The Oakland Public Education Fund (The Ed Fund) welcomes John Bliss and Calvin Guinn to the Ed Fund Board of Directors. We appreciate the time, talents, and experience they bring to the Ed Fund.
John Bliss is President of SCI Consulting Group, California’s premier local agency infrastructure funding and policy consulting firm. He specializes in establishing ballot-funded mechanisms for public agencies. He is active in Oakland civic activities, serving on the Board of Youth ALIVE!, the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation, which he co-founded.
John co-chaired the Measure Q Campaign in 2020, bringing more than $30 million to Oakland each year to support park maintenance and homelessness services. He also co-founded the Model Bridge Competition at Oakland Technical High School in 1995 and continues to manage it annually. He is married to Kim A. Thompson and lives in the Rockridge area of Oakland. They have two adult children.
Calvin Guinn leads and manages his family-owned Design/Build custom residential construction business. At one time, he partnered with a colleague and started a low-voltage division for San Francisco-based Young Electric + Communications (YEC) company, a privately held, union-supported electrical contracting company. During his current tenure at YEC, Guinn has managed the steady growth of the low voltage division to $30 million annually and serves as an adjunct advisor to the board of the San Francisco Electrical Contractors Association (SFECA).
He has held engineering and managerial positions in the semiconductor manufacturing industry at Applied Materials and U.S. DOE-funded research and development in partnership with the nation’s leading public university, the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
John is an Oakland native and a product of the Oakland public schools system, has a B.S. in Civil Engineering from UC Berkeley, and is a lifelong resident of Oakland. His three grown children also attended Oakland public schools. One of John’s passions is introducing young people to opportunities in engineering and construction, exposing them to viable avenues into those professions through mentorship and apprenticeship programs provided by various building trade unions.
