and on the grant leadership team that established the initial Center for the Advancement of Mentoring in the Department of Justice. He also had the privilege of serving three different AmeriCorps national service programs as a trainer, manager, and program evaluation developer. In recent years, he’s focused on youth mentoring and ministry advancement.

In his earlier career, Jim served in a variety of assignments with the U.S. Air Force for 28 years. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in international relations and an MBA focused on management science.

Ashley is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia, where she majored in computer science and minored in data science.

She’s always loved problem solving and is especially passionate about software development and data analytics. During her time at UVA, she gained valuable technical and teamwork skills through hands-on projects, competitive hackathons, and a software development internship.

Ashley enjoys taking on new challenges and applying her skills to impactful projects, especially those that involve creativity and drive meaningful change.

Shanaal is the principal consultant and founder of Aha Moments LLC, a workforce development and educational solutions company that provides direct intervention with K-12 students in the classroom, professional development for instructors, and strategic systems consulting for leaders and their teams.

She has served in the US and Latin America with learners as young as 4 years old and as old as 90-something.  Shanaal has worked with churches and nonprofits, training trilingual and bilingual teams and networks of as many as 450 volunteers to serve children and families.  In 2012, while completing a Fulbright teaching grant at the Universidad Vicente Rocafuerte in Guayaquil, Ecuador, she designed and taught courses on educational psychology and educational research.  Upon returning to the States, she co-created a program to help adult and teen survivors of sex trafficking find their voice, build essential skills for economic and academic success, and obtain jobs that would pay a living wage.  One of the graduates of the program became a key advocate for the passing of Georgia’s Senate Bill 8, known as the Safe Harbor/Rachel’s Law in 2015.  

In the late 20-teens, as an elementary teacher and lover of educational innovation, Shanaal integrated the Texas state educational standards with students’ real-world interests so that her 2nd and 4th graders could become entrepreneurs and 3rd graders could lead their school to win a $20K grant.  In 2022, she was invited to join the founding team of the Workforce Innovation Skills Hub (WISH) in Fairfax County, where she served as the Director of Workforce Development and designed programs, partnerships, and systems to bring the vision of the WISH into reality.

Shanaal graduated from Duke University with a double major in biomedical and electrical engineering, then went on to earn a master's degree in educational psychology from the University of Georgia. 

Rob is a senior at Northeastern University, majoring in marketing and communication studies. Rob has done co-ops at a big tech company and a small public relations firm, where he found his passion for writing for clients and working with the media. Rob hopes to return to the PR industry after graduation. 

As a high schooler, Rob was a mentee in a Harraseeket Pathways program and had a wonderful experience that influenced his life/career goals and taught him the value of mentorship. He is excited to give back to Harraseeket by strengthening its partnerships and raising the Foundation's profile!

Alexis has been behind the camera for over 30 years and one of her passions is helping nonprofits get their visual message out through photography or videos. As a small business owner in Herndon (F22 Video Solutions) she prided herself on helping so many nonprofits for their fundraisers, events, training and celebrations- she was always there for the 12+ nonprofits that called on her. Alexis is excited to bring her skill sets to The Harraseeket Foundation. Alexis has been a part of the local community and the local schools as long as she's been a Northern VA resident roughly 20 years. She's looking forward to expanding her creativity to help grow another nonprofit.

Deborah envisions a world where all young people experience belonging and agency, within and beyond the school walls. With expertise in instructional design, student voice, and community engagement, Deborah has led system-wide innovation projects that prioritize real-world learning and civic agency. She has taught across middle school, high school, and college levels, and has held leadership roles at the school, division, and state levels. She has presented at national forums and collaborated with educators and policymakers to foster inclusive access to deeper learning. 

Deborah is from Queens, New York and holds a B.A. in English Literature from City College of New York and an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in African American Studies and American Studies from Yale University. She holds Virginia licensure endorsements in K-12 Administration and Supervision, English, English as a Second Language, and Social Studies. She currently serves as a curriculum leader in one of the largest public school divisions in the nation. 

Bill has 40 years’ experience with software, project management and business development. His career covered the growth of computing from simple special purpose machines to the complex but small devices everyone carries around in their pockets these days. His work was there when rockets took payloads to geosynchronous orbits, when we first landed on Mars, when satellite based X-Ray telescopes validated Einstein's equations, and when nationwide identity management systems began to simplify policing.

Along the way, he learned how to get large groups of people to work together effectively. Part of the process was developing countless technical, logistical, management and cost proposals and plans, training others in how to produce these products and then converting those plans into real systems in a controlled process visible to all interested parties. Lately, he has turned these skills and training to developing management plans and grant proposals that support the greater good for the community.

Flynn is a well-known senior specialist in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainable Development and Futures Studies. He has a unique combination of academic, business and non-profit experience to integrate research and practice into pragmatic learning programs.

He has been a senior executive in both large and small business, been the Director for the high-profile Center for Entrepreneurship at Baylor University and worked extensively with World Vision and other major non-profits.

Since his original work as a futurist at George Washington University during his doctoral program, he has continued to effectively bring an understanding of how current trends create the emerging context for personal and organizational strategies and practices. Flynn is currently Managing Director of Prescient360 Group in the DC area.

Flynn earned his Ph.D. from George Washington University in Strategic Planning and Corporate Social Responsibility and his M.B.A. in International Business from Baylor University. He has taught Entrepreneurship at several major universities and has worked with both start-ups and new initiatives for major corporations. He also teaches a course at GMU called Well-Being in Turbulent Times.

Many say Sarah Gaydos was born with a crayon in her hand. As a graphic designer, she’s found her passion in helping bring brands to life (especially those brands that help others). As one of the few people in this world who was lucky enough to know what she wanted to do at a young age, she loves being a part of something that’ll help others discover their passion in the work they do every day.

A favorite childhood story in Lauren’s family is about the time she started a neighborhood basketball team for the kids nearby. She led her friends in making posters, building a roster, getting parents to sign forms (who knows what they said), and organizing a practice schedule…only to realize, not only was she TERRIBLE at basketball, but she also hated playing it. Looking back now, though, this was probably the first glimmer of Lauren’s true strength – which is seizing on to new ideas and breathing life into them, something she enjoys doing with The Harraseeket Foundation in her spare time.

Lauren is both an explorer and a guide in Harraseeket’s Imagining Your Future program, continuously looking for new insights to build a well-rounded life and helping those who come after her recognize and avoid pitfalls that she’s fallen victim to herself while also finding and grabbing hold of passions they might have left behind on their third grade basketball team.

Pety is a graduate from Bahcesehir University in Istanbul with a Bachelors in Visual Communication Design.

Growing up, she’s always loved using her creativity as a form of expression whether it’s through art, clothes, design and even makeup! Now as she’s gotten older she gets to still practice the enjoyment of delivering a message through design but this time not only just for herself but for the people around her with a strong message but find it difficult when trying to express it visually.

When the opportunity of Haraseeket came to her she was more than excited to join the team! She loves the idea of creating for a cause that she herself believes is so important and can’t wait to see how far we can all make this grow!