Rinconada Team
Rinconada Ventures
455 Eureka Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
phone: (415) 642-7441
email: info@rinconada.org
Board of Directors
Mark Breimhorst, President of the Board of Directors and Founder of Rinconada Ventures, has most recently served as the West Coast Division Business Development Manager for Underwriters Laboratories (UL). In this capacity, he has managed the planning and incubation of new business initiatives within UL. Mr. Breimhorst is an alumnus of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received his MBA with a focus on marketing and entrepreneurship. Previously, he served as the disability rights advocate and paralegal at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. Mr. Breimhorst's disability community and advocacy experiences include the Suncoast Center for Independent Living and a variety of counseling, leadership, educational outreach, community-building, and legal advocacy roles at Stanford. In terms of education experience, he taught courses and developed programs within Residential Education and as Director of the Peer Counseling Center at Stanford, and as the Student Activities Coordinator at New College in Sarasota, FL. Mr. Breimhorst founded and served as the Executive Director of the Community-Wise Educational Program, an alternative school for at-risk youth in East Palo Alto, CA. Mr. Breimhorst received both his Masters degree in Education and Bachelors degree with honors in Comparative Literature from Stanford University.
Gene Cook works in Product Management at eBay, Inc. He is an MBA graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where his areas of focus included general management, venture capital, government and entrepreneurship. Before coming to Stanford, Mr. Cook worked as a healthcare technology entrepreneur. He was the co-founder and CEO of FusionHealth, Inc., a Nashville, TN-based company formed to provide integrated back-office software and management support to independent medical practices. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vanderbilt University, Mr. Cook holds a Bachelor of Arts with a pre-medical concentration and high honors in English. Much of his public service has centered on education. He has worked as a university fundraiser and has co-founded teaching and scholarship funds. Most recently, Mr. Cook has served in fundraising and other leadership capacities for the I Have a Dream program of East Palo Alto, CA, an organization pairing graduate student mentors with at-risk elementary schoolchildren.
Jaimey Fisher is currently teaching at Tulane University after finishing his Ph.D. at Cornell University. His dissertation was on the efforts to reform the German educational system after World War II. His doctoral work reflects his interest in the history of educational policy as well as in the politics and culture of youth. While at Cornell, he taught freshman seminars on modern German literature and Hollywood and German film. In 1996, he worked as the Bates-College-In-Berlin program assistant, which entailed his setting up an internship program for American students in Berlin. Besides his work in higher education, Mr. Fisher has worked as a counselor at a transitional homeless shelter and in technology support for a labor union of nurses in New York City. He has also volunteered as an educator at the Ithaca Rape Crisis Center, where he was charged with outreach programs to area schools, and was on the board of the Community-Wise Educational Program. Mr. Fisher holds a Masters of Arts from Cornell University and a Bachelors of Arts, with distinction and with honors, from Stanford University.
Jill Schiager brings a wealth of relevant experience and education to her role. As a member of the senior management team at The Pew Charitable Trusts, she was engaged in a wide range of grantmaking, operations, management and policy issues. She also managed the relationships and work between the president and the seven program areas and directed a variety of grantmaking projects, including a significant public-private partnership. Prior to joining the Pew Trusts, Ms. Schiager earned her MBA at Yale University’s School of Management. Previously, she held several key roles at Citizens Democracy Corps, a nonprofit that provided management and technical assistance to businesses, nonprofits and government agencies in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc. Of significance, she served as Country Director in Romania, where she guided all aspects of in-country operation, including program development and evaluation, financial and staff management, and liaisons with volunteers, funders and local government officials. Ms. Schiager also served as a Commercial Loan Analyst at South Shore Bank in Chicago and as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal, West Africa. She is an evaluator for the Yale School of Management-The Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures and has consulted to nonprofits and businesses. She received her BA in Russian language from Arizona State University.
Vikas Taneja is currently a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. Previously, he worked with the Information Technology Group of McKinsey & Co and as a venture capital associate with Arch Development Corporation. Mr. Taneja has extensive experience in assessing and funding early-stage organizations through his work with Arch. He brings expertise in entrepreneurial finance, business strategy, and technology to Rinconada. Mr. Taneja has a Bachelors of Science Degree in Computer Systems and Economics from Stanford University and an MBA Honors from the University of Chicago.