Puente's Board of Directors PDF Print E-mail

Puente's Board of Directors is comprised of dedicated, experienced professionals. Each board member has lived in Oaxaca for a minimum of three months and donates annually to Puente. We are currently looking to expand Board membership. If you are interested in learning more, please do not hesitate to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Scroll down to learn more about each board member.


 Kate Seely first worked with amaranth in the summer of 2002, which spurred her to co-found Puente and co-direct the organization until 2006. Upon leaving Oaxaca in 2006, she became the President of the Board and maintains a strong connection and dedication to the organization and the communities it serves. Since returning to the San Francisco Bay Area, Kate has worked with two philanthropic affinity groups, Hispanics in Philanthropy (HIP) and Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP). Recently, Kate has returned to the food sector, focusing specifically on sustainable food systems and agriculture. At Om Organics and Farms Reach, she is working to mend the broken food system through a return to regional food systems and sustainable agriculture. Originally from San Francisco, Kate graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont where she studied Latin American Literature and Political Science. She has spent five years living in Latin America, during which time she was working in community development with marginalized communities.
Board Vice President Leslie Payne has been involved with Puente since the summer of 2003 when she worked as a development consultant to help the organization formalize its structures and grow. Her professional background includes nonprofit development and philanthropy, and she currently works for a philanthropic consulting firm in Washington, DC. Leslie studied art and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and earned her MBA at Georgetown University.

Board Treasurer/Secretary Katherine Lorenz co-founded Puente in 2003, serving as Co-Director and later Executive Director until 2008.

Katherine Lorenz is President of the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation (www.mitchellfamilyfoundation.org), a Texas-based grantmaking foundation focusing on environmental sustainability issues throughout the state. Before taking on this role, she served nearly three years as Deputy Director for the Institute for Philanthropy (www.instituteforphilanthropy.org), whose mission is to increase effective philanthropy in the UK and internationally, and she now sits on the Institute's Board of Directors.

Prior to her work with the Institute for Philanthropy, Katherine lived and worked in Oaxaca, Mexico for nearly six years where she co-founded Puente a la Salud Comunitaria. She continues to be highly involved with Puente's work as an active board member.

Before founding Puente, she spent two summers living and working in rural, poor communities in Latin America with the volunteer program Amigos de las Américas and later served on their Program Committee and as a trustee of the Foundation for Amigos de las Americas. Additionally, she currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Endowment for Regional Sustainability Science and the Amaranth Institute and formerly was a Board Member of Resource Generation. Along with her family, Ms. Lorenz is a member of the Global Philanthropists Circle (through the Synergos Institute) and is an active participant in the GPC Next Generation subgroup. Ms. Lorenz holds a B.A. in Economics and Spanish from Davidson College.

Board member Tim Watson is a lawyer in the San Francisco law firm of Watson & Lanctot, LLP, where he advises numerous nonprofit organizations on tax and governance issues. Over the years, he has represented hundreds of Central American and Mexican immigrants and refugees in asylum and immigration proceedings. Tim and his wife and fellow board member, April, lived in Oaxaca for two years, during which time he worked at a nonprofit providing microfinance loans to women in rural Oaxacan communities. He is also a co-founder of Un Mundo, a community development organization working in rural Honduras. Tim received a bachelor's degree in history, with an emphasis in Latin American Studies, from Boston College and a law degree from the University of California, Davis.
Board member April Watson joined Puente’s Board in the fall of 2006. She works for a nonprofit community hospital in Redwood City, California, managing community health programs. Prior to this, April worked for six years—2 years of that time based in Oaxaca, México—for Freedom from Hunger, a nonprofit international development organization. She provided training and technical assistance to organizations in Latin America, created health education curricula, led evaluations of community health and microcredit programs, and authored papers on the impact of development programs. April holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Nutrition from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and a Master’s in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley.

Board member Caroline Boyd Kronley is a management consultant based in New York. She first became familiar with Puente's work while living in Oaxaca for two-and-a-half years, where she worked as coordinator of strategic planning for a Mexican microfinance institution that serves women in rural communities. In this role, she designed and led training, fundraising, and program evaluation initiatives. She has also worked in various capacities for a number of non-profit organizations in the United States, focusing on community development and access to financial services among low-income and immigrant communities. Caroline graduated from Haverford College with a degree in History and a concentration in Latin American Studies, and she holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Lisa Thompson worked as Puente's Development Director and management consultant for almost three years before becoming a Puente board member. Lisa's background includes a wide array of nonprofit management experiences including volunteer coordination, board development, and fundraising for small start-up nonprofit organizations. In her current position she is the Development Director for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, a nonprofit providing free legal services to low-income Texans throughout a 68 county area. Lisa holds a Master's of Science degree in Organizational Management from the School for International Training and a Bachelor's degree in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin.
Joe Choperena Joe Choperena implements on-farm projects focused on nutrient management, energy, fertilizer and water efficiency, and renewable energy for Sustainable Conservation, an environmental non-profit organization based in California. Born and raised on a farm in the fertile San Joaquin Valley of California, he has worked in the production, processing and marketing of various agricultural commodities and has also garnered experience in the private, public and non-governmental sectors. Prior to 2006, when he began working for Sustainable Conservation, Joe spent 5 years with USDA Rural Development managing microfinance and economic development programs for businesses in rural California. He also has international development experience working on projects in Parana, Brazil, Guanajuato, Mexico and Chisinau, Moldova. Joe graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Agribusiness and a Spanish Minor from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and a Master’s of Science degree in International Agricultural Development from the University of California, Davis.

 
 
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