Team
Kareem Weaver, Co-Founder and Executive Director
Kareem Weaver is a Co-Founder and Executive Director of FULCRUM, which partners with stakeholders to improve reading results for students. He is the Oakland NAACP's 2nd Vice President and Chair of its Education Committee; his advocacy is featured in the upcoming film The Right to Read.
Mr. Weaver previously served as New Leaders’ Executive Director of the Western Region and was an award-winning teacher and administrator. He has undergraduate degrees from Morehouse College and a master’s in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina. Mr. Weaver believes in the potential of all students, the brotherhood of man, and the importance of service above self. His educational heroine, for literacy instruction, is the late Marva Collins.
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Liza Finkelstein, Co-Founder
Liza taught ESL, English and Literacy intervention in Hunter’s Point and the Mission district for SFUSD.
Liza has continued to work toward high quality, equitable education for all by serving for almost a decade on the advisory board of New Leaders, a national non-profit that recruits and trains catalytic leaders for transformative change in underserved urban public schools.
Carrie Simon, Director of Growth
Carrie’s arrival at FULCRUM follows 5 years of leadership in several organizations, including Defy Ventures and the CROP Organization, that support people who are leaving prison integrate back into their communities.
Carrie’s desire to put a stop to the “school-to-prison pipeline” led her to literacy – one of the most effective ways to increase an individual’s ability to thrive in the information age.
Carrie's strengths include strategy, project management, and operations. Prior to her work in social justice, Carrie spent more than a dozen disenchanted years in the asset management industry in New York City and San Francisco.
Trinity Hansen, Administrative Coordinator
As Administrative Coordinator, Trinity manages all of the Executive Director’s public engagements and ensures alignment with FULCRUM’s national and local strategies. In addition, Trinity provides administrative support to the leadership team on matters of finance, communications, and special projects.
Prior to FULCRUM, Trinity worked in various programmatic and project management roles at non-profit organizations based in San Diego and Denver. Her passion lies at the nexus between social justice and sustainability, with an emphasis on underserved, underrepresented, and underestimated groups. She strongly believes championing early literacy as a civil right is critical to empowering all.