About BimBam

Sam Baker

As Senior Vice President of SpringHill Ventures, Sam is involved in all aspects of managing the Company’s real estate development projects. Within his role on the executive team, Sam plays a key part in molding and implementing the strategic direction of SpringHill’s developments. Sam also oversees all financial activities and analysis for the organization and manages and coordinates third party contractors, including contract negotiation, scopes of work and development plan implementation. Sam has over 15 years of experience in real estate finance, private equity investment, asset management and accounting. Prior to joining SpringHill Ventures, he spent 10+ years in New York working for BofA Merrill Lynch, Clarion Partners and Blackpoint Partners. Sam oversaw investment management functions for these private equity and development firms specializing in opportunistic retail, office, multi-family and land investments. Throughout, he has directed leasing, construction and property management activities, representing both active and passive stakeholders, for properties and portfolios across the country. Overall, he has been a major contributor in the acquisition and value-creation of over 10 million sf of real estate with a combined value of over $2.5 billion.

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Sam earned his MBA from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Tulane University. Sam currently lives in Mill Valley where he and his wife are tirelessly trying to get their three young daughters to love the outdoors as much as they do.

Lisa Colton

Lisa Colton is the Chief Learning Officer at See3 Communications, and the founder and president of Darim Online. Her works centers around how nonprofits align themselves for success in the digital age, with a particular emphasis in the Jewish community. Much of Lisa’s energy focuses on helping people and organizations innovate, and helping innovators mature and strengthen their work.

Lisa is a graduate of Stanford University, and attended The Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and Livnot U’lehibanot. Lisa lives in Seattle, WA with her family, where she’s a partner of the Kavana Cooperative, and is currently fostering a bunny named Caesar.

Andrew Gordon

Andrew Gordon has been animating characters professionally for over 20 years. He joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1997 where he has animated on A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2 and 3, Monsters Inc, Monster U. Finding Nemo, Finding Dory, The Incredibles and Ratatouille among many others. The characters he has helped lead include Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Gill, from Finding Nemo and Edna Mode, the costume designer in “The Incredibles.” He was Supervising animator for the academy award nominated short “Presto” and directing animator on Monsters University and a Toy Story TV special. Andrew is currently the director for ancillary material for the film “Incredibles 2.”

Mr. Gordon studied animation in Vancouver, NY and NJ, and prior to his work at Pixar, he worked at Warner Bros. Classics. He was awarded “Outstanding Character Animation in an Animated Motion Picture” by the Visual Effects Society for his work in Finding Nemo. Andrew has an interest in creative spaces, creating many of the secret spaces at Pixar such as the Love Lounge, Lucky 7 lounge and Hearth Lounge. Andrew also teaches animation and storytelling around the world including classes for businesses, working with such companies as Sales Force, Pinterest, Deloitte and IDEO. He co-founded a school called The Animation Collaborative, and helped start the most popular program at California College of Art.

Ralph Guggenheim

As a founding member of Pixar, the pioneering computer animation company, Ralph was Vice President of Feature Animation.  At Pixar he managed the growth and development of the studio from seven people in 1986 to more than 350 employees in 1997.  Among his many accomplishments, Ralph produced Toy Story for Pixar and Disney.  This computer animated feature film, produced for $30 million, grossed over $350 million worldwide and is among the most successful animated films ever produced. Subsequently, Ralph was an Executive Producer at Electronic Arts, the computer game manufacturer, where he produced Majestic, an innovative online episodic experience that established the Internet as a storytelling medium.

At Alligator Planet, Ralph supervises the production of all projects, including relationships with offshore production studios.  He produced two computer animated feature films for the direct-to-DVD market in 2004 and 2005: Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie and Casper’s Scare School, both for Classic Media, Inc.  These projects required his coordination of a multinational team spanning Australia, India, Los Angeles, London and New York.  Each 75-minute film was produced in less than 16 months from script to delivery.

Ralph produced the first season of Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, working closely with the show’s creator and a small team based in San Francisco.  Subsequently, he produced a pilot for the Fox TV series Bob’s Burgers, picked up by Fox for a 13-episodes first season.

Miriam Heller-Stern

Dr. Miriam Heller Stern is National Director of the School of Education of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, based at the Rhea Hirsch School in Los Angeles.  She supervises a menu of graduate programs in education at HUC-JIR, designed to prepare and advance educators at all stages of their careers. Dr. Stern earned her Ph.D. in education policy and practice and her MA in history from Stanford University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow.

Dr. Stern serves as a coach, mentor and advisor to Jewish educational leaders, institutions and initiatives across the United States. She has taught courses on educational vision/philosophy of education, curriculum development, practitioner research, social foundations of education, and the arts in Jewish education.  She has published widely and is a frequent presenter at academic and professional conferences for educators.

Dr. Stern serves on the advisory boards of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation’s Community Teen Initiative, theatre dybbuk, the Jewish Montessori Society, the Jewish Lens, and education committees of the Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Jewish Education and the Network for Research in Jewish Education Awards Committee. Previously, she was Dean of American Jewish University (AJU) Graduate Center for Jewish Education in Los Angeles where she founded Dream Lab, a teaching fellowship and catalyst for artist educators to deepen their professional practice as educators. Together with her husband Jonathan, she proudly channels her interest in creativity into parenting their three elementary and middle-school aged children, Elijah, Judah and Zoe.

Sarah Lefton, Founder

Sarah is a graduate of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a Pomegranate Prize winning Jewish educator and an uncompromising creative director with experience at the New York Times, Grey Advertising and several media and entertainment tech start-ups, bringing commercial technology and design skills to bear in the nonprofit world. Her work has been featured on NPR, in the Wall Street Journal and CNN.com. A recipient of the Joshua Venture Group fellowship for Jewish social entrepreneurs, she was named one of the “Forward 50” most influential Jews by the Forward newspaper.

Roman Polnar

Galyn Susman, President

Galyn is a producer at Pixar Animation Studios. She joined the company in 1990 working on TV commercial production as a technical director, animator, and producer. Her first work on a feature film was for Toy Story, where she modeled, shaded, and supervised lighting. Galyn continued in the technical disciplines until 2003 when she joined the crew of Ratatouille as Associate Producer. After the film’s completion she produced live action documentaries and short films for DVDs as well as two Toy Story television specials.

Before arriving at Pixar, Galyn was conducting graphics research and development at Apple, where she was a part of the team that made a short film entirely on Macintosh computers. She cites this project as the tipping point for choosing her current career. Galyn is a graduate of Brown University and lives with her husband and children in Piedmont.