Our Team
Aaryaman “Sunny” Singhal
Board Member
Aaryaman “Sunny” Singhal is a PhD student studying Environmental Science and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
He enjoys working on big challenges, right now his focus is on water security in the Western U.S. in the face of climate change. In particular, he is interested in policy changes to support the evolution to a new water paradigm that centers justice for historically marginalized communities.
Sunny is intellectually curious and values diverse experiences. He studied liberal arts and business at the University of Texas at Austin, and has worked at Southwest Airlines, a small environmental nonprofit, and as an organizer in the youth climate justice movement.
In his spare time, you’ll find him running, hiking, biking, and playing board games.
Alisha 一心 Pegan
Alisha 一心 Pegan (she/hers) is a queer mixed-race designer, builder, and artist working at the intersection of climate action, community development, and data. Her career has spanned government, nonprofit, and private sectors, all rooted in a mission to scale sustainable, equitable solutions. Her work has included climate-resilient infrastructure in Boston, solar installations with tribal governments in California, power grid flexibility efforts across the U.S., and data management for a solidarity economy coalition.
Her passion for just energy transitions led her to the Public Bank East Bay, where she is honored to serve as a board member. Inspired by models like the Boston Ujima Project, she is committed to helping build an alternative, community-governed financial institution that prioritizes the public good.
In her creative time, she makes crooked pottery, mends clothes, practices kickboxing, and dances at East Bay Bike Party with friends.
Board Member, Secretary
Alison Lingane
Board Member
Founder, Ownership Capital Lab
Alison Lingane is a nationally recognized employee ownership expert.
Her passion for creating an economy that works for everyone was fueled in her early career by her role designing and leading micro-enterprise programs for urban youth. Alison is the Founder of the Ownership Capital Lab, which focuses on capital as a growth and scale lever for employee ownership. The Lab identifies, pilots, and supports the uptake of strategies for financing employee ownership at greater scale.
This work builds on her 10+ years as co-founder of Project Equity, a leader in the movement to harness employee ownership to maintain thriving local business communities, honor selling owners’ legacies, and address income and wealth inequality, and on her role as founder and manager of the Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund.
Leading capital initiatives for Project Equity, Alison raised nearly $15M in capital to finance employee ownership transitions. She also launched Project Equity’s work partnering with over a dozen cities, counties and other government agencies throughout California and the U.S.
Alison has her B.S. from Harvard and her MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, where she is currently a Social Impact Fellow.
Dr. Baba Kofi Weusijana
Board Member
Baba Kofi Weusijana, Ph.D., is a Learning Scientist, Computer Science Instructor, and activist. He is a proud member of SocialistAlternative.org and 350.org.
Dr. Weusijana knows we can not achieve the Green New Deal by 2030, end racial oppression and inequity, empower working people, and democratize the workplace by relying on Wall Street banks. He is a member of the communications committee.
Debbie Notkin
Board Member, Chair
Debbie Notkin is the Chair of the Board of Directors for Friends of Public Bank East Bay. She has been with the organization since its inception in 2016.
Before that, she worked with Occupy Oakland's Foreclosure Defense Group and Strike Debt Bay Area. She has a deep interest in science fiction, especially works by women and people of color; she chaired the James Tiptree, Jr. Award (now the Otherwise Award) motherboard for many years.
She has lived in Oakland since 1984.
Debra Gore
Board Member
Debra Gore is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of leadership across nonprofit, academic, and public-private sectors, and more than a decade in finance and infrastructure development.
As Founder & CEO of the Debra Gore Group LLC, she leads community-centered asset-based ownership and investment strategies focused on building an inclusive economy and long-term community wealth.
She previously served as President & CEO of The Greenlining Institute, where she championed national policy implementation, climate justice, and coalition-building.
A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA and BS in Engineering, Debra also served as chair on the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Community Advisory Council and is a lifelong advocate for systems change rooted in justice, voice, and community wealth.
Didacus Ramos
Board Member
Didacus Ramos is an Urban Planner working to convert California sprawl into something that includes people. What a concept.
But he started out making documentary films in Jerusalem and as a stringer for Israel Television and Canadian Broadcasting Company. After studying at USC he turned to feature filmmaking, finishing those years with Chartoff-Winkler and yet another Rocky film.
As an Urban Planner Didacus used his years of filmmaking to make sure that affordable housing was better constructed than a film set. He worked cities in Southern California trying to include the wellbeing of the residents as much as that of businesses and industry.
Now he's helping to build the Public Bank East Bay, a Eden Community Land Trust, and the Literacy Plus Council improving literacy in Hayward.
When not saving the world he enjoys sputtering in Spanish and perfecting his cooking skills on way too-hot dishes.
George Quaye
Board Member, Treasurer
Margie Lewis
Board Member
Margie Lewis, an Oakland resident, has been a member of the Friends of the Public Bank East Bay since its beginning and is now chair of the Advocacy Committee.
As part of the organization, she helped found the California Public Banking Alliance and was a member of the Alliance group that worked on getting legislation passed which allows for the creation of public banks in California.
In addition to her work with the PBEB, Margie also works with several environmental groups. She helped found the Environmental Justice chapter of Communities for a Better Environment and continues to work with them. She also continues to work with Local Clean Energy Alliance, People Power Solar Cooperative, and is an active member of the Oakland East Bay Democratic Club.
Neha Singh
Staff, Project Manager
Neha Singh is Public Bank East Bay’s Project Manager, spearheading the establishment of the governance structure, aligning operations with organizational goals, and providing high-level strategic support to advance financial justice and community ownership.
She earned her Master of Public Policy at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, where she studied the intersection of public policy and socioeconomic justice, with a focus on income and wealth disparity.
Before joining PBEB, Neha served as a Fellow for the National Community Reinvestment Corporation and contributed to the San Francisco Financial Justice Project and Rise Economy, where her work included researching fines and fees, developing strategies to reduce the financial burden of incarceration, examining the insurability crisis in California, amplifying BIPOC and low-income voices to highlight climate-risk, and drafting a blueprint on how to convert an existing state infrastructure bank into a public bank. She has also worked as a Financial Institution Examiner with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, evaluating banks of varying sizes for compliance and risk management.
In her free time, Neha is a yoga instructor and enjoys teaching and practicing yoga, spending time in nature, indulging in Hindi cinema, and being a devoted cat mom to Saki. Her name means “love” in Sanskrit and serves as a constant reminder of her commitment to center love in everything she does.
Paulina Gonzalez-Brito
Board Member, Vice-Chair
CEO, Rise Economy
Paulina Gonzalez-Brito (they/them/elle) identifies as Xicane, Purepecha, Mestize. Their great-grandparents were Mexican Arizona copper miners who took part in the historic Metcalf-Greenlee strikes in the early 1900s and whose father was an immigrant union hotel worker. Paulina has dedicated more than 20 years of their life to leading economic justice organizing campaigns to expand worker rights, immigrant rights, and the rights of low-income and underrepresented communities of color. Under their leadership, Rise Economy has expanded its work to directly challenge systemic and structural racism within the U.S. financial system and to focus the organization’s work on building collective political and organizing power amongst and with frontline communities to close the racial wealth gap.
RuDee Sade
Board Member
RuDee Sade (pronouns they/them/me) is a poet and strategist with deep roots in systems thinking, economic justice, and narrative design. With over a decade of experience turning vision into resourced impact, they’ve helped community-focused teams generate capital toward collective and liberatory goals. RuDee serves on the board of Public Bank East Bay to help build democratic financial infrastructure rooted in care, truth, and sovereignty.
Vinod Paniker
Board Member
Co-Founder, TigressAI
At Paceline, Vinod Paniker is building the next generation financial services platform that rewards people for healthy behavior.
Before joining Paceline, Vinod was the Head of Product Management, Marketing Platforms at Prudential Financial, a Fortune 50 company. In this key role, he focused on leveraging technology, AI, and ML to help build the next generation digital marketing capabilities for Prudential. Vinod also headed Prudential’s Silicon Valley campus.
With over 25 years of professional experience, Vinod is skilled in product management, product development, software engineering, and management leadership in the FinTech and Financial Services domain.
Before joining Prudential, Vinod was co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Söoryen Technologies, where he championed the delivery of FinTech products and services to a wide variety of companies, including start-ups and major industry players like MyVest and Cetera.
Before Söoryen, Vinod was Vice President of Engineering at Pricelock, focusing on building a revolutionary platform in the energy segment. He also spent over a decade at E*TRADE, where he held various positions of increasing responsibility, most notably leading E*TRADE’s Retail brokerage projects as Director of Software Engineering.
Vinod holds a BS in Engineering from the University of Mumbai, India.
Will Toaspern
Board Member
Will Toaspern is a Senior Researcher at the UC Berkeley Labor Center's Green Economy Program. His research occurs at the intersection of climate, labor, and economic development to understand how to accelerate a climate and energy transition that works for workers and communities.
Will has spent his career and organizing work focused on efforts to alleviate poverty and build healthy communities. This has included working as the Policy Director for a gubernatorial campaign in Colorado, leading local advocacy and organizing at an anti-poverty non-profit in Seattle, and as a consultant.
Through that work, he has come to understand the critical need for funding and investment systems that are led by community members and in pursuit of maximizing public good rather than shareholder profits.
Will graduated from Stanford University in 2014 and received a Masters of Public Policy from UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy in 2024. He currently lives in Oakland with his fiancé.