BCE Welcomes New President-Elect after Milestone Year
- bcemarketing
- Aug 19
- 4 min read
President Jen Faber welcomes Pooja Shah as incoming President Elect to help her lead the organization forward.
When Jen Faber joined the Burlingame Community for Education Foundation (BCE) Board in early 2020, she had no idea she was beginning a leadership journey that would span six years, including four as President, and help guide the foundation through the pandemic as well as record-setting milestones. Faber’s introduction to BCE came when Hoover Elementary needed a site director in February 2020. She had just moved to Burlingame and was eager to get involved in the community.
“I had just moved to Burlingame and was really excited about the work that Burlingame was doing with its public school district,” Faber recalls. “I also was just really curious to understand how all of the pieces work together in Burlingame to make our schools so great, so I got involved.” She served as Hoover’s Site Director for the 2020–21 school year before stepping into the President Elect role in 2021–22, learning the ropes from then-President Craig Darling. In 2022, she became President, a role she has continued to hold well beyond the typical two-year term.
During her tenure, Faber has helped BCE achieve some of its most significant milestones. She is particularly proud of awarding the largest-ever grant to the Burlingame School District ($3.035 million for the 2025–26 school year), and to the progress made with BCE’s Endowment. “This was the first year that we were able to pull money from our Endowment, and that was really a special milestone for BCE and for Burlingame School District as a whole,” Faber says. “Seeding the Endowment to $2 million was a goal that had started at the Endowment’s inception in 2015, and we hit that 10 years later.”
Recruiting a new president-elect has been one of Faber’s most important priorities in recent years. “It’s very important for an organization that is run on volunteers to have regular changeover so we are able to pivot and manage shifts in the needs of the community,” she explains. Finding that next leader wasn’t easy in the years following the pandemic, when many organizations experienced a dip in volunteer participation. Persistence has paid off. After a long search, Faber is thrilled to have found the right partner to help lead BCE into its next chapter. Enter Pooja Shah, someone Jen has had her eye on for years. “I’ve been trying to recruit Pooja for four years,” Jen says, “so I’m super excited to partner with her and president with her for this year, and then pass the baton so that she can take the reins!”
Pooja Shah brings to BCE a rare combination of strategic expertise, deep community involvement, and a lifelong commitment to public education. Born and raised in Sunnyvale, she is a proud product of public schools, and credits that experience for shaping her values today. “I am a beneficiary of a high-quality public education in the Bay Area,” she says, “and it is my personal crusade to ensure that every kid, especially in our home district, is able to benefit from that same level of outstanding public education that I received.”
Her career began in investment banking and corporate development, but a desire to make a lasting impact led her to the nonprofit education sector, where she has led finance and strategy for organizations dedicated to expanding equitable access to education for low-income families. Since moving to Burlingame in 2019 with her husband, Vivek, and their two children (now in sixth grade at BIS, and second grade at McKinley) Shah has thrown herself into community life. She’s served as the National Board Chair of Playworks, Board Treasurer for a public charter school, PTA Co-President, and even as the first woman to join the McKinley Dad’s Club Softball Team.
Looking ahead, Shah is eager to make BCE board leadership and volunteering with BCE attractive to a broad range of community members. “I want to find out how we can make the volunteer board leadership and involvement something that is attractive to anyone and everyone,” she says. “I want to explore ways to make it feel accessible and sustainable.”
She’s also focused on building on BCE’s recent momentum. “The growth in engagement BCE has seen over the last year is so exciting, and we know we’re also still missing out on a huge percentage of our population. I want to understand why, and help bring those folks along their own BCE journey. Even if we can increase our donor community by ten percent, that will be incredible progress. Ultimately, her vision is for BCE to be something every Burlingame resident engages and supports.
“I want BCE to be a well-understood, well-respected, and well-valued organization that every member of the Burlingame community can speak intelligently about. I want them to understand the full context of why BCE matters, and also get behind that why.” - Pooja Shah, BCE President Elect
Looking ahead, Faber and Shah are eager to keep growing the BCE community while making sure the organization stays strong for years to come. They’re teaming up to explore new ideas, like co-leadership in the President role, that could make it easier for future leaders to step in. “This is a chance to experiment and we might have to iterate,” Shah said. “But I’d love to use this opportunity to collaborate on what the structure of these roles could look like, so that it’s easier for us to recruit leaders in the future.”
They’re clear on one more thing: it’s got to be fun. “You draw people in by showing you can deliver on a mission, and by showing how much fun the work can be,” Faber said. With BCE, they promise, you’ll find both. With Jen and Pooja at the helm, BCE’s future looks bright, and super fun!
