Leadership
Staff
Richard Parks, MBA
President
Karina Del Cid
Adventures Ahead, Associate Director
Gabriela (Gaby) Ruano
Community Organizer
Wendy Salvador-Galbraith
Community Organizer
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Nancy Lam
Director of Organizing and Policy
Natalie Apen-Bock
Administrator
Sharis Flores
Intern
Adventures Ahead Teachers
Wendy Garcia
Iris S.
Griselda Luis
Board of Directors
Rev. Bob Gay
Board Chair
Rev. Gay serves as the Pastor of men’s discipleship at Faithful Central Bible Church. Prior to taking this position he worked in the fundraising field for many years, including time with the Covenant Church's Pacific Southwest Conference and as Promise Keepers' West Coast Development Director. For almost 20 years, he served as senior deputy for Gil Lindsey, Los Angeles' first African-American City Council member in a community just east of RCP's neighborhood.
Michael Mata
Board Member
​Michael A. Mata has designed and administered community and faith-based programs for over 30 years, particularly in the areas of community development, congregational redevelopment, intercultural programs, organizational and leadership development, ministry/nonprofit management and community youth development. Recently appointed to direct the Los Angeles Program in Masters in Transformational Urban Leadership at Azusa Pacific Seminary he is also the Community Transformation Specialist with Compassion Creates Change, Inc. and an affiliated faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary. Prior to his current assignments he was the Urban Development Director for World Vision U.S. Program where he was responsible for guiding the department’s implementation of its Signature Programs Model (community transformation focused on community youth development). Mata was the Mildred M. Hutchinson Assistant Professor of Urban Ministry (the first endowed chair in urban ministry) and Director of the Urban Leadership Institute at the Claremont School of Theology (1993-2003). As an ordained minister, he served fifteen years as part of the pastoral team at Los Angeles First Church of the Nazarene (a multi-ethnic/multi-congregation church with a highly regarded community program and prominent youth program) and two years as Pastor of Urban Mission at Pasadena First Church of the Nazarene. He is also the former Director of the Bresee Institute (a key resource for faith-based community and leadership development efforts, which gained distinction among the academic, business and political leaders of Los Angeles under his leadership).
Anna Parks
Board Member
Ms. Parks moved into the community in 1998 and led the Adventures Ahead steering committee during the program’s first three years. Most recently, she developed Redeemer's School Choices brochure and conducted extensive trainings with parents across South LA. When not juggling the needs of her three children, she serves part-time as Redeemer's administrator and part-time as the Student Services Coordinator for the USC Professional Doctorate Program in Policy, Planning and Development. She has a Masters degree in Social Work from the University of Southern California (USC) and a B.A. degree in Philosophy from Pomona College.
Richard Parks
President
Richard Parks is the president and founder of Redeemer Community Partnership. He moved to the neighborhood in 1986 to study at the University of Southern California and never left.
Read full bio above.
Greg Strand
Vice Chair
In 1996, Mr. Strand founded Nova Composites, a Seattle-based company that designs and fabricates high-tech parts for the aerospace industry. He came to know RCP through a week-long church mission trip, during which time he refurbished our tutoring center and coached basketball clinics for our grade-school students. Mr. Strand recently sold his company to Park Aerospace Structures Corp. and now serves as president. He and his wife Kathy have three daughters, the youngest of whom has traveled to Los Angeles twice to teach dance clinics for our summer program. Mr. Strand has an engineering degree from Seattle Pacific University and an MBA from the University of Washington.