Hi, I’m Jason. I’m Co-Executive Director at the Arlene & Michael Rosen Foundation, where I support my team to do three things to help increase access to behavioral healthcare across California: (1) give away money; (2) get people in a room together: (3) and peddle policy ideas. The fourth, unofficial thing I do is make sure the Foundation eventually runs out of money on purpose. We’re scheduled to spend ourselves cheerfully out of existence.
I arrived in philanthropy by way of a long and meandering path. I started out helping adults with disabilities find and keep housing and jobs, which remains the most useful work I’ve ever done. Then I was a tax lawyer for a bit, which I enjoyed more than is socially acceptable to admit. Then a public policy lawyer focused on housing and homelessness, then a stint in local government designing and improving service systems, which is a polite way of saying I attended a great many meetings. Then a data dude, turning spreadsheets into strategy. For my next role, I’m training to be a therapist. So far no two jobs have shared much of a skill set. I’ve chosen to call that range.
Outside of work I’m raising one small human, share custody of two dogs, and I bake elaborate, structurally ambitious cakes that I am told are “a lot.”