Events

Karen Philbrick is the Executive Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San José State University, a position she has held since 2014. MTI leads two competitively selected multi-university consortia: the California State University Transportation Consortium (CSUTC) and the Mineta Consortium for Transportation Mobility (MCTM). 

Dr. Philbrick has been appointed three times by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation (Secretaries LaHood, Foxx, and Chao, respectively) to sit on the USDOT Transit Advisory Committee for Safety (TRACS) where she chaired the FTA Administrator’s Tasking 14-02 which identified key elements of a safety management system approach to fatigue management. She also has the privilege of serving as the President of the Research and Education Division (RED) of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), where she also sits on the ARTBA Board of Directors and Executive Committee. Dr. Philbrick is part of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on “Transit Safety and Security” and “Passenger Rail Transportation. 

With an eye toward seamless and equitable transportation for all, Karen also serves the industry through the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Board of Directors and has served on the Women in Transportation Seminar (WTS) Foundation Board as Secretary after having served two terms as a Director. 

A frequently invited keynote speaker, Dr. Philbrick has delivered federal congressional briefings and invited testimony to the California Senate Transportation Committee and the Assembly Transportation Committee. 
Dr. Philbrick has received many prestigious awards for her leadership excellence and outstanding contributions to her field. She is the recipient of the CUTC Administrative Leadership award, the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO) named Dr. Philbrick a “Woman Who Moves the Nation”, the Silicon Valley Business Journal named Dr. Philbrick 1 of the 100 Women of Influence in Silicon Valley, and she was recognized by the YWCA Silicon Valley with a Tribute to Women Award for her contributions to the field of transportation.

Dr. Philbrick holds a PhD from the University of Denver and an MA and EdM from Columbia University. She earned her undergraduate degree from California State University, Fresno.

About the Topic

Learn how the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San Jose State University--a competitively selected university transportation center and the leading transportation center of the Silicon Valley--is leveraging its industry partnerships to train the transportation workforce of the future. See more here.

Tom Day is an experienced public speaker with a broad range of interests.  Widely traveled, he has been to China, India, Russia 3 times, Norway, Zimbabwe, Belize, and Ethiopia. He has spoken at SIRS, Kiwanis, Lions and Rotary clubs from Burlingame to San Jose in person, and from San Diego to Whistler, Canada, via Zoom. He and his wife live in Stevenson Ranch, Los Angeles. In his retirement Mr. Day has studied ice at the South Pole, permafrost in Siberia, and the State of California Sea-Level Rise Guidance update. 

Mr. Day is a retired software engineer with extensive experience in Toastmasters.  Mr. Day follows "Climate Adam" and Peter Beckwith on YouTube.

About the talk

We will have a talk on the recent history of North Pole ice including the current situation up there. Tom Day will cover the "general state of affairs in the Arctic Ocean" and other icy places. The connection between melting northern ice and sea level rise will be approached. Satellite photos from the last 30 years will illustrate this section of the talk.  Other large bodies of ice, Greenland and Antarctica, will be covered briefly.

Mr. Day will draw on his extensive reading on this subject, which includes:

• Climate Wars, by Gwynne Dyer
• The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, by Michael Mann
• The Ice at the End of the World, by Jon Gertner
• This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs.The Climate, by Naomi Klein

Assessor - County of Santa Clara

San Jose Magazine named him one of Silicon Valley’s 100 most powerful leaders. Pulitzer Prize winning author and Washington Post reporter, Haynes Johnson, described Larry Stone in his bestselling book, Sleepwalking Through History, as “bright, articulate; an American rarity, a proven political success in a time of political failure.”

He was first elected Assessor in 1994 and overwhelmingly re-elected six times by the residents of Santa Clara County, which stretches north to Palo Alto, south to Gilroy, and includes San Jose, the “Capital of Silicon Valley.”  The County boasts a population of 1.9 million – greater than that of 13 states.

Stone has been a financial manager on Wall Street and co-founded a successful Bay Area real estate investment and development firm.  He served 16 years as a council member and mayor of Sunnyvale, a period during which the city earned an international reputation for effectiveness and became a model for President Clinton and Vice President Gore’s efforts to reform the federal bureaucracy.  President Clinton said, “The National Performance Review was modeled in part upon the remarkable reinvention efforts pioneered by the City of Sunnyvale, where Larry Stone served as mayor.”

As County Assessor, Stone has overseen remarkable improvements to streamline the operations of his office, eliminate backlogs, and achieve higher levels of public service, all while consistently operating substantially under budget.  The State Board of Equalization acknowledged his office as one of the best-managed assessors’ operations in California.

Larry Stone also has been an active and effective civic leader in many fields ranging from the arts, to education, to the environment.  He was instrumental in co- founding an innovative $11 million education endowment foundation that has contributed nearly $20 million to benefit a local, public elementary school district.  A native of Seattle, he has an MBA from the University of Washington and has studied at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  He and his wife, Carmen, have lived in Sunnyvale since 1970, where they raised three sons

Senator Dave Cortese was elected in November of 2020 to represent State Senate District 15 which encompasses much of Santa Clara County in the heart of Silicon Valley. Along with his accomplished career as an attorney and business owner, the Senator previously served on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors for over a decade, with four years as Board President, on the San Jose City Council for eight years, including two years as Vice Mayor, and as a trustee for the East Side Union High School District for eight years.

He grew up in San Jose as part of a family that has been active in civic, cultural, and business activities for generations. 

During his nearly three decades in public service, Dave has brought the community together to address and reduce homelessness, combat climate change, expand public transit options, and improve the quality of our public education system. 

Rushton Hurley has worked all over the globe as a Japanese language teacher, school principal, school improvement consultant, and speaker on innovative learning and communication. He directs the educational nonprofit Next Vista for Learning, which houses a free library of creative educational and service videos at NextVista.org, and holds masters degrees in Education and East Asian Studies from Stanford University.

The author of three books, Rushton's fun and thoughtful talks and writing center on inspiration and creativity, technology and leadership, avenues for engaging learning, the power of digital media and tools for collaboration, and personal and professional perspectives in a technology-infused, ever-changing world.

Rushton has been a Rotarian since 2004, as a member of the San Antonio Downtown Club (the world's largest, at the time), the Rotary Club of Santa Clara, the Rotary eClub of the Southwest USA (one of the first online clubs in Rotary), and now the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley, for which he was its charter president. He holds a special interest in how technology can serve the business of service, and looks forward to sharing with and learning from you.

About the topic

Shifting our thinking about how we work to improve Rotary and our communities does not require ditching what has made us strong, but rather embracing how technology can serve the business of service in order to bring those strengths to the community in new ways. As part of the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley, I've enjoyed our ability to inspire members and guests through stories of what is now possible and will share some of these stories with you in this short talk, along with how our club is different. (Hint: it is not simply because we are an online club.) Hopefully, these ideas will foster discussions about how to celebrate your club's stories and strengths in new and fun ways.