Anita Jones Roehrick
Co-Founder, Executive Director
Anita is a Writer/Visual Artist/Storyteller, born and raised in Albany, Georgia. She has a Fine Arts degree from Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. In the early 90s, writing and illustrating children’s stories lead Anita to oral tradition storytelling, working in San Francisco Bay Area schools as an artist-in-residence and tailoring storytelling programs for libraries, corporations and private clients. In 2002 she and husband, Rob, co-founded Gaines-Jones Scholars in memory of her mother, father and sister who all passed away in the 1990s.
Robert M. Roehrick
Co-Founder & Trustee
Rob is a retired Graphic Artist and principal of Roehrick Design, a communications design studio (1993-2021) in the San Francisco Bay Area. He collaborated with a variety of for-profit and non-profit clientele, creating innovative solutions to promote their organizations. In retirement, he returned to his potter’s wheel.
Rob’s professional design experience prior to 1993 included staff positions in the firms Destiny Two (Minneapolis), Lance Wyman, LTD (New York), Ace Design, and Phippen Design Group (San Francisco). He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Macalester College in 1981 and a Master of Science (Communications Design) degree from Pratt Institute in 1987.
Flora B. Devine
Founding Board Member
University Attorney and Title XI Coordinator at Savannah State University, the oldest HCBU in Georgia. During her career, Flora has practiced law across many sectors including federal and local government, private industry, and higher education. Her career in education includes executive-level leadership positions in legal affairs, mediation and conflict resolution, diversity leadership, and cultural competence.
John Alphonso-Gibbs
Board Member
John is semiconductor professional with a Silicon Valley career that spans more than 25 years. He earned an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree in Electrical Engineer from Howard University. His many adventures in the high-tech field of microelectronics have included projects in a variety of industries including aerospace, consumer electronics, silicon sensors, biomedical devices, and toys.
John has led and mentored teams of engineers across the country and on multiple continents. Dedicated to making STEM careers accessible to all, John also works part time as a Math and Engineering Instructor at Bay Area Community Colleges.
Timothy Hardwick
Gaines-Jones Scholar & Board Member
Tim’s educational and professional careers have provided him a wealth of experiences both locally and abroad. As a Middle Grades Education major at Albany State University (2012), he had the opportunity to teach in Ghana West Africa (2011), then taught fifth grade at Radium Springs Elementary, followed by the Data and Technology Specialist position at Monroe Comprehensive High School in Albany, Georgia.
As of 2026, Tim is the Vice Principal at Radium Springs Middle School in Albany, Georgia. He was also the very first Gaines-Jones Scholar in 2004 and joined the Board in 2017.
Natasha Singh
Board Member
Natasha has over 20 years of experience working with young people, families, and schools. She holds an M.Ed. in Human Sexuality and has taught at Rutgers University and independent schools across the country. Her work focuses on helping students develop sexual/relational ethics and critical consent literacy.
Beyond the classroom, Natasha champions justice and sexual harm prevention through board service, including Freedom Forward, a San Francisco–based organization working to prevent the sexual exploitation of minors. She previously co-chaired the board of the Center for Domestic Peace, an organization dedicated to ending domestic violence and promoting healthy relationships in Marin County. She is also the co-founder of Asha Rising, a nonprofit that provides permanent housing for elderly survivors of sex trafficking in Kolkata, India.
Natasha is a recent recipient of the Humanitarian Award from the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists for her work in the field of human sexuality. Her writing has appeared in various publications including The Modern Love Column of The New York Times, The Atlantic, ThreePenny Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Brevity, Hippocampus, and South Asia Review.
Monica Viggiano
Board Member
Monica Viggiano is an Academic Tutor at Florida State College at Jacksonville from which she holds an Associate of Arts degree.
She brings 25 years of customer service experience and received an English degree at FSC in June 2018.
Miranda (Roehrick) Freund
Advisory Board
The only daughter to Anita and Rob, Miranda is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area; graduated from Marin Academy in San Rafael, CA in 2013. She went on to Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, graduating with a B.S. in Psychology in 2017. She recently got married in Napa Valley to her long-term partner, Andreas, and is settling back into the Bay Area after spending four years living in Manhattan.
Professionally, Miranda has been a career marketer for nearly eight years. Her work focuses on connecting with audiences and scaling foundational communities in the early-stage space (primarily pre-seed to series A startups). With a background spanning across fashion & lifestyle, health & wellness, consumer social, interior design & home, and cybersecurity, she brings an array of perspectives to her campaign strategy and brand development projects.
Miranda grew up watching her parents create and manage the foundation. When she turned 13, they charged her with getting involved. One month later, she organized friends to create a Gaines-Jones Junior Board of Directors with a mission to “Help others locally and globally.” They chose the name, Positive Impulse. For five years they raised money and designed programs for homeless adults and children in Marin County and made donations to Heifer International.
Abraham Johnson
Advisory Board
Abraham Johnson is a native of Albany, Georgia, and an alumnus of Monroe High School. Since 2011, Abraham has been an active and proud Gaines-Jones Scholar, and joined the Board in 2018.
In 2015, he earned a BS in Biology from Savannah State University where he also served as a peer educator and Vice President of Collegiate 100 Black Men of Savannah State. In 2018 Abraham earned his Masters of Public Health with a concentration in Community Health Education from Georgia Southern University. Abraham now resides in North Carolina where he works for an international NGO supporting community engagement for HIV clinical trials.
Robert Jones
Founding & Advisory Board
Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A native of Dawson, Georgia, Robert was a founding member of the GJEF Board. He earned a bachelor’s degree in agronomy from Fort Valley State College, a master of science degree in crop physiology from the University of Georgia, and a doctorate in crop physiology from the University of Missouri, Columbia. For 34 years he worked at the University of Minnesota, where he had most recently served as senior vice president for academic administration since 2004. Before that, Robert spent more than 15 years in several key administrative leadership positions at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. In January 2013 he became the 19th president of U of Albany (New York). On September 2016 he became Chancellor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. And yes, Anita and Robert are cousins!
Cynthia Ladd-Viti
Advisory Board
Cynthia is the Assistant Director of the Office for Graduate Diversity at the University of California, Berkeley. As a proud Cal alumna, she has worked for over 18 years to increase the access and academic success of diverse students on the Berkeley campus—with a focus on first-generation, historically underrepresented, BIPOC, LGBTQ, undocumented, system-impacted scholars and those with disabilities or from educationally and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Her role includes outreach, recruitment, admissions advising, building and supporting graduate student networks, and developing programs and methods for increasing the pool of diverse applicants to all UCB graduate and professional programs.
A long-time resident of Marin County, California, she is the mother of two; both graduates of Columbia University in New York City. Cynthia served many years on the Gaines-Jones Board of Directors before moving to Advisory.