New Alumni and Board of Regents Members
New Alumni Board Members
Jahmese Myres ’06 develops policy to improve working conditions for low-wage workers in Oakland.
Brent Austin MBA ‘09 has worked for Chevron for 21 years in a wide range of positions researcher to financial analyst, cost engineer, operations manager, trading analyst, trader, marketing specialist, project manager and product engineer.
Liane Cismowski ME ’05 has had a teaching career that spans 25 years and classrooms ranging from kindergarten through graduate school. She currently serves as a teacher and vice principal at Mount Diablo High School.
Jodelle (Jodie) Prola Russi ’83, ECR ‘84 is a teacher and vice principal at Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception School in Walnut Creek.
Harry York EE ’89 is the chief executive officer of the Pittsburg, Calif., Chamber of Commerce. He served in a similar position for the Reno-Sparks chamber and as executive vice president for the Concord Chamber of Commerce. New Board of Regents Members
New Board of Regents Members
Richard H. Meyer ’69 retired as director of anesthesia business development and marketing for the international division of Abbott Laboratories in 2002. He was born and raised in Southern California. A graduate of Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, he received his bachelor’s degree in history from Saint Mary’s in 1969, and earned an MBA from Pepperdine University in 1977. Meyer joined Abbott Laboratories in Los Angeles in 1969 as a domestic sales representative for the hospital products division. He was promoted to increasingly responsible positions in Oklahoma City, Philadelphia and, in 1981, to Abbott’s headquarters in Chicago. In 1984 he joined Abbott’s international division.
John McLaurin has been the president of the Pacific Shipping Association (PMSA), a nonprofit trade association that focuses on global trade, since 1995. PMSA represents ocean carriers and operators of marine terminals and has offices in San Francisco, Long Beach and Seattle. PMSA engages in community, legislative and regulatory affairs in California and the state of Washington. Prior to joining PMSA, he worked for the Marine Spill Response Corporation, American President Lines and the American Petroleum Institute. McLaurin has a bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Davis and a law degree from Southwestern University School of Law. He is active in a variety of efforts and programs dealing with special education for children and adults with autism.
Paul Stich ‘79 is the former president and CEO of Dasient, an Internet security company that protects websites from web-based malware attacks. Dasient was acquired by social media giant Twitter in January 2012. He has also served as vice president of global telecommunications solutions at McAfee, as president and CEO of Counterpane Internet Security, and as co-founder, president and CEO of Groundswell, an internet consulting firm. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics at Saint Mary’s and an MBA at University of Notre Dame School of Business in 1984.
Jason Shellen ‘96 worked with a number of Silicon Valley companies in hardware sales and marketing after he graduated from Saint Mary’s. He is on the RSS Advisory Board and the advisory boards of Feedly and 8tracks.com. Currently the CEO & co-founder of Tapedeck, Shellen has worked at Google, at Thing Labs, a company that made Brizzly, a social media reader and Twitter web tool, as founder and CEO, and at AOL. As an employee of Pyra Labs, he was part of Google’s acquisition of Blogger in 2003. During his tenure at Google, Jason started the Google Reader project and became the founding product manager. He holds patents on feed and social media technologies.
Diana T. Wu, Ph.D., professor emeritus from the School of Economics and Business Administration, started teaching at Saint Mary’s in 1981 and was the first woman and first minority to lead the Business Administration Department, which she chaired from 1986 to 1989. She earned an MBA from New York University in 1961 and worked as an accountant in Berkeley before earning a doctorate in organizational psychology from the Wright Institute in 1980. Her field of specialization involves all aspects of business management — with special interests in organizational psychology and international business and China. She is the author of the textbook “Asian Pacific Americans in the Workplace.”