Shiree Teng

Shiree has worked in the social sector for 40+ years as a social and racial justice champion – as a front line organizer, network facilitator, capacity builder, grantmaker, and evaluator and learning partner. Shiree brings to her work a lifelong commitment to social change and a belief in the potential of groups of people coming together to create powerful solutions to entrenched social issues.

Shiree has an intimate understanding of the issues and challenges related to working in communities of color and dynamics of race, class, gender, culture and power. Having spent her life in the social sector, Shiree comes to the work from the perspective of building capacity and lasting relationships.

Starting out as a young community organizer at age 17, Shiree learned much of what she knows today from having organized in the trenches in Los Angeles, New York City, Watsonville/Salinas, and San Francisco/Oakland. From those 15+ years of working alongside and learning from immigrant child care, restaurant, garment, cannery and farm workers, Shiree brought the lessons into running nonprofit organizations, and then to being a program officer at the Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness program.

In 2000, Shiree began her independent consulting practice. Standing on the shoulders of many who supported and guided her through the years, Shiree has established a rich strategy and evaluation practice, working with social and racial justice groups and their funders. For eight years, Shiree chaired the board of Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Shiree has also served on the boards of National Equity Project, Rockwood Leadership Institute, APEN and Forward Together.

Today, Shiree chairs the board of Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ) in Oakland’s Fruitvale community. From 2015 to 2018, Shiree was a member of and then Chair of the Oakland Unified School District’s Measures A, B and J Facilities Bond Oversight Committee, responsible for providing citizenship oversight of $437M bond funds to upgrade school facilities.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Shiree is fluent in three Chinese dialects. Having lived and worked in Watsonville and Salinas with cannery and farmworkers, Shiree has a functional understanding of Spanish. She holds degrees in Social Welfare and Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in the Fruitvale District in Oakland with her partner, Dennis, and sons Rumi and Maceo and dogs, Rosie and Peanut.