Spark | celebrating women who ignite global change

Mission/Strategies/Values

History of Spark

Board of Directors

Staff

Advisory Board

Press

Annual Report

Shannon Farley (Executive Director)
shannon@sparksf.org

Shannon is the Executive Director of Spark. Since its founding in 2004, Spark has engaged over 3,000 young professionals in the Bay Area in education, volunteerism and activism as well as raised over $250,000 for grassroots women's organizations in the Bay Area and around the world. As its first Executive Director, Shannon is tasked with taking Spark to the next level. She is increasing programming and fundraising goals to strengthen Spark's local and global positioning.

Prior to joining Spark, Shannon helped start the W. Haywood Burns Institute, which works to protect and improve the lives of youth of color, poor children and their communities by ensuring fairness and equity throughout all public and private youth serving systems. She previously worked for the Youth Law Center where she provided legal services for youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Shannon has nine years of experience working in the fields of health and justice for women and girls. She has worked at domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and health education forums. In 2004, she was chosen to be a Women's Policy Institute Fellow for the Women's Foundation of California. Shannon holds a BA in American Studies from Georgetown University and an MS in Gender and Social Policy from the London School of Economics.

Stephanie Cruz (Program Coordinator)
stephanie@sparksf.org

Stephanie is a Stanford 2008 graduate with a degree in Anthropological Sciences. Stephanie is deeply interested in international humanitarian work, having been exposed to its direct impact while an intern at the International Commission on Missing Persons (IC-MP) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During her internship, Stephanie traveled to Bosnia to begin work on mass grave identification. From that experience, she learned that the most severely affected victims of the war were the women widowed and orphaned by genocide. In addition, Stephanie has conducted anthropological research in Latin America on a variety of subjects. She has served on Public Service boards at Stanford and is a continuing active member of its Chicano/Latino community.