Board of Directors

Seattle, WA

Parent; Associate General Counsel – Research and Innovation at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Member of the Research Committee.

New York, NY

Parent of two young children; 14 years of experience in marketing, e-commerce, and strategy for a national home furnishings retailer, as well as a consultant for social enterprise businesses and e-commerce companies. Member of the Marketing and Fundraising Committees.

Marin County, CA

With 15 years of marketing leadership experience, Julie has led brand strategy and innovation for companies including Quaker, Gatorade, and Clorox, and has provided strategic consulting through Bamboo Brand Strategy Agency.

She serves as a Board Member of Hand in Hand, where she chairs the Marketing Committee. She is also on the leadership team of Indivisible Marin and volunteers as an Adoption Counselor with Hearts for Paws Rescue.

Palo Alto, CA

Parent; executive background in marketing and strategy; Certified Hand in Hand Parenting Instructor in English and Spanish. Chair of the Fundraising Committee. Passionate about supporting families and building community.

Boxborough, MA

Parent; CPA and Chief Financial and Technology Officer at Aging Services of North Central Massachusetts.

Kim is Treasurer and Chair of the Finance Committee.

Palo Alto, CA

Patty was born, raised, and educated in California. She is the mother of two sons. She has centered her life’s work on teaching parents the importance of connection, listening, their work as parents, and how parenting with Hand in Hand principles and insights can build their leadership and their children’s sound judgment. In her first fifteen years of working with many hundreds of parents and children throughout the US and abroad, she was instrumental in developing and articulating the Hand in Hand Parenting approach.

In 1989, Patty founded the non-profit Parents Leadership Institute, which acquired the name Hand in Hand Parenting in 2004. As Director, she wrote 14 booklets, produced numerous videotapes and audiotapes, and has written well over 100 articles on the principles and benefits of Hand in Hand Parenting. She has spoken widely for over thirty years, written articles for magazines and journals, and trained nearly two hundred Hand in Hand Instructors who teach and practice this approach on five continents. Her booklets have sold over 1 million copies in English and many other languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Romanian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Japanese, German, Norwegian, French, Sammi, Dutch, and Farsi. The Hand in Hand archives contain over 3000 anecdotes on the benefits of the Hand in Hand approach, written by parents from many countries and cultures who have resolved a wide variety of parenting issues using the approach.

In 2016, Patty Wipfler and her colleague Tosha Schore, M.A., co-authored the book Listen: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges. It has been translated into Chinese, German, Romanian, Hungarian, and French, and in English, it is available in paperback, digital, and audio formats.

Patty lives with her husband in Palo Alto, California, and enjoys supporting her three young adult grandchildren as they build their life’s work. She sits on the Board of Hand in Hand Parenting, and continues to write and support its work and fine leaders.

Maria Chew is a Hand in Hand instructor and Early Childhood Educator. Hand in Hand tools have transformed her parenting and teaching. As a parent and teacher educator, she has seen how transformative these tools are. Maria is quite fond of non-profit board leadership and is currently serving as the chair of the Program Committee.

Los Altos, CA

Parent; Managing Partner, Los Altos Advisors, a strategic advisory firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area providing market, business, and corporate development for early stage technology companies.

John is the father of three daughters and lives with his wife, a Certified Hand in Hand Parenting Instructor, Suzy Heltzel, LCSW.