Lisa J. Blanchard – Executive Director and Founder: As founder, Lisa has been the guiding force and visionary of The Grateful Garment Project. Lisa’s unique combination of experience in nonprofit, customer service, law, and management produces the creative and conceptual leadership required to bring The Grateful Garment Project to the State of California and beyond. She has dedicated significant amounts of time to working with people not only professionally, but also in a volunteer capacity. Lisa holds an AS in Business, a BS in Human Services and a Masters in Nonprofit Administration. It is her vision that no victim of sexual assault ever experience further suffering due to lack of resources.

Tentative Date

Heath Rocha is our current Assistant Superintendent of the Los Gatos Saratoga Union High School District, he was previously the Chief Student Support Services.  He has worked in our district since 2016 and has previous experience at the University of Vermont, the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District and the Carmel Unified School District. 

Heath has a BS in Psychology from St Mary’s College and a MS in Counseling with a specialization in School Psychology from the University of Vermont. 

Heath will be addressing the results of the recent California Healthy Kids Survey for our high school district. 

Tiger Teerlink joined the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce over 10 years ago and is currently its President with an office on Big Basin Way in the Saratoga Village.  He is the founder and the chairperson of the Annual Saratoga Classic and Cool Car Show that has grown into one of the most popular events in the South Bay Area.  

His efforts at the Chamber have most recently been recognized by Senator Dave Cortese who presented  him with a Certificate Of Recognition from The California State Senate as a BEST OF THE BAY Honoree for his tireless dedication and commitment to his fellow community members."

Robert Freeman, The founder of the Global Uplift Project became homeless in high school, so joined the U.S. Merchant Marines, where he sailed for 6 years. He then came to bay area and at the age of 28, earned a B.S. at Santa Clara University.  At 35—as the old man in his class—he earned an MBA from Stanford. Robert joined the computer industry and rose to become Vice President at Sybase, one of the largest software companies in the world.  

Then, in 2000, at the age of 47, he left software industry to become a high school teacher.  He taught for 16 years at Los Altos High School.  In 2012, he was named Bay Area Teacher of the Year by the San Francisco 49ers organization.  

In 2007, while at Los Altos High School, Robert founded One Dollar For Life, or ODFL.  ODFL invited high school students to donate one dollar, and used those funds to build classrooms and medical clinics in the developing world. 

In 2020, in order to accommodate adults, ODFL changed its name to The Global Uplift Project, or Tea-Gup (TGUP).  The work remains the same, but now adults are able to participate.  

Since its founding in 2007, ODFL/TGUP has built more than 300 low-cost, small-scale, high impact infrastructure projects in 22 of the poorest countries in the world.  Over their full lives, those projects will help almost 2 million of the poorest people in the world have just a slightly better chance in life.  

From 1993 to 2014, Rod Diridon, Sr., was executive director of

the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), a transportation policy

research center created in 1991 by Congress. He is known

as the father of modern transit service in Silicon Valley and has

chaired more than 100 international, national, state, and local

programs, most related to transit and the environment. He frequently

provides legislative testimony on sustainability.