Jeffrey Betcher is a community builder with social justice policy experience at the national level.  He has extensive nonprofit sector experience with a focus on strategic program planning, systems, board development, grants and project management.  Betcher is co-founder of the Quesada Gardens Initiative, a highly regarded community-based organization in the Bayview Hunters Point District of San Francisco.  (See www.quesadagardens.org)  Under his leadership, the Quesada Gardens Initiative has garnered massive media attention and prestigious awards that include the Robert C. Friese Award for Neighborhood Conservation, the Crissy Field Community Heroes Award, and the Models of Hope Award from the San Francisco Interfaith Council.  He is the lead organizer for Bayview Footprints, a collaboration of community-building projects focused on communicating a positive story about San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. 

Betcher recently founded a private sector venture called YamStreet – an apparel design and manufacturing business featuring a line of women’s sleepwear.  YamStreet is dedicated to the expression of progressive values through all aspects of doing business.  The company and its products are being designed to model innovative practices including local production, eco-friendly materials, worker-friendly labor practices, and collaborative business practices.  Betcher is also a founder and President of People Wear SF, an association of apparel industry professionals strengthening the San Francisco Bay Area’s sewn products design, manufacturing and retail industry through networking and collaborative public relations. 

Betcher was Program/Operations Director at the Family Violence Prevention Fund where, for 12 years, he collaboratively developed violence prevention programming.  By the end of his tenure, the FVPF had become established as the premiere national organization devoted to the prevention of violence against women and children, and the organization’s public awareness campaign had become an Ad Council “Historic Campaign.”  Betcher currently serves on the National Advisory Committee for the violence prevention program Transforming Communities, the board of the Combined Federal Campaign’s Child Protection, Abduction and Abuse Prevention Charities of America, the board of Think Round, Inc., the San Francisco Mayor’s Shape Up Coalition and Southeast Sector Food Access Working Group, and on the steering committee for Literacy for Environmental Justice’s Living Classroom.  He holds a B.A. in History from Kenyon College, and has been a Bayview resident for 10 years.