Hema Sareen Mohan

Hema Sareen Mohan has worked for more than 20 years in the nonprofit and public sectors. For a decade, she worked in the California State Senate and County of Santa Clara.
Her key policy areas are education and juvenile justice reform. While in the State Senate, she worked on the landmark state legislation to change the kindergarten entry age and create a new grade known as transitional kindergarten in California public schools. Hema's nonprofit experience includes seven years at the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based nonprofit policy and research organization, where she directed a training program for school-based police officers to use positive behavior support techniques with students, and worked on an alternative-to-detention program for immigrants in deportation proceedings. Hema is also a published poet and was most recently a finalist for the San Mateo County Poet Laureate.

She serves on the boards of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, The Phillips Brooks School, and the Child & Family Institute. Hema graduated with a BA in political science from Hunter College and an MPA from Columbia University. A native New Yorker, she lives in the Bay Area with her husband and three children.