Our Team

We have a team of dedicated and experienced professionals who are passionate about helping organizations build successful programs.

Our team creates remarkable programs that are worthy of your time, energy and effort. We aren't consultants. We are collaborators.

We rely on the collective consciousness of your organization to get to the heart of the challenge and build something that makes a difference. Our conversations starts with "should we do this?" first to determine what is best for all stakeholders.

We are committed to inspiring and motivating communities, staff, and donors alike.

Alex Waters

Executive Director

Alex is the Executive Director of the Program Labs where he leverages over 15 Years of experience designing, building, and supporting programs. He has extensive experience in EdTech, entrepreneurship, and nonprofit management. Most recently he was the Director of Economic Development & Innovation at the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation where he is the chief architect of the Jacobs Center Business Accelerator & Creator Studio. He currently serves on the Board for the SDSU Research Foundation, and SD Neighborhood House Association.

Cassandra Schaeg

Advisor

Cassandra is an Emmy award-winning storyteller, advocate, and entrepreneur. Her work in nonprofit and private sectors fuses education, economic development, and equity to ensure women and BIPOC entrepreneurs have access to networks, and resources. She is the Founder of SIP Wine & Beer and Co-Founder, Producer, and Host of the Emmy award-winning series Fresh Glass. She is active in the community serving on The Board of Trustees at Palomar College, and mentoring students at CSU San Marcos Business Administration Program, and Jacobs Center Business Accelerator Program.

Dr. Boris Dev

Advisor

As an AI engineer, Boris has worked in startups across a wide range of industries – legal operations, machine analytics, semiconductor PoS analytics, story generation in video gaming, and people analytics. Drawing from these experiences he is able to build AI software around a program’s unique data and cultural language. He has a PhD from SDSU in Human Geography where his dissertation focused on using Census data to formulate new neighborhood human inequality metrics.

Joon Han

Advisor

Joon S. Han is the Founding CEO of Better San Diego a strategic alignment consultancy that businesses and other consultants go to for growth. He is a strategist that is on a mission to help as many entrepreneurs as possible. He has an extremely ginormous soft spot for social entrepreneurs (and similar folks passionate about social enterprises, conscious capitalism, triple bottom line, venture philanthropy, social innovation, ecopreneurs, go-giving, social ventures and social change in general).

Katie Rast

Advisor

Katie is the Director of Community Impact, at the San Diego Foundation where she oversees a portfolio of programs focused on inclusive growth for San Diegans. From Early Childhood Education, the Science & Technology Program to Ensuring Age Friendly Communities, she combines innovation and execution to deploy catalytic capital that drives change. Katie was the Executive Director for Fab Lab San Diego, though a partnership with MIT, was a Senior Strategy Advisor for UC San Diego Design Lab and managed the General Electric Brilliant Career Lab. Katie has received awards and recognition by MIT, USAID and the WorldBank.

Kurling Robinson

Advisor

From founding Internet Productions, a company instrumental in connecting major television networks like ABC with their audience, to his pivotal role at NetZero, a pioneering endeavor that facilitated widespread internet access and fostered novel marketplaces, Mr. Robinson's unwavering focus remains on illuminating the overlooked and underserved. Presently, Mr. Robinson holds board memberships in prestigious organizations such as the San Diego Workforce Partnership(Elected Chair), Workforce Ventures, Startup San Diego.