Steve Carnevale and Shuo (Shuonan) Chen were recently appointed by Governor Newsom to fill open Commission positions.
SACRAMENTO – The Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (MHSOAC) is pleased to welcome Steve Carnevale to fill the position of small business employer with less than 500 employees, and Shuo (Shuonan) Chen to fill the position of family member on the 16-person Commission, established in 2004 by the Mental Health Services Act and charged with the responsibility of driving transformational change in
California’s mental health system.
“As the COVID-19 pandemic continues into a second year, we are all more aware than ever before of how critical workplaces and family members are to supporting mental health,” said Lynne Ashbeck, Commission Chair and senior vice president of community engagement and population wellness for Valley Children’s Healthcare. “We welcome our new Commissioners, their unique perspectives and their commitment to the Commission’s work to help transform the mental health system of care in California.”
Carnevale is the executive chairman of Sawgrass, a developer of digital industrial inkjet technologies and cloud-based mass customization software. He runs a family-owned wine business in the Napa Valley called Blue Oak and is the founder and chair of the advisory board for the UCSF Dyslexia Center which is translating cutting edge neuroscience to enable precision learning.
In addition to other education non-profit board service, Carnevale is a founder and co-chairs Breaking-Barriers-by-8, where he works with other non-profits, schools, corporations, and foundations toward achieving 100 percent literacy for all by age 8. He is also an advisor to ESO Ventures, a social venture fund in Oakland for community workforce development of unrepresented populations and is the former President and Emeritus Chair of The Olympic Club Foundation, whose mission is to support disadvantaged youth sports programs that develop future community leaders.
Chen is General Partner at IOVC, an early stage venture capital fund based in Silicon Valley focused on enterprise and SaaS, where she has invested in dozens of startups now unicorns or acquired by Fortune 50 companies. She is a Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and Faculty at Singularity University, where she teaches entrepreneurship and emerging technologies. Chen is a co-author to one of the leading books on financial regulations published by Cambridge University Press.
In addition to her investing and teaching roles, Chen is the CEO of Shinect, a Silicon Valley-based non-profit community of 5,000+ engineers passionate about entrepreneurship. She is also a Board Member of Decode, the largest tech and entrepreneurship community co-hosted with UC Berkeley and Stanford student organizations, alumni networks and entrepreneurship centers, as well as an Advisory Board Member of Yale School of Medicine’s Center for Digital Health and Innovation.
As a statutory requirement of the Mental Health Services Act, the Commission is designed to empower stakeholders, with members representing not only consumers and their families, and employers, but also service providers, law enforcement, government officials, and educators.
Interview Opportunities by Request
Toby Ewing, Ph.D. – MHSOAC Executive Director
About the Commission
In enacting Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, California voters in 2014 created and charged the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission with the responsibility of driving transformational change in public and private mental health systems to achieve the vision that everyone who needs mental health care has access to and receives effective and culturally competent care. The Commission was design to empower stakeholders, with members representing consumers and their families, service providers, law enforcement, educators and employers. The Commission puts consumers and families at the center of decision-making. The Commission promotes community collaboration, cultural competency and integrated service delivery. The Commission is committed to wellness and recovery, using its authorities, resources and passion to reduce the negative outcomes of mental illness and promote the mental health and wellbeing of all Californians.