Theme: Enquire, Explore, Engage

We are delving within ourselves this year and reflecting on who we are and how we can be agents for positive change within our surroundings. In talking about this process as a group, we came up with three observations. We need to ask questions about ourselves and the world around us, to explore the ideas that intrigue us most and to act in positive ways on the findings we develop. Using these conclusions, we came up with the theme Enquire, Explore, Engage. We sought local speakers who could present on these ideas based on their own professional/personal experiences.

Amador Theater
1155 Santa Rita Road
Amador Valley High School
Pleasanton, California, 94566
United States

Creatures of Impulse

Creatures of Impulse is an improv troupe made up of youth ages 14 - 18. They perform all kinds of improv, but mainly focus on long-form, story-based improv (plays without a script).

Madison and Jovan Perez

Madison and Jovan are students at Amador Valley High School.

Woogity Tempo

Woogity Tempo is a Ska band made up by a couple of highschoolers in Pleasanton. Members of the band are interested in all things music and all things Ska. Interests of the musicians include eating, playing music, sleeping, playing RockBand and especially talking about how they should really get some more gigs.

Alexa Ferrante

Amador Valley High School Student

Alexa Ferrante is an Italian, Puerto Rican born in New York and an AVHS sophomore. She loves to paint and to go into the great outdoors. Alexa has a bit of a different mindset than everyone else. She wonders how she can contribute to spreading the idea of thinking positively. She stumbled upon this concept when she found that she herself was not doing that. She realized that even in bad situations there was always a way to find silver linings in the world around her. Instead of letting the feeling of failure get to her, she used it to fuel a fire of positivity that she rides with into her daily battles.

Alisha Shaik

Amador Valley High School Student

Alisha Shaik is an AV junior in the Middle College program. When she is not at school, she is a poet, cat lady, former chocolate lover, and stress eater. She is also a hijabi who occasionally wears scarfs other than black. She is an aspiring doctor or medical researcher, social 
activist, and soon to be a proud owner of twelve cats.

Audrey Byrne

Bishop O’Dowd High School Student

Audrey Byrne is a rising senior at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland. She learned about social justice issues after a conference in Washington D.C, where she became interested in how policy and politics can change people’s lives. After the trip, she and her classmates started a social justice club at their school, hoping to harness the power of young people to lobby officials for change. Audrey learned about the school to prison pipeline through her internship with Genesis, a community-organizing group that worked to help get funding for Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth. Besides political issues, Audrey likes the beach, playing the same five chords on the guitar, running, and hanging out with friends.

Bob Borchers

Chief Marketing Officer – Dolby Laboratories

Bob Borchers joined Dolby Laboratories in January 2014 as Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President. He has more than 20 years of experience bringing compelling products and services to consumers in new ways and has worked at such companies as Apple, Nike, and Nokia. As part of the original iPhone® team at Apple, Bob was instrumental in the development, launch, and global expansion of the iPhone, iOS, and App Store™. While at Apple, he also led the Nike® + iPod® partnership, expanded the iPod accessory ecosystem, and forged relationships with the major auto companies to provide iPod integration. Most recently, Bob was a general partner at Opus Capital, making early stage investments in mobile software and service platforms. Prior to Apple, he spent six years at Nokia, where he cofounded and served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the Vertu business unit. Before his career in the mobile industry, Bob worked for Nike in Beaverton, Oregon, where he led efforts in

Bree Barnett Dreyfuss

Bree Barnett Dreyfuss has taught Physics at Amador Valley High School since 2005. She earned her B.S. in Physics from Cal State University, Hayward (now East Bay) with a minor in Art Studio and a Master in Teacher Leadership from St. Mary's College of Moraga. Barnett Dreyfuss is active in the Exploratorium's Teacher Institute as a Mentor and Coach to new teachers. She currently serves as Vice President of Marketing for the Northern California/ Nevada Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers. Focusing on hands-on learning and visual representation she strongly believes that the Physics education community is stronger through reflection and collaboration.

Calla Li

Calla Li is a junior at Amador Valley High School. She has been playing the Chinese zither for 9 years. In her free time, she enjoys dancing, hanging out with friends, and traveling with her family. She loves learning languages, and is fluent in both Chinese and English, and also learns Russian and French. Her favorite subject in school is French and History.

David Turner

Ph.D. Candidate and Activist-Scholar from Inglewood, California

David Turner is an activist-scholar from Inglewood, California. His educational, scholarly, and activist interests intersect at Black politics, social movements, critical consciousness, racial formation, the political economy, and gender identity. David’s primary interest is social transformation, and working with historically marginalized communities to do it. His current research projects are focused on Black youth and student organizing in the 21st century. One current project focuses on the meaning making processes of Black college students who are engaged in social movement activism. His other project is an activist-ethnographic account of student activism over the last 18 months, focusing on the tension point between critical, transformative change and liberal multiculturalism. David holds an M.S.Ed in Higher Education from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Africana Studies with a minor in Sociology from California State University, Dominguez Hills. In a profession

Edna DeVore

Director, Center for Education at SETI

Edna DeVore is the Director of Education at the SETI Institute. She’s been a researcher, planetarium director, teacher, and curriculum writer, and currently directs education projects related to astronomy, space science and SETI. Today, she leads “Reaching for the Stars: NASA Space Science for Girl Scouts,” a new project that aims to engage more girls in space science. Notable among other education projects are the “Life in the Universe” curriculum materials for students in grades 3-9 and a high school course, “Voyages Through Time”. Edna co-directed the education and public outreach programs for two NASA missions: SOFIA and Kepler, plus education programs for the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the MAVEN Mission. SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) is a modified 747 commercial jet that carries a large (2.5 m) telescope up to 45,000 feet to observe the universe in infrared wavelengths – a part of the spectrum which cannot be seen from the ground. The Kepler Mission

Jonathan Grantham

Amador Valley High School Director of Bands

Jonathan Grantham, director of bands at Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, California, leads a band program of 320 students involved in five concert ensembles, three jazz bands, a competitive marching band, various chamber ensembles, winter percussion, and two winter guards. In his fourteen years at Amador Valley the band program has grown to more than double in size and has earned consistent superior ratings and high honors. Amador Valley’s top wind ensemble performed at the CBDA state conference twice (2007, 2010), at the 2013 Midwest Clinic in Chicago, and at WASBE in the summer of 2015. Mr. Grantham is active as an adjudicator, clinician, and guest conductor. He was an executive board member for CMEA Bay Section and the Western Band Association and served for several years on the Special Projects Committee for CBDA. Mr. Grantham was a recipient of the Crystal Apple Award and was chosen as Pleasanton Unified School District’s 2012-2013 Teacher of the Year.