Board of Trustees

An immigrant from Hong Kong at the age of twelve, Dr. Ben Lui and his family received health care from the very same health care safety net to which he has devoted his entire career since graduating from Yale Medical School and the SFGH Internal Medicine Primary Care Residency Program. He is currently the Chief Medical Informatics Officer for On Lok Lifeways, an organization dedicated to serving and caring for frail seniors in its Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). During his stint at the San Francisco Department of Public Health as Chief of Community Primary Care and Director of Community Integrated Health Care, Dr. Lui led system transformation work to enhance the health network’s capabilities to address patients’ social needs. As Director of Chinatown Public Health Center, he served and advocated for a primarily immigrant population, most of whom were socioeconomically disadvantaged and culturally isolated.  He believes health care is a right and not a privilege, and feels honored to work in the safety net to help those patients most in need.  

Dr. Lui is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and an Assistant Clinical Professor at UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital.  His board experience includes serving as President of the Board of Directors of NICOS Chinese Health Coalition, and as a board member of On Lok Senior Health Services.

At CAIS, Ben is a member of the Pandemic Response Advisory Team and has been serving as an Admission Docent since 2016. In addition, he was a member of the Task Force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. A Harvard University graduate with a concentration in East Asian Studies, Dr. Lui appreciates the beauty, balance, and power of an education infused with the best of the East and West. He has happily found this beauty and balance in CAIS for his children, Georgiana (Class of 2024) and Declan (Class of 2028).

Ben serves on the Executive Committee, the Audit and Risk Management Committee, and the Finance Committee.

Board Secretary Alda Leu Dennis is a venture capital investor at Initialized Capital. She was born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas and moved to the Bay Area in high school.  

Alda began her career as a financial analyst at The Walt Disney Company. Then, she practiced as an attorney as a litigator at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, and in-house counsel at Clarium Capital and Founders Fund. After that, Alda moved on to be COO of a start-up called Airtime. Thereafter, she served as managing director of 137 Ventures, a later-stage venture firm. She graduated from Stanford with degrees in economics and political science, and a JD from UCLA.

Alda and her husband, Hilary, are happy CAIS parents. They have a son and daughter who are Class of 2025 and a daughter who is Class of 2028.

Alda serves on the Executive Committee, Advancement Committee, Facilities Committee, and the 19th Avenue Campus Sub-Committee.

Chris Foley grew up in Indiana, and joined the Navy to run nuclear power plants. The NAS Alameda was his last duty station. Following his discharge in 1987, Chris moved to San Francisco, where he owned and operated the Start to Finish bicycle stores until he sold the company in 1997. He is currently a partner at the real estate brokerage Polaris Pacific, where he specializes in land sales and entitlement. Chris is also the founder and CEO of the Market on Market, a food hall in the Twitter building. When his daughter,now an alumna of the Class of 2021, started at CAIS, Chris told the school he was always available to help. Eventually he was approached to join the board to advise on real estate and development matters. Chris’ hobbies include traveling the world, especially to Asia, eating great food, bicycling, hiking and spending as much time as possible with his daughter.

Chris serves as Vice Chair of the National Center for International Schools (NCIS) Committee, and serves on the Facilities Committee and the 19th Avenue Campus Sub-Committee.

Emily He is a Silicon Valley technology executive with experiences leading go-to-market functions in both private and public companies, including Microsoft, Oracle, Siebel Systems (now Oracle), and Saba Software (now Cornerstone OnDemand). She is known as a thought leader on topics such as the future of work, digital transformation, and inclusive leadership, and passionate about using technology innovations to solving real-world problems and transforming industries.

Paul Kocher grew up in Corvallis, Oregon and received a B.S. in biology from Stanford University. Excitement about the technology industry sidetracked his plan of becoming a veterinarian, and he became a cryptographer instead. Paul’s technical work includes co-authoring the SSL 3.0 protocol (which encrypts web connections when the “lock” icon is shown) and many other projects related to Internet and device security. He founded the company Cryptography Research, Inc. in 1995, which became a division of Rambus when it was acquired in 2011. He also co-founded ValiCert, has advised multiple technology start-ups, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009. Paul is honored and excited to serve on the CAIS board for many reasons, including the school’s unique role in fostering bridges between the U.S. and China, which he hopes will be a foundation for global friendships, business relationships, and diplomatic relations in the years ahead.

Paul chairs the Facilities Committee, co-chairs the 19th Avenue Campus Sub-Committee, and is treasurer for the National Center for Independent Schools (NCIS) Committee. He also serves on the Finance Committee and the Pandemic Response Advisory Team.

Jon’s daughter Aly is a student in the Class of 2025. A Bay Area native, Jon has enjoyed the challenging ride through the many cycles of commercial real estate in the region for more than 20 years with ground-up development, building rehabilitation, and asset repositioning. As the CEO of his firm Urban Land Development (ULD), he has been the visionary force behind the conception, design, and realization of the company’s portfolio of real estate projects in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also serves on the Board of Directors and Investment Committee for Urban Land Capital, a fund providing investors with a diversified portfolio of select assets which would typically only be reserved for institutional investors.

Never satisfied with simply participating in the industry and strongly believing that communities are best served when developments include cultural arts and related enhancement projects, Jon leads the effort at ULD to develop community relationships and provide a base for retail entrepreneurship, enabling future opportunities for local and regional populations. Included in the many organizations he supports are Jacob’s Heart, Children’s Cancer Support Services, Community Arts Stabilization Trust, APACC, United Playaz, and the ABADA-Capoeira Arts Center. And, of course, CAIS! 

Jon’s degree is a B.S. in Environmental Toxicology from the University of California, Davis, which underscores his commitment to protecting the natural environment and ensuring a safe and sustainable project.

Jon serves on the Facilities Committee and the 19th Avenue Campus Sub-Committee.

Mr. Mueller served as a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State for 32 years specializing in U.S. relations with China and Asia.  The culmination of his career was as American Consul General to Hong Kong from 1993 to 1996, leading the 400-person Consulate General. These were the formative years leading up to Hong Kong’s reversion to China in 1997.

Following his career with the State Department, Mr. Mueller began a second career in education. In 1998 Mr. Mueller became Head of School of Northfield Mount Hermon School, a college preparatory boarding high school in Massachusetts. During his seven-year tenure he deepened the school’s historic commitment to global education, particularly to China and Asia, and led the strategic planning and decision-making to become a smaller school of 650 students on one campus rather than two. He then served from 2005 to 2010 as Head of School of Hong Kong International School, a pre-K through grade 12 school with a diverse, global student body of over 2500 students. Most recently he served as Head of School of Shanghai American School, a 3,000-student international Pre-K through 12 school on two campuses.

Mr. Mueller’s diplomatic career included assignments to Asia and the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. At the Department he worked at a senior level for Secretary of State George Shultz coordinating the worldwide work of the State Department and subsequently for Secretary James Baker carrying out the President’s national security agenda with Congress. Earlier in his career Mr. Mueller worked for and traveled with Secretary Henry Kissinger. The highlight of that assignment was meeting his future wife, Claire, who was also a career diplomat.

In the early years of his career, after two years of Chinese language training, he and Claire were assigned to the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing from 1976 to 1978. They were there to witness the events surrounding Chairman Mao Zedong’s passing, the end of the Cultural Revolution, and the subsequent launching of economic reform under Deng Xiaoping. Previously he had studied Vietnamese for a year and then served two assignments to the American Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam. 

Mr. Mueller also served at the American Consulate General in Hong Kong in the 1980’s as Chief of the Economic Section and earlier on the team which negotiated the first US-PRC trade agreement. He was also Director of the Asia Society Hong Kong Center from 1996 to 1998, an educational non-profit organization building understanding among the peoples of Asia and the U.S.  He has traveled widely throughout Asia and seen firsthand the transformation of China and other Asian countries. 

Mr. Mueller has served on several non-profit education boards of trustees, including a previous term on the CAIS board and Hong Kong International School. 

Mr. and Mrs. Mueller have two sons.  Jonathan and family live in Colorado, and Eric and family live in San Francisco. The Muellers are proud grandparents of five young grandchildren, Jackson, Katherine, Clara, Allison, and Gillian.

Sara Roberts is currently an Executive Director in the Advisory Services practice of Ernst & Young LLP with a focus in Strategy, Organizational Culture, and Purpose-Led Transformation. Prior to EY, she was Founder and CEO of Roberts Golden, a boutique consultancy, where her team and she advised on organizational strategy and culture transformation efforts for nearly a quarter of the Fortune 100 as well as many other large brands and NGOs. Her deep area of expertise is helping organizations get clear on their purpose and how to align and activate it to drive their most pressing strategic imperatives. She has been known as a “go-to” person when companies are looking to become more customer-centric, innovative, and agile in the way they operate.

Sara is an accomplished author and her latest book, Nimble, Focused, Feisty: Organizational Cultures that Win in the New Era and How to Create Them, was published in August of last year. This book outlines her perspective that in the most successful “new era” companies a customer-centric purpose is what focuses their organization in order to drive results. She is also the co-author of the best-selling book, Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers. She is a frequent keynote speaker and workshop presenter at top events including Gartner, The Conference Board, and the Association for Corporate Growth on the topics of transformation, purpose, and culture and has been quoted and featured in numerous publications including BusinessWeek, Fast Company, and Forbes.

Sara has extensive board experience having previously been the board chair for Drawbridge, an arts program for homeless children, and Family Builders by Adoption which places hard-to-adopt children in loving homes.

She is mom to Vinn Schumann, Class of 2024, who began at CAIS in his first year of Pre-K.

Sara serves on the Advancement Committee.

Darren is the father of Claire (Class of 2024) and Willy (Class of 2026).  He grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the Bay Area to attend UC Berkeley where he received a B.S. in environmental economics. He obtained a M.P.P. degree from Harvard, an M.D. from Stanford, and he did residency training in internal medicine at UCSF. While at UCSF, he met his wife, Stefani Wedl, who is now a Hospitalist physician at CPMC. Darren is currently the CEO of Apixio, a healthcare technology start-up that uses artificial intelligence to mine medical records to improve care quality. During his career, he has held executive roles in managed care and healthcare technology companies.  In his free time, Darren continues to pursue his rock star dreams as a drummer in a local band.  He is honored to serve on the Board and support CAIS and its parent community.

Darren serves on the Audit and Risk Management Committee and the Finance Committee.