About The Kids Foundation came into being as a mechanism to nurture the lives of children academically, as well as improve their home life, by providing children and their parents a useful, time-saving, one-stop information resource for homework, family law and parenting advice. The organization was established exclusively for charitable and educational purposes.
ServicesThe organization operates a free Web Site where kids and their parents or guardians can find a one-stop source of information for homework, creative and enriching web sites, family law and parenting tips. It is a safe place to find links to highly-rated and relevant information about homework, from web sites about animals to dictionaries, language, math, science, technology and more, as well as links to web sites that are creative and enriching such as arts and crafts and games. About The Kids Foundation has no annoying or inappropriate advertising such as pop-ups or banner ads and there are no chat rooms.
Parents can be secure in the knowledge that this web site and all it's links have been fully screened and only contain the highest quality educational and creative content. There are currently over 9,000 Web pages link to the Web Site.
In addition to being avaluable homework tool, the web site is a place where parents can quickly find information on such topics as medical advice, safety, or listings of the country's top summer camps.
The site also provides information on sensitive and highly-charged ares of divorce and family law. This section aims to help kids and their families get through this difficult time in their lives as smoothly as possible. Links include Mediation, Family Law and Child Support resources.
The About The Kids Foundation also publishes the "Kids Ultimate Online Homework Resource Guide" which is a listing of all the screened Web Sites in a convenient easy to use booklet. These guides are available for sale through school PTA's at $14.95. Each book sold makes $5.00 for the PTA, money that is intended to supplement the educational funding shortfall.
Many future products and services will be added. There will be a mix of free services as well as products and services designed to raise additional monies to support schools.
History
Joseph A. Ekman is the founder of About The Kids Foundation. He was inspired to start the organization and immediatly provided the free Web Site while helping his older daughter, a first-grader, with her math homework using the internet. He found it tedious to have to screen web site after web site and began to keep a collection of his favorite web sites for his daughter to use. He decided to put his screened collection of math web sites onto one web site and this idea grew into other subjects like language, science and history that would help kids and parents with a full range of homework needs. About The Kids Foundation was inspired by, and is dedicated to, Joseph A. Ekman daughters, Emily Rose (Giggles) and Elizabeth Sarah (Boo).
Partners
Software & Technology partner pageAccess, Inc.has worked closely with the About The kids Foundation in planning and implementing the foundation's web site. pageAccess software has, for the previous six months, during this web site's development, and continues to provide trouble free web site enhancement, management and content integration tools.
Fund raising through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Management
Joseph A. Ekman
Founder
Joseph A. Ekman is the founder of About The Kids Foundation. He additionally serves as its chairman of the board. A father of two girls, Ekman has been involved with child safety issues since 1984, including work on the legislation that banned the use of headphones while operating a motor vehicle or riding a bicycle in the state of California. He is the author of the Kids Ultimate Online Homework Resource Guide, and the co-author of Ekman Co-Parenting Journal, both published by Duke Publishing & Software Corporation.
Ekman currently serves on the Advisory Board of Clear Methods Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts a software startup offering an advanced XML and Web services platform. Prior to joining the Advisory Board he was the vice president of North America sales for Clear Methods, his focus was growing business with enterprise IT customers and strategic relationships. Prior to joining Clear Methods, Ekman was director of worldwide alliances and business development for Jeeves Solutions, a division of Ask Jeeves. While at Jeeves he developed and managed key strategic partnerships with One Economy Corporation, Oracle and IBM. Prior to joining Jeeves Solutions, Ekman spent more than 11 years in various director-level sales positions at IBM and Sun Microsystems where he was responsible for strategic planning, management of field sales teams, and the development of sales models.
Jennifer J. Hagan, Esq.
Corporate Counsel & Board Member
Jennifer J. Hagan acts as corporate counsel for About The Kids Foundation. She received her law degree from Santa Clara University School of Law and has been practing law in the San Francisco Bay Area for 12 years. Hagan specializes in corporate, contracts and real estate law, and is currently a partner in the Hagan Law Firm in Palo Alto, California, where she is the managing attorney.
While attending law school, Hagan clerked for the Honorable LaDoris H. Cordell, presiding judge of family law division Santa Clara County Superior Court. Prior to entering law school, she obtained her master of fine arts from Emerson College and received a bachelor of arts in communications from California State University, Chico.
Hagan currently serves on the board of directors of About The Kids Foundation, The Stanford Water Polo Endowment Fund and the Tazzla Institute, all nonprofit organizations. Ms. Hagan is also currently a commissioner for the City of Palo Alto's Park and Recreation Commission and is a member of both the State Bar of California and the Palo Alto Bar Association.
Vincent A. Barletta
Board Member
Vincent A. Barletta is a board member of About The Kids Foundation. A father of three children, including twins, Barletta has more than 20 years of progressively responsible manufacturing, business consulting, materials, production, sales development management experience. Barletta is currently the vice president of operations at Foxhollow, a medical device start-up where he is responsible for all manufacturing and distibution activies. Prior to Foxhollow, he held positions at Agile Software, Heartport, Cariometrics, and Acuson, where he focused on sales, marketing, production and manufacturing of medical devices and software to the industry. Barletta also worked for System Software Associates where he was a business consulting manager and was a senior consultant at Gemini Consulting.
Barletta holds three medical devices patents, a master degree in business adminstration form Santa Clara University and a bachelor of science degree in engineering technology/manufacturing processes from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo.
Advisory Board Members & Consultants
Bruce H. Bess, Ph.D.
Consultant
Dr. Bruce Bess is a consultant with About The Kids Foundation. He is also the co-author of the Ekman Co-Parenting Journal. Bess brings more than 25 years of experience to About The Kids Foundation, in the area of clinical psychology, with a particular focus on family law and parenting issues.
In addition to his work with About The Kids Foundation, Bess is a court appointed custody evaluator and special master working in the San Francisco Bay Area and has had more than 300 family court appointments in the past 15 years. He previously worked with San Mateo County Mental Health Services Department and was the director of the North County Community Mental Health Center, based in San Mateo, California.
Bess received his doctorate in psychology from the Professional School of Psychology in Los Angeles, California.
James M. DesJardins
Advisory Board Member
James DesJardins is an advisory board member with About The Kids Foundation. A father of one child, DesJarins brings more than 20 years of business experience. He is currently a director at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in San Francisco where he focuses on Fortune 100 companies in the western United States. Prior to PricewaterhouseCoopers, DesJardins was director of product strategy, alliances and business development for Synquest Inc., a company that developed supply chain planning applications. He also held various senior sales and management positions at PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, Hewlett Packard and Litton Industries.
DesJardins received his bachelor's in marketing from Nichols College in Dudley, Mass., and has completed graduate course work in computer science at Worcester State College in Worcester, Mass.
Michael Nicosia
Advisory Board Member
Michael Nicosia is an advisory board member with About The Kids Foundation. A father of two children, Nicosia brings a wealth of leadership experience in both the enterprise applications and business analytics market including over 15 years of successful executive sales roles.
Most recently, Nicosia joined the DataSweep team as Vice President of Sales. Prior to DataSweep, Nicosia served as Vice President of Sales for BizGenics. Prior to BizGenics Nicosia served as Vice President of analytic applications business unit at Informatica, Inc. Prior to Informatica, Michael served as Vice President of Sales at SkillsVillage, Inc., a venture-backed start-up, where he and his team rapidly developed the momentum that led to SkillsVillage’s acquisition by PeopleSoft in 2001.
Before joining SkillsVillage, Michael was regional Vice President of Sales at PeopleSoft where he consistently exceeded revenue targets in key industry verticals including Manufacturing, Services, Finance, Telco and Healthcare.
Prior to joining PeopleSoft, Michael held a variety of executive sales roles at leading application software and technology companies including J.D. Edwards and Hewlett-Packard. He holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing from San Jose State University in San Jose, CA.
Jackie S. Schneider
Advisory Board Member
Jackie Schneider is an advisory board member with About The Kids Foundation. Schneider brings more than 15 years of business experience. Schneider is currently a marketing manager for Hewlett- Packard where she is responsible for the strategic marketing of network storage solutions. Prior to her current position Schneider held various other positions at Hewlett-Packard, such as product marketing, sales development and finance. Before joining Hewlett-Packard, she was a manager at Lipsky, Goodkin & Co., P.C., a public accounting firm in New York City. Schneider is a certified public account and licensed in the state of New York.
Schneider currently serves as a development committe member for the Jewish Family Children Services and has served on the board of the San Francisco based nonprifit, Performing Arts Reaching to Youth.
Schneider holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the State University of New York and a Master of Business Administration from Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.
Jay Suh
Advisory Board Member
Jay Suh is an advisory board member with About The Kids Foundation. A father of two children, Suh brings a wealth of leadership experience in both business and consulting roles. He is currently business consultant and licensed real estate agent.
Most recently, Suh was previously the vice president of sales at Design Solutions an engineering services and manufacturing company specializing in New Product Introductions. In 2001, Design Solutions purchased Menlo Tech, a company that Suh founded and where he was president & CEO. Prior to Menlo Tech, he was vice president of business development at HireRocket, an application service provider that sells recruiting solutions for Fortune 500 companies.
Suh received his bachelor's degree in molecular cell biology from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the Silicon Valley Association of Realtors and member of the PTA at Covington School in Los Altos, California.
* The Declining Significance of Marriage: Changing Family Life in the U.S. - Larry L. Bumpass, Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
** Trends in Divorce - Preston & McDonald, 1979
