Meet the Team

Biographies

Kimberley Anderson

Kim is the President and Executive Director of Boston Bridges Initiative and the former President and a Founder of the Parents Diversity council (PDC), a non-profit organization. This group seeks to create opportunities for Bedford Public School parents to foster a culture of inclusion and diversity for all students and families, with a special focus toward issues of racial equity. Kim is a graduate of the New York School of Nursing and spent six years working in hospitals and long-term facilities in New York City. She is a wife and mother to four children and is now studying paralegal law with a concentration in civil rights and business. Experiencing life as a woman of color born in Scotland and a mother of interracial children, Kim is dedicated to being a representative for the voices of other persons of color in efforts to bridge the differences with the understanding of many cultures that must coexist.

Howard Wolk

Howard Wolk is co-president of the Cross Country Group, one of the largest privately-held companies in Massachusetts. Howard has served on the boards of Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and several other non-profits, as well as Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. He co-produced two films on METCO, On The Line and Codeswitching. A graduate of Lexington High School, Howard lives in Weston with his wife and two daughters.

Jon Sills

Jon has been an anti-racism activist since the 1960s and an educator prioritizing educational equity for close to 50 years. Jon served as high school principal and superintendent in Bedford, MA from 2000 to 2020, and as department chair and history teacher both in Brookline and Boston during the previous 17 years. His education work has focused on deep anti-racism cultural change and opportunity gap-closing programs like the Tenacity Challenge. An adjunct professor at Boston University, he teaches Equity and the Law and Equity Practices, and he has given workshops on Equity Leadership to principals and superintendents. Recently retired from the superintendency, Jon now works as a facilitator and coach in the New Superintendents Induction Program. Jon has served on the METCO, Inc. board of directors for the past five years. 

Akil A. Mondesir

A proud graduate of Bedford High school, Akil was part of the Bedford METCO program, class of ‘98. After several years working in residential programs, he realized his true passion was in giving back, specifically to the students and district that he felt have given him so much. Akil returned to Bedford and after several years became the METCO Director. Working with the students and helping them to navigate their way through academic and social challenges inspires him to believe that we are really teaching global citizens. It is Akil’s passion to see students working together, understanding differences, and coming together to make each other better.

Jessica Castro

Jessica Castro is a Program and Operations Officer at the Trefler Foundation, where she supports the implementation of the foundations core programmatic areas of focus, specifically education, health disparities, workforce development cancer prevention and treatment. She implements and manages the day to day finances of the Foundation inclusive of payroll and benefits administration billing paying and accounting with outside vendors and contractors 
Jessica holds a Master’s in Business Administration and Bachelor of Arts in Human Services. She has thirteen years of experience in program management and development in the nonprofit sector and assisting individuals with barriers to self-sufficiency, including welfare dependence, limited work histories and ex-offenders. She is a collaborative and dedicated leader, with excellent interpersonal and communication skills and a proven record of fostering partnerships with government officials, corporations, employee and community representatives. Jessica is dedicated to nurturing a work environment that encourages collaboration and optimizes team performance and is recognized as having exceptional planning and organizational skills, with a leadership style that invites group participation and cultivates and elevates staff competency.

David Thomson

David Thomson provides public relations management and communications oversight for Boston Bridges Initiative. He draws upon years of leadership experience as the founder and president of Thomson Communications, a targeted marketing and public relations firm helping organizations of all sizes tell their stories. If you are in the media and would like more information about Boston Bridges Initiative, please contact David at david@thomsoncommunications.com.

Jennifer Kelley

Kelley, who lives in Bedford, Massachusetts, has many years of work and volunteer experience in both the public and non-profit sectors. She is currently a Realtor with Barrett Sotheby's International Realty and has a strong working knowledge of many communities Boston Bridges Initiative serves. Kelley also serves as Coordinator of Private Partnerships for the Lynn Public Schools. Additionally, she holds volunteer leadership roles for the Bedford Education Foundation and the Town of Bedford's Volunteer Coordinating Committee.

Kelley received her Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies from Middlebury College and a Masters of the Arts in Teaching form Tufts University.

Joanna Schmergel

Joanna studied English and Liberal Arts at Norwich University. She served as an Army Officer in the 82d Airborne Division after college and later earned her MBA at Simmons College. She worked in operations management Raytheon Company for 5 years.

In 2017, she founded Downsize for Diversity under the Lincoln METCO Coordinating Committee, a 501(c) (3), which netted sales of $170,000 from 2017 to 2022. In 2022 Joanna and Marika Hamilton, Lincoln Public Schools METCO Director, co-authored a book detailing this experience, Downsize for Diversity, How We Raised $122,000 with a Pickup Truck and a Little Help from Our Friends. Downsize for Diversity ART (Anti-Racist Together) moved to the Boston Bridges Initiative in January of 2023 and has netted over $80,000 since then.

Joanna enjoys volunteering at Lovelane Special Needs Horseback Riding in Lincoln, long walks, big dogs, international travel, and most of all, her husband, Greg, son, Gage, and daughter, Aurora.

Rysen Hirata-Epstein

Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, Rysen came to Massachusetts to study Political Science and English at Boston University and the Kilachand Honors College in 2022. After his roommate’s infatuation with art led him to talk about BBI with Joanna, he would join BBI as an intern in the summer of 2024. Besides helping to update BBI’s social media and websites, he is the Secretary-General of the Hawaiʻi Pacific Model United Nations conference, Senior Managing Editor of the Boston University Pre-Law Review, an avid Wikipedia Editor, and manuscript transcriptionist and typesetter at the International Music Score Library Project.