Karen Liu is the vice president of quality assurance and regulatory affairs at Carlsmed, Inc. Her deep industry experience includes leadership roles at NuVasive, Medtronic and several San Diego start-ups. Her career path has been driven by improving patient outcomes with safe and innovative medical devices. 

Karen has a B.S. in Materials Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and holds certifications from American Society for Quality and Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.

Karen is a news junkie who is passionate about data-driven reporting. She has been a Spotlight Club member since 2016. She is also a long-time Producer’s Club Member of KPBS, a President’s Club member of the San Diego Zoo and a Humane Leaders Circle member of the San Diego Humane Society. Her other passions are world travel and mentoring the next generation of engineering leaders.

Atul Patel has more than 30 years of international treasury management experience. He has managed surplus cash investment portfolios, foreign exchange and interest rate risk, risk management and global banking relationships. He has negotiated and executed long-term financing in multiple countries to support growth in emerging markets. He also negotiated and established co-branding programs across Latin America and the Caribbean. Prior to joining PriceSmart, Atul served as assistant treasurer for a private investment management firm in Bahrain and Geneva. Before that he spent seven years with Imperial Chemical Industries in London focusing on managing foreign exchange and interest rate risk and day-to-day treasury operations and investment of surplus cash. 

Atul is a graduate of the University of Wales in the UK, where he earned his BS in economics and materials science. He has served as trustee and treasurer at the International Community Foundation and Alliance Healthcare Foundation.

Denise Carabet is a veteran journalist who covered San Diego for four decades. She began her reporting career at The San Diego Daily Transcript before joining the Copley Press, first at the former Evening Tribune, then moving to The San Diego Union as a business reporter and eventually becoming Senior Editor for Business and Sports. She left the U-T in 1992 to become editor of the San Diego Business Journal.

A journalism graduate of San Diego State University, Denise and husband Don are the parents of two grown daughters and four grandchildren living in the San Francisco Bay area.

A resident of Kensington, these days she devotes much of her time riding her horses in North County, enjoying the Arts (movies and theater in particular), and visiting the family in Northern California.

Through the years, she has served as president of SDSU Alumni Association, temporary executive director of The San Diego Community Foundation, VP of the Kensington/Normal Heights Friends of the Library and has advised a number of local non- profits.

Elisabeth Eisner Forbes brings civic and business experience to bear on her long-time work in the nonprofit community. 

She practices law and is a seasoned practitioner with broad corporate, finance and real estate experience with a specialty in advising nonprofit corporations. She has also taught law students at the USD Law School and business law and the legal environment at Southwestern Community College to undergraduates.

She served three three-year terms on the San Diego Foundation board until terming off in June 2023. She served on the executive committee, chaired the finance committee, and served on numerous other committees and ad hoc working groups. She also served as Chair of the San Diego Charitable Real Estate Foundation, a supporting organization of the foundation. Before being elected to the foundation board, Elisabeth served five years on the foundation’s finance committee as a community member.

She is a founder, current board member and officer of the San Diego Parks Foundation. She is a member of the Social Equity Collaborative Fund, a fund of Catalyst of San Diego and Imperial Counties (formerly San Diego Grantmakers), and a past-director of Catalyst. She is also a past board member of the YMCA Corporate Board of Directors. 

She received her law degree from UCLA, where she also earned her undergraduate degree. 

Eileen is currently president of Project High Hopes, a foundation which supports civic engagement, ground-breaking science, and provides services for the elderly in downtown San Diego..  Project High Hopes worked nationwide with high school students,  helping them register to vote when they became eligible. Among the science projects is the support of the Vayu Foundation which has saved lives of compromised newborns around the world. At home, it operates Thriving Downtown to help low income seniors navigate life and continue to live independently.

She founded and owned the Bernardo News in what was then a “new town” of Rancho Bernardo from 1971 until 1988, and she launched and published a network of nine community newspapers in Southwest Riverside County.

Among her community activities, she chaired the board of Casa de las Campanas, a continuing care facility and served as president of the San Diego Women’s Foundation.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Penn State University, and served as the editor of its student newspaper, The Daily Collegian.

Matthew Halgren is an attorney at the law firm of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, where he specializes in appellate litigation and news media law.

Matthew works on all aspects of the appellate process across many fields of law for clients in a host of industries, including technology, finance and insurance sectors. He has briefed and orally argued a variety of matters in state and federal appellate courts.

A First Amendment specialist, Matthew advises news media clients on matters related to the reporting process. He enjoys collaborating with journalists to obtain government records and to avoid the legal pitfalls that can accompany the work of a free press. Before representing news media organizations as a practicing lawyer, Matthew worked on their behalf as a student in the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. In college, he served on the editorial board of the Daily Princetonian, and he was the editor-in-chief of his high school newspaper, the Grossmont Foothill Echoes.

Matthew previously served as a law clerk for two federal judges, Richard R. Clifton of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Marilyn L. Huff of the U.S. District Court in San Diego Before law school, he served in the office of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Martha Dennis is principal at Gordian Knot, an advisory firm to emerging technology businesses in San Diego. She previously was a venture partner with Windward Ventures, which invested in early-stage Southern California technology companies.

Martha also was co-founder, president and CEO of WaveWare Communications Inc., which sold software for wireless handheld connectivity. Before that, Martha co-founded Pacific Communications Sciences Inc., a San Diego wireless communications equipment company later acquired by Cirrus Logic. Martha also led software development at Linkabit Corp. as assistant vice president. She currently serves as board chairman of Netsapiens Inc., lead director of Space Micro Inc. and director of Mundoval Fund.

Martha is past chair of the city of San Diego Science & Technology Commission and past president of San Diego’s telecom industry association. She has led several nonprofit boards, including the La Jolla Music Society, Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, Bishop’s School, and Athena. She has been a trustee of the San Diego Museum of Art, Harvey Mudd College, San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, San Diego Foundation, San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, San Diego Museum of Art and YMCA of San Diego County.

Martha holds a doctorate from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from Smith College.

Joyce M. Gattas is former special assistant to the president of San Diego State University. Previously, she was dean of the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts, where she led 11 departments and schools with several centers and research institutes, ranging from the visual and performing arts, communication, hospitality management and ROTC.

Well known in the San Diego civic and philanthropic community, Joyce is dedicated to connecting the college to the community through her direct involvement. She currently serves on the boards of Forever Balboa Park and San Diego Museum of Art.

Her honors include “50 People to Watch,” “10 Cool Women,” Who’s Who in San Diego, Women Who Mean Business, the “Ginger Award” for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts, and Women of Dedication Honoree.

Joyce has a doctorate from the University of California Berkeley and is a graduate of the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University. Before she was an SDSU dean, she served as the associate vice president for faculty affairs at the university. She also taught at the California State Universities in Long Beach and Hayward.

Brant Houston is a professor and Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting at the University of Illinois. He also is a member of the faculty of the Graduate School of Library Information and Sciences. At Illinois, he also oversees an award-winning online news site, CU-CitizenAccess.org.

From 1997 to 2007, Brant was executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a 5,000-member association, and taught at the Missouri School of Journalism. Before that, Brant was an award-winning investigative reporter for 17 years. He was a member of the newsroom staff at The Kansas City Star that won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of a hotel building collapse and a member of the investigative team that won a Headliners Award for exposing shoddy building inspection practices in the Kansas City area.

Brant is co-author of “The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook” (Fourth Fifth and Sixth Editions and author of five editions of “Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide.” Brant also is a co-founder and chair of the board of directors of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, a consortium of more than 180 nonprofit newsrooms around the world. He was a co-founder of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a consortium of more than 450 nonprofit newsrooms in North America, of which inewsource is a member.

Bernie Kulchin has had a distinguished career in human resources management in industry and as a consultant. He is currently serving the nonprofit community on a number of boards.

For more than a decade, he was responsible for all human resources functions for Cubic Corp. and its 7,000 employees. Before Cubic, Bernie was with General Dynamics Corp. for more than 30 years. There, he was division vice president of human resources.

He has been an instructor and leader in human resources management and leadership development topics. Bernie has taught human resources management at UCSD and National University. He also has been an expert witness in employment law cases.

In the nonprofit sector, Bernie served on the San Diego Library Foundation board of trustees and as a member of the boards of San Diego Habitat for Humanity and San Diego Youth Symphony. He also served as chair for Nonprofit Management Solutions and as a member of the advisory board for Elder Help and the Jenna Druck Foundation.

The Encyclopedia of Journalism cited Charles Lewis as “one of the 30 most notable investigative reporters in the U.S. since World War I.” Charles is the founding executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop and a professor of journalism at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C.

A national investigative journalist for over 40 years, Charles is a bestselling author who founded the Center for Public Integrity and its International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington. He left a successful career as an investigative producer for ABC News and the CBS News program “60 Minutes” to begin the Center for Public Integrity from his home, growing it to a full-time staff of 40 people. Under his leadership, the center published roughly 300 investigative reports, including 14 books, from 1989 through 2004, and was honored more than 30 times by national journalism organizations.

Charles was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998. And in 2004, PEN USA, the respected literary organization, gave its First Amendment award to Charles, “for expanding the reach of investigative journalism … and for boldly exercising his freedom of speech and freedom of the press.”