Julia Vetromile

Julia Vetromile cares deeply about racial justice, civil rights, and protection of the environment. As a native San Franciscan, she witnessed the destruction of the Fillmore District in the 60s and 70s. She is the co-lead for the Criminal Justice and Prison Reform Committee, particularly focused on reentry for the formerly incarcerated. An active member of Congregation Emanuel, Julia is a retired chemical engineer with a B.S. from University of California.

Bobby Jones-Hanley

Bobby Jones-Hanley is a visionary social justice leader, movement strategist, and bridge-builder between philanthropy, government, and grassroots organizing. With deep expertise in political education and thought partnership, Bobby creates spaces where key stakeholders move beyond learning into action. Leveraging his lived experience and an expansive network, he drives strategic collaborations that shift power, resources, and influence to justice-involved, BIPOC, and marginalized communities—building a movement for transformative change.

As a system-impacted leader with over 30 years in the criminal justice system, Bobby has dedicated his life to dismantling barriers and creating opportunities for those most impacted by systemic inequities. He is the founder of Pure1.org, a national reentry support network and resource hub that connects individuals—both pre- and post-release—to the tools and networks they need to successfully rebuild their lives. Recognizing the power of prevention, Bobby also launched the award-winning Triumph Journey, a trauma-informed youth empowerment program designed to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. Through a curriculum of evidence-based techniques, Triumph Journey guides participants toward healing, transformation, and self-authorship—teaching them to become the heroes of their own lives through the power of storytelling.

For the past 5.5 years, Bobby has been a driving force in workforce development across the San Francisco Bay Area and currently serves as the Director of Reentry for CROP, an organization revolutionizing California’s approach to criminal justice reform through innovative and holistic reentry solutions. He is a co-chair of the Legislation, Policy, and Practices subcommittee of San Francisco’s Reentry Council and serves on the Strategic Leadership Advisory Team of Excell Network, which empowers the formerly incarcerated through higher education. His commitment to systemic change extends to his work coaching Stanford students in prosecutorial reform at Stanford’s Extreme D.School.

Bobby’s leadership reaches across sectors, from his role on the San Francisco Black & Jewish Unity Coalition Steering Committee, where he also co-chairs the Criminal Justice & Prison Reform Committee, to his membership in the T.E.A.M. Leadership Huddle, an elite coalition of military leaders, professional athletes, and community organizers dedicated to maximizing impact.

Through bold vision, strategic action, and an unrelenting commitment to justice, Bobby is reshaping narratives, shifting power, and building pathways for equity, opportunity, and lasting change.

Jason Mitchell

Jason Mitchell is one of those people who's always had a knack for understanding the big stuff—like power, justice, and why confronting hard truths is so much harder when you're from a place of privilege. Growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, with two very progressive Jewish parents, he didn’t have much of a choice but to learn about inequality, systemic racism, and how uncomfortable it can be when people who look like you are the ones benefiting from it. But hey, Jason took it all in stride, and instead of letting it crush his spirit, he turned it into his life’s work with a deep rooted commitment to justice, growth, and understanding. His intersectional approach, combining his Jewish heritage with a passion for confronting structural inequalities, has led him to work alongside a variety of organizations, including those focused on racial justice, Palestinian solidarity, and broader systemic issues like militarism and extreme capitalism. When he’s not helping individuals or organizations work through their biggest issues, he’s probably collaborating, protesting and speaking out with groups like SURJ, JVP, and Breaking the Mold. He’s definitely the guy who’ll challenge your views on race, gender, power, and money—while making you laugh, so that you may forget how serious the conversation is. Although, in truth, it’s been hard to be funny these days.

Jason is the kind of guy who knows how to argue (he’s a lawyer) but also knows how to listen (because, you know, he’s also a mediator). After years of being a litigator in San Francisco, he pivoted to running an import-export business for sportswear, and then, just for fun, got into training, facilitation, and executive coaching. It's like his career is one big buffet of skills—whatever helps make the world a better, more equitable place, he’s down.

But wait, there’s more: Jason’s also a dad, a passionate salsa dancer (yep, he learned in Cali, Colombia), a Vipassana meditation enthusiast (he did ten days of silent meditation, and came out even more zen than a monk), and he’s hoping to join a protest drum circle. Basically, Jason’s got it all—activism, family, dance moves, and a deep desire to make the world a little bit more just... all while having fun doing it.

So, if you ever need someone to help you shift your perspective, negotiate through a tough situation, or just get you out of your head for a while with some salsa, Jason’s your guy. And who knows, he might even get you to challenge your belief system while you’re at it.

Leslie King

Leslie joined the Black and Jewish Unity Coalition in 2023 and is grateful to be part of an inclusive, social justice organization that strives to build the resistance to and offer solutions for the widening disparities and racism in our American society. 

Throughout Leslie’s adult life she has been engaged in education and advocacy work in community organizations and public schools; in personal growth education; and involved in creating social services for people with legal, mental health, medical needs, and drug addiction issues. 

Leslie was born and raised in Cincinnati Ohio. Her family had deep roots in the Bronx, NY established by her paternal grandparents who fled the Odessa pogroms against the Jewish people in the early 20th century and her maternal grandparents left Hungary for the U.S. at the same time due to antisemitism. 

Although in the 1960s Ohio was a conservative place segregated by race and religion, she was fortunate to attend a fully integrated school 7-12 that drew from the entire city of Cincinnati. As a teen in the 1960s, she was influenced by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Her social activist Rabbi introduced her to readings by James Baldwin, while the same Rabbi and some family friends joined the movement in Selma. Although dance, music and swimming were key parts of her youth, her volunteer work at Head Start, combined with the MLK and Kennedy assassinations and the VietNam war propelled her to leave Ohio to join the movement in California in 1969. 

In the Bay Area she joined the multitudes of community and student activists in the anti war movement. In the course of this work she was part of building a multicultural United Front that was connected to the national movement. The movement was determined to end the military draft, the Vietnam war, and participated in the Civil and Human Rights movements which were aggressively fighting disparities and racism in America.

Despite the increased pressures from law enforcement during the Nixon/J.Edgar Hoover era, she and many others sustained the resistance movement on the Midpeninsula. Leslie helped to meet the needs of the underserved populations by providing health clinics, drug treatment programs, tenants unions, and much more locally. In 1973 she was part of a team of activists who joined the Occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in February 1973 to assist in providing health services while people were under threat by the Federal government. These experiences built a strong political, personal and spiritual bond with many people, and happily, this included her current husband Bob King. 

Leslie and her husband Bob King are currently living in Sunnyvale. Fortunately, they reconnected after 20 years and have been married since 1993. They are a blessed interfaith, blended family of multi cultural backgrounds that include one granddaughter and 4 sons with Mexican American, African American and Jewish histories. 

Professionally, she has worked as a public high school teacher with a focus on providing a full curriculum for immigrant teens who are English language learners from all over the world; was a partner with Bob, and manager in their rural health care business; a writer and researcher as a paralegal; and in early years she worked in the electronics industry, and assorted jobs. 

Education: Para legal research and writing; Psychology, psychiatric technician AA; BA history, political science; K-12 Social Science teaching credential; MA Education, with emphasis on multicultural teaching. Continuing Education courses in creative writing. 

In her semi-retirement years she is a substitute teacher and tutor in the Sunnyvale community and spends much time with family in Grass Valley. She and her husband Bob are members of Congregation Beth Am in Los Alto Hills, are followers of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta,GA. She is engaged in local educational pursuits to provide Ethnic Studies in the CA public schools.

Bob King

Bob joined the Black and Jewish Unity Coalition in 2022 along with his wife Leslie via zoom. They live in Sunnyvale CA. Being active ardent seekers of justice, they felt at home in the first meeting. Leslie is Jewish and Bob is from a Black Baptist Church past and now. He felt an additional place for their union and efforts to serve communities to grow. 

Bob is a proud Palo Alto native. He grew up in south Palo Alto where a Black population was at best 8% of the total population. Most of the black population was in a 5 block rectangle from the railroad tracks West to El Camino Real where he lived. Bob was raised going to Jerusalem Baptist Church members of his family helped begin the congregation, the names of his Grandmother and two aunts are inscribed on the cornerstone of the church. Thanks to research by his youngest son Elijah, Bob learned that his great grandfather Tuck Greer was a slave in Texas and is listed on The Dawes and Freedman's Rolls of 1900. The family roots drew his family to memorable visits during his childhood and some of his family members still live there. 

After Gunn high school graduation, Bob attended Stanford university, participated in the Black Student Union and the larger anti Vietnam movement on campus and throughout the Bay Area. He left to help build a youth school, community garden in East Palo Alto and then a Redwood City medical clinic for an underserved 

community. Here he was trained as a Community Physician Assistant and he discovered his passion. He had always believed health care was a right and was frustrated by seeing low income people receiving poor care. The clinic educated their patients in self care and confronted the County regarding its low interest in preventative care for the poor. He became an activist in defending community health and the right of self determination. 

In 1973 Bob received a phone call at the clinic on behalf of the American Indian Movement and the Oglala Sioux Tribe to help with their medical needs on the Pine Ridge reservation. They were protesting on their reservation to assert their self determination. The center of the protest was at the community around “Wounded

Knee.” On December 29, 1890, 250-300 Native American Women, Men and Children. The people murdered were buried in unmarked graves by the U.S. Calvary. The 1973 demonstration was for the right to keep their tribal customs and land promised by treaty. This was met with violent response from the Federal government. Bob and Leslie in answer to the phone call formed a group that delivered medical help and equipment to the reservation. 

Upon returning to the Bay Area he decided to pursue a career in Respiratory Care and went to Foothill Community college. After graduation, he worked at the Children’s Hospital at Stanford. He became the Technical Director Respiratory Care at the Children’s Hospital at Stanford. 

Following another of his passions fired from both of his grandfathers he built a ranch and farm. He bought land and moved to the CA Sierra Foothills with his first wife and son, after his first wife passed away, he founded a private Respiratory Home Care business called Community Home Medical, Inc. The goal of the company was to provide respiratory healthcare to low income rural and minority communities in nearby cities. The disparities of access to medicine, poor treatment and increased illnesses in minority communities required more than his small business could provide. 

Therefore, in1994 he was invited to Washington by The Black Caucus of The United States Congress to address the Ways and Means Committee question: “ Can Minority Providers Survive Health Care Reform?” Bob’s many suggestions were heard, but not implemented because the medical system was being overtaken by HMOs and monopolies. 

By 1993, Bob and Leslie, both single, met again after 20 years, and he was overjoyed when she agreed to marry him and move to Grass Valley. In 2005 he and Leslie returned to the Bay Area where he continued as a respiratory therapy practitioner in multiple hospital settings and with all age groups. During three years of that time,he was also an Adjunct Professor of Respiratory Therapy at Foothill Community College. 

After auditing some health classes, in 2016 he was encouraged to return to Stanford University, at 66 years old. He was able to further study asthma and

received a fellowship to suggest methods to reduce repeated pediatric asthma emergency room visits. The hospital location was in the West Oakland community. He graduated with a degree in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity- Health and Wellness in 2018. 

He continued to practice respiratory therapy and semi-retired after the COVID epidemic in 2021. He is now a Substitute Teacher in Middle Schools because he believes that if children “learn how to learn” they will gain confidence for their future. With his medical background, he is also a sub for special needs children mild to severe. Throughout Bob’s life he has played music, loves sports and being a father of 4 sons and grandfather to one sweet girl. 

Education: Foothill College Respiratory Care Program, AS

Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, BA.