Our Leadership

Brooke Briggance is the Deputy Director for the FACES for the Future Coalition at the Public Health Institute where she provides professional support for current FACES programs across California, oversees program development, program implementation and stakeholder engagement in new communities seeking a FACES program and manages special projects such as curriculum development and evaluation. She also provides administrative support for the Coalition including in the areas of development, management, and coordination of all summer programming.

Brooke comes from a multi-sector background in health, direct impact programming for children, youth and families, and public education non-profit work. She began her career in healthcare in the Department of Neurology at SUNY Stony Brook in New York, and continued as Lead Administrator for a private practice in Neurology. She has experience in administrative leadership and public education advocacy and reform, and served as the Executive Director of the Alameda Education Foundation where she oversaw a nationally recognized public awareness campaign highlighting the impact of cuts to public education in California. She has worked as a consultant assisting in projects ranging from school district redesign, community engagement, best practices for non-profits and development strategy. She most recently served as the Program Manager for the FACES for the Future program at Children’s Hospital Oakland before moving with the FACES for the Future Coalition to its new home at Public Health Institute in 2011.

Brooke became passionate about cultural competency when she completed her undergraduate work at SUNY Stony Brook in World Religions, and her graduate work in World Religions and Systemic Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Originally from Michigan, she moved to California in 1999.

Veronica Sanchez-Madrigal is the Program Associate for the FACES for the Future Coalition. In her prior role, she served as Program Coordinator for the FACES San Francisco program. She earned a Master’s degree in Public Health at San Jose State University and a B.S. in Community Regional Development and B.A. in Chicano Studies from the University of California, Davis.

Veronica has served as a volunteer labor coach supporting women’s health and addressing post-partum depression with Canal Alliance, while supporting the Help Me Grow Program with First 5 Alameda County. Her passion working with maternal, child and adolescent health allowed Veronica to explore and learn more about the various inequities that communities are facing and relating those inequities to her own lived experiences. After earning her MPH, she joined the FACES for the Future team in 2015 to mentor, teach, and bridge the gaps for equitable opportunities for young people to have meaningful experiences to grow and become our future leaders in health.

Veronica is a native of the East Bay Area, CA with a wealth of knowledge and experience working with culturally diverse and underrepresented communities. She is committed to advocating for social justice and health equity and supporting the educational and professional endeavors of young people.

Elva was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and migrated to San Francisco with her family in 1975.  Elva started her career at PHI in 2008 working with the Mesoamerican Health Initiative (MHI) as a Program Coordinator and has worked in many other PHI programs since.  Most recently, she worked with the California Adolescent Health Collaborative (CAHC) supporting their programs in a variety of ways, including working with and training Health Educators and Case Managers in the Central Valley in the Fourth R curriculum for the H-REP program, and facilitating community mapping sessions for the Young Mother Researchers program which focused on engaging breast feeding young mothers in community based participatory research.  She holds a Master Trainer Certificate from the University of Western Ontario on the Fourth R program.  Elva enjoys dancing, traveling to exotic places with her son and daughter, and spending time with her family.