Staff

Gerald Richards is the Chief Executive Officer of 826 National. With twenty years of management and development experience at national nonprofit organizations, including the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship where he served as the Executive Director of the Bay Area office, Gerald is a respected trainer and sought after speaker on topics of youth and education access. He is interviewed regularly on these topics and has appeared on NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams, CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s 360, and The Michael Eric Dyson Show, as well as in articles in publications including The San Francisco Examiner and Inc. Magazine. He has also served as an education expert for national marketing campaigns promoting creativity in and outside the classroom. In 2008, he was named one of 101 African-American Champions for Youth in the Bay Area.

Gerald has conducted trainings and presented at conferences including the National Conference on Student Assessment, The Power of Youth Entrepreneurship at Stanford University, Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Boot Camp, and the CA/NFTE Entrepreneurship BizCamp, and represented 826 National at the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2011 Annual Conference, the 2011 PSFK Conference, and the 2011 Big Ideas Fest.

His nonprofit career also includes positions with the United Negro College Fund; University of California, San Francisco; the J. David Gladstone Institutes; Chicago Panel on Social Policy; and The Cradle Foundation. He has managed flourishing relationships and partnerships with corporate, foundation, education and governmental entities including Citi, Merrill Lynch/Bank of America, the Lyles Center for Entrepreneurship at Fresno State, and the San Francisco Mayor’s Office. He is currently a member of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and Ed Steps Curiosity and Creativity workgroup in Washington, D.C.; an inaugural fellow in the California Leaders of Color Fellowship Program; and was a member of the 2009 class of Leadership San Francisco. He currently serves on the board of the Woodland School, and previously served on the boards of Juma Ventures and KIPP SF Bay Academy.

Mr. Richards has a BA in Film Studies from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Erin Archuleta is the Director of Field Operations and Strategy for 826 National. In this role she works closely with the current 826 sites, developing policies and trainings to strengthen 826 chapters’ educational and volunteer programs. She plans for organizational growth and replication of the 826 model, responding to requests from educators in the United States and abroad interested in launching after-school tutoring and student writing projects.

Previously the Educational Programs Director and Volunteer Coordinator of 826 Valencia, she is a former classroom educator. The Everett Middle School community honored her with two César Chávez Peace Awards for her service in the 826 Valencia Writers’ Room. She was part of the publishing team that received a Moonbeam Spirit Childhood Wellness Award for Children’s Literature for Exactly, an 826 Valencia publication with Wallenberg Traditional High School. Her curriculum appears in Don’t Forget to Write: 54 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons for Students 6-18. Archuleta has represented 826 Valencia as a panelist at the Coalition of Essential Schools Conference and 826 National at the 2011 National Conference on Volunteering and Service. She is a member of the Leadership San Francisco Class of 2012.

In addition, Archuleta is also a co-founder of ICHI, an award-winning San Francisco restaurant and catering company; through this work she was nominated for the Women’s Initiative Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the San Francisco Bay Area in 2010 and 2011.

Erin is a native of Flint, Michigan and received her BA in Secondary Education from Western Michigan University. She is a graduate of the Lee Honors College.

Jen Benka is 826 National’s Director of Development & Marketing. She has twenty years of nonprofit fundraising, marketing and management experience gained at local and national arts and social service organizations. Most recently, Jen served as Vice President of Development for the online media start-up The Bay Citizen, which produces the Bay Area section for The New York Times. Previously, she worked for close to a decade as the managing director of Poets & Writers, the nation’s largest nonprofit organization serving creative writers. In her role she served as the chief fundraising and marketing officer, and planned and executed a successful multi-million dollar endowment campaign, and won the organization more visibility than it had received in its 40-year history.

She has designed and conducted numerous fundraising and marketing trainings, including at 9to5, National Association of Working Women’s Annual Leadership Conference; the national conference of LGBT Community Centers; the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ annual conference; the Chicago Cultural Centers’ Small Press Fair; and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design’s Creative Educators Institute. She was also a member of the planning committee for the New York State Council on the Arts’ (NYSCA) literature program’s technical assistance trainings, and has served on panels at NYSCA, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Milwaukee County Arts Commission. She is also the author of the poetry collections Pinko (Hanging Loose Press), A Box of Longing With Fifty Drawers (Soft Skull Press) and the artist book The Preamble (Booklyn).

Jen holds a BA in Journalism from Marquette University and an MFA in Writing from The New School University.

Ryan Lewis is the Director of Research and Evaluation for 826 National. Ryan received his Master of Public Service degree from the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, AR, where he focused his fieldwork in education reform and race theory, completing projects in designing program evaluation systems, development, and strategic planning. During his fieldwork, Ryan worked on a three-person team conducting a six-month project with the Boys, Girls, Adults Community Development Center in rural Marvell, Arkansas, which assessed the organization’s health and provided the organizations with consultation on their strategic planning, program evaluation, fundraising initiatives, and leadership transition. Individually he completed a three-month project with the South African Education and Environment Project in Cape Town, South Africa, which helped the organization develop, implement, and administer a program evaluation system for their Gap Year college admission program. And with 826 National's founding chapter, 826 Valencia, Ryan developed a system for capturing detailed evaluation information about the chapter's large-scale student publishing project, which also included reporting findings and recommendations to stakeholders.

Ryan has also led two international education projects, teaching creative writing at the Storymoja Hay Festival in Nairobi, Kenya and serving as field staff for a university service project with Hendrix College and the Harry Bodasing Primary School outside of Durban, South Africa.

Mariama Lockington is 826 National’s Operations Manager. She has been an educator and activist in the Bay Area for the past four years and originally hails from Michigan. Prior to working for 826, Mariama completed a two-year teaching fellowship with Citizen Schools, where she managed volunteers, developed curriculum, and taught writing to middle school students around the Bay Area. She has also partnered with and taught writing workshops for numerous Bay Area youth programs, including Youth Speaks, LYRIC, Making Waves Education Program, and 826 Valencia.

In addition to her work with youth, Mariama is a published poet and performer. She was the recipient of the University of Michigan’s undergraduate Hopwood Poetry Award in 2004, a two-time member of the University of Michigan Slam team, a member of the Ann Arbor spoken word troupe, Wordworks, and has performed on stages with the Grand Rapids Symphony and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Mariama has been published in the Comstock Review, and is currently earning her MFA in poetry from San Francisco State University.

Mariama holds a BA in Creative Writing and African American Studies from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Education from Lesley University.

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