Raphael House is actively recruiting energetic and motivated professionals to join our Board of Directors. Click the link below to learn more.
Tom Poser
Senior Managing Director
Newmark Knight Frank
Chair of the Board of Directors
Tom Poser serves Newmark in Northern California as a Senior Managing Director representing office and medical Tenants and Landlords. Tom is a native of the Bay Area and specializes in advising clients regarding workplace strategy, office space leasing, and the acquisition and disposition of office assets. Outside of working with traditional office space owners and occupiers, Tom has specialized experience in working with clients in the technology, healthcare, and life sciences industries. Prior to joining Newmark, Tom was with JLL for eleven years serving as an Executive Vice President representing office tenants. Before joining JLL, Tom was a Vice President with Commercial Realty Advisors, Inc. in San Diego where he represented both tenants and landlords in their efforts to buy, sell, or lease office and industrial properties. Preceding his Commercial Real Estate career, Tom was a professional basketball player in various countries across the globe. Tom earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara after spending his childhood in the Bay Area. Tom, his wife and their three children currently live in Marin County.
Laura Larsen
Community Volunteer
Board Vice-Chair
Laura’s background is in the hospitality industry, in which she worked as a consultant to create successful concepts for restaurants and public spaces for major hotel companies worldwide. Her broad range of experience includes strategic business consulting, concept strategy and brand development, event planning, marketing and PR planning, chef/menu development, and market research. Laura has been involved with Raphael House since 2013 and she co-chaired the annual gala in 2015, 2016 and 2018 and joined the Board of Directors in 2018. Laura is a Bay Area native and loves living in San Francisco with her husband, Sloan, and her two children. She supports Raphael House and community organizations so that the San Francisco Bay Area can become a better home for all.
Charlie McEachron
Chief Operating Officer
Drawbridge Realty
Board Treasurer
Charlie McEachron is the Chief Operating Officer at Drawbridge Realty, a real estate investment company headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Mr. McEachron is responsible for the oversight of portfolio management, investments, and operations at Drawbridge. He also provides strategic direction for Drawbridge’s capital markets activities. Prior to joining Drawbridge in 2006, Mr. McEachron served as a Director at Greco Development where he spearheaded the acquisition, capitalization, and management of urban infill commercial development projects in Minneapolis, MN. Prior to Greco, Mr. McEachron was a Strategy Consultant for Deloitte Consulting where he evaluated new business ventures and market expansion opportunities for Fortune 500 firms. Mr. McEachron graduated from Boston College with a degree in finance and holds an MBA from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.
Heather Sager
Partner
Perkins Coie LLP
Board Secretary
Heather Sager’s extensive knowledge of California’s complicated statutory and regulatory requirements for employers is well-regarded by technology, retail, and finance clients alike, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. She has wide-ranging experience litigating complex wage-and-hour claims, as well as conducting wage-and-hour audits for clients grappling with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the California Labor Code, and the California Equal Pay Act.
Heather’s practice was established at the forefront of the wage-and-hour class and collective actions that are now commonplace throughout the country. She emphasizes proactive risk management to avoid litigation and employs efficient and aggressive strategies to help her clients minimize exposure when faced with class, collective, representative, multi-plaintiff, or single-plaintiff lawsuits. As part of due diligence, Heather also provides risk assessments of wage-and-hour exposure, as well as policy and procedure audits both pre- and post-merger.
Heather is active in counseling and training employers on workplace harassment prevention and unconscious bias and regularly conducts workplace investigations into allegations of inappropriate conduct. She is adept at helping startup clients understand the importance of compliant policies and practices beginning at formation and frequently advises clients on leave issues, employee classification, and independent contractor status, as well as strategies for preventing and addressing misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition.
Heather’s experience also extends to the traditional labor realm, where she has helped clients prevail in elections, obtained injunctive relief to stop inappropriate union conduct, defeated organizing campaigns, and appeared before the National Labor Relations Board on countless issues.
Yannis Dosios
Global Chief Commercial Officer
Integral Ad Science (IAS)
Yannis is the Global Chief Commercial Officer at Integral Ad Science (IAS). Prior to joining IAS, Yannis was the Vice President of Emerging Businesses at Twitter, responsible for building successful businesses outside of core advertising, such as the MoPub mobile monetization platform and the Twitter Developer Platform. Before this, Yannis was Global Head of Strategy & Operations for Twitter’s Customers organization, driving growth strategy, infrastructure, pricing, sales enablement & scalable support. Prior to Twitter, Yannis was Vice President of Platform & Exchange at Yahoo, responsible for all programmatic advertising revenue. In previous roles, he launched and built Flurry’s advertising mobile publisher network, was Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, Vice President of Marketing at Smilebox, and a Strategy Consultant at the Monitor Consulting Group. Yannis earned an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was born and raised in Greece, lives in San Francisco and is a passionate father of three boys.
Orlando Harris
Chief External Affairs Officer
Homebridge
Orlando Harris serves as Chief External Affairs Officer (CEAO) for Homebridge. Prior to joining Homebridge, Orlando was Executive Director of Career Services and Leadership Development at San Francisco State University. He has an extensive background in the corporate sector as well as higher education. Orlando held various individual contributor roles as well as leadership roles with IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Gartner and American Express. Prior to his arrival at SFSU he was the first Director of Corporate Relations at the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management. He’s a graduate of Alabama A&M University and a Harvard Business School, Fall 2021 GMP Candidate.
Amanda King
Community Advocate
In 2005, Amanda King saw a gas station billboard sign (the infamous one at Turk & Larkin) reading “If you’re going through Hell, keep going” – Winston Churchill”. Little did she know this was to become her personal motto and a constant source of strength. Amanda is a passionate supporter of, and believer in, the great work of Raphael House to help families achieve and thrive. She is a founding member of the Program Committee (inception 2015), helping to shape internal programs for current and former residents. An acclaimed jazz singer, mom, businesswoman, and former Raphael House resident, she relishes giving back to Raphael House as it was there for her and her son, Duncan, in their time of greatest need. A San Francisco resident for almost 20 years, she moved to Las Vegas in 2017 and has quickly become one of its top jazz performers (though she very much misses the verdant vibrancy and thrilling hum of living in the Bay Area).
Michele C. Lee
Deputy General Counsel
Pinterest Inc.
Michele C. Lee is a seasoned executive with a track record of successfully tackling headline-news legal disputes. She is currently Deputy General Counsel at Pinterest. Prior to that, she was head of Twitter’s global litigation, regulatory, and competition team, and also worked with executives at Visa to manage legal risk. Before entering the private sector, Ms. Lee was a United States Department of Justice Trial Attorney and prosecuted cases of civil fraud committed against the government. In her free time, she can be found with her husband and three young sons on wooded trails searching for red-tailed hawks and banana slugs.
Tom Miller
Multifamily Housing Developer
Community Activist
Tom is an Independent Multifamily Real Estate developer with properties in Houston, Texas. He worked with Houston community leaders to revitalize a neighborhood impacted by crime and blight. Tom was instrumental in developing a community revitalization plan (“Super Block”), creating a coalition of neighborhood homeowners, apartment owners, small businesses, City of Houston political leaders, the Near Northwest Management District, and the Houston Police department. Ultimately the City of Houston closed three large apartment complexes and razed two of the properties in the neighborhood. A Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) was awarded in 2010 by HUD and the City of Houston to Mr. Miller and two additional adjacent properties. 1200 units in a three-block area were completely modernized, and the community was revitalized as measured by an 80% reduction in neighborhood crime. The neighborhood was transformed from “the most dangerous neighborhood in Houston” (as stated by Houston news reporters), to an affordable and safe community, and remains so today. Tom continues as a member of the Business Development Committee for Houston’s Northwest Management District. Prior professional experience was in the computer and telecommunications industry. He resides in San Rafael California with his wife Kate Keating.
Karl Werwath
Chief Operating Officer (COO)
Bank of the West – BNP Paribas
Karl Werwath serves as the Chief Operating Officer for Bank of the West and is a member of the Bank’s Executive Management Committee. In his role, he leads Information Technology, Information Security, E2E and Risk Operations, Enterprise Services, Process Reengineering, Project Management, and the Sourcing and Vendor Management teams. Previously, he held senior positions at Capital One Financial Corporation, including Managing Vice President /Executive Vice President of Commercial Bank Client Service and Digital Solutions; Retail and Direct Bank Digital Transformation; Retail, Small Business and Commercial Bank Operations; U.S. Credit Card Customer Operations and U.S. Credit Card Marketing Operations, in addition to other roles. Karl also held various roles at Motorola Inc., including Business Manager of White Oak Semiconductor in the U.S.; General Manager of the Energy Products Division in China; Operations Manager of the Industrial Electronic Division in England; and Product Manager of the Automotive Electronics Division in Italy and the U.S. Most importantly, Karl is the loving husband to Jeana and father to Scott and Katy. When not hard at work, you can find him on the bike
trails in Marin or walking his standard poodle, Nestle.