Capstone Conversation by Jared Asch

In this Capstone Conversation episode, host Jared discusses adult education consortia, accountability, and the role of data with Kim Jones (director, Oakland Adult and Career Education), Shruti Bharat (CEO, Campground), and Paul Rosenbloom (adult education and community college advisor). Kim describes OACE’s long-standing adult education and workforce programs (GED/diploma, ESL, citizenship, and sector training) and its many partners across colleges, K–12 districts, workforce organizations, unions, and employers, emphasizing the difficulty of tracking learners across providers and into jobs. Shruti explains Campground was built to enable secure, collaborative data sharing across networks to support pay-for-performance placement, coordinated services, and stronger outcome storytelling for regional funders. Paul outlines California’s 71 consortia structure, the need to rebrand adult schools, support adult dual enrollment and alumni engagement, and sustain collaboration through disciplined processes and dedicated connector capacity.

Host Jared Asch interviews Kristen Cooper of Grant Management Associates (GMA) about major shifts in the federal grants landscape affecting cities, nonprofits, special districts, and other agencies. Cooper shares GMA’s background and scale, then explains how funding pauses in 2025 created uncertainty that is easing as awards resume in late 2026, alongside unusually short application deadlines that require shovel-ready projects. She highlights a key process change under Executive Order 14332: increased political review of discretionary funding, making legislative outreach and letters of support more important. The conversation stresses a stronger emphasis on measurable outcomes and evidence-based reporting, strategic partnering to strengthen proposals, and careful use of AI—using it for funding identification, deep solicitation analysis, and review tools while keeping humans responsible for narratives, budgets, and technical content.

Host Jared Asch interviews Martinez Mayor Brianne Zorn at City Hall about her path from environmental scientist to councilmember and mayor (since 2022). Zorn describes major generational and diversity shifts on the council, improved district representation across the city, and a strategic plan that honors Martinez’s past while embracing innovation. She details waterfront redevelopment progress: a 2024 Trust Lands Use Plan, a new marina manager (F3), and a 24-month exclusive negotiating agreement signed in December 2025 with a developer exploring hotels as an economic driver, plus public access, BCDC input, marsh mitigation concepts, a proposed Ferry Street overpass grant, and a 66-year (potentially 99-year) state lease. Downtown strategy includes events, reaching “critical mass” of businesses, a new Vacant to Vibrant ordinance, and linking housing growth to economic development. The conversation also highlights ties to famous events, history, and invention, along with regional industrial-transition planning amid refinery-related impacts.

Host Jared Asch interviews Kristen Cooper of Grants Management Associates about major shifts in federal, state, and local grantmaking and administration following Trump administration changes and the HB 1 “Big Beautiful Bill,” focusing on accountability rather than politics. Cooper describes an OMB rewrite proposing a wholesale overhaul of 2 CFR 200 (Uniform Guidance), including explicit agency authority to terminate awards, mandatory pre-issuance political appointee review for discretionary awards, and “routine 332” conditions baked into award terms; proposals are under review with heavy public comment and likely litigation. They discuss much shorter RFP response timelines, the increased need for overt political support, and a pivot from Justice40/equity toward job creation and workforce development, including partnerships with colleges. They highlight California opportunities such as Prop 4 water and resilience funding, ongoing SRF/CDBG/HOME flows, housing grants tied to greenhouse gas reductions, public safety tech funding, and energy trends including continued EV charging incentives, hydrogen, and geothermal.

In this episode of The Capstone Conversation, host Jared speaks with Gabe Hanzel-Sella, national program director at The Growth Sector, a San Francisco-based nonprofit founded in 2008 that helps community college students access high-wage engineering degrees and careers through a structured, supported pathway. Gabe describes the organization’s engineering degree apprenticeship model, including a pre-apprenticeship summer bridge with just-in-time math support, hands-on projects, a $2,000 stipend, and ongoing coaching from student support specialists, plus paid university and employer internships that can lead to part-time work during school and full-time roles after graduation. They discuss employer partnerships such as Veolia tours to broaden career awareness, recruitment through community colleges and trusted community messengers, and a student example illustrating the long transfer path, mentorship, and eventual entry-level engineering employment. Gabe highlights a Department of Labor grant focused on civil and transportation engineering and invites public agencies and employers to partner.

In this Capstone Conversation episode, Dena Belzer of Strategic Economics discusses how East Bay cities can drive innovation and economic development while meeting RHNA housing requirements and deciding when to preserve or repurpose industrial and older office properties. She explains that many “warehouse” buildings are flexible assets that can support a range of uses, and advises cities to avoid overly prescriptive zoning, focusing instead on compatibility, hazards, and health and safety while allowing flexibility in uses and parking. Belzer describes how inflation and tariffs raise construction costs and create capital-market uncertainty, complicating housing feasibility as incomes lag rent growth, and outlines shifting regional demand that reconcentrates activity near core innovation hubs. She shares findings from Solano County strategic planning on targeting middle-wage job growth through better regional positioning, supply-chain development (including Travis AFB), and stronger subregional collaboration, emphasizing that housing supply is essential to economic development and that data centers require more nuanced understanding.

Host Jared Asch interviews Luz Gomez, board chair of EastBay Municipal Utility District (East Bay MUD), about East Bay water and wastewater issues. Gomez explains East Bay MUD’s mission to provide high-quality, affordable water with environmental stewardship, its 100+ yearhistory, and major infrastructure including the 1927 Pardee Dam on the Mokelumne River and three 90-mile aqueducts nearing 100 years old that requirecement relining to prevent corrosion. She notes East Bay MUD serves 1.5 millionpeople with about 2,200 employees and seven elected directors. Conservation haslowered per-capita use, aided by low-flow fixtures and lawn-to-drought-tolerantconversions. She describes recycled water “purple pipe” partnerships (DURWA)and planned expansion with Central San. Gomez discusses statewide watervulnerability, climate-change impacts (algae blooms, silt from atmosphericrivers), capital upgrades to treatment plants, groundwater banking via theDREAM project, drought-transfer agreements, technology for leak/earthquakesensing, and advises residents to store a week of water for earthquakes and understand shydrants annually.

Jared Asch and Josh Broward co-host a joint episode discussing how startups sell and scale in government (GovTech). Jared, a consultant helping cities and private companies with economic development, land use, and GovTech sales, and Josh, founder of Wisdom Partners and a leadership coach with a PhD in organizational leadership, emphasize that governments care less about product features and more about problem-solving, risk reduction, and accountability. They recommend early pilots—sometimes free or via conditional contracts tied to success metrics—to build case studies, de-risk adoption, and create internal champions who understand procurement realities. They outline fundraising stages (angel, pre-seed, seed, A and beyond) and note GovTech is hard to sell but sticky once adopted. Scaling advice includes targeting repeatable customer profiles, starting small (“minnows”) before “whales,” focusing geographically, and maintaining founder relationships post-sale. They also introduce Startup Walnut Creek, building an East Bay innovation hub focused on sports and health tech, with an October competition and partnerships with institutions and investors.

Host Jared Asch interviews Jonathan Bash, CEO of Locunity, about how local information is changing as Bay Area newspapers lost most of their journalists after private equity consolidation, creating gaps in coverage of councils, boards, and special districts. Bash explains how Locunity uses AI to download and transcribe public meeting videos, ingest agendas, and convert them into structured data that powers free city newsletters plus alerts, roundups, briefings, and reports with quotes tied to source video for “ground truth.” The platform helps residents, advocacy groups, government relations teams, and journalists quickly identify relevant issues across many jurisdictions and beats. They discuss shifting media habits, declining social media usefulness amid bots and AI content, and the rise of AI-driven information retrieval. Bash describes Locunity’s growth to about 120 Bay Area jurisdictions plus Louisville, its funding via mission-aligned angel investors, and plans to scale nationally. 

Host Jared Asch discusses organ donation—especially kidney transplants—in the Greater Bay Area with advocate Maggie Jacobs and caregiver Bob. Maggie shares how her husband, diagnosed in 2018 with FSGS, needed a kidney quickly due to 5–9 year deceased-donor waits in California; they found a living donor by widely sharing his story on social media (not directly asking for a kidney), and he is now thriving after a transplant. She later donated a kidney herself and explains dialysis burdens, plus paired exchange, swap/chain, and voucher programs, noting only about 1 in 20 questionnaire respondents may be viable donors. Bob describes his son Johnny’s renal failure discovered after dangerously high blood pressure, five years on dialysis, limits on work and travel, and efforts with CPMC/Sutter to find a donor while addressing heart and liver issues; he promotes CPMCKidneyDonor.org. They cite national need (about 90,000 waiting) and urge routine lab work because kidney disease is often caught late.