Events

Yavus Atila will discuss Rotary's New Area of Focus and ESRAG (Environmental Sustainability Rotarian Action Group),

Yavus is the current member, founder, and Charter President of the Rotary Club of Monterey Cannery Row since October 2011. He joined Rotary in April 2005 as a member of the Rotary Club of Monterey Peninsula Sunrise and served as the club President in 2010-11 and Assistant Governor in 2011-12. He served as the District 5230 Governor in Central Coast California in 2016-17 and the District Trainer for 2017-2018 term, the District Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) chair for 2017-2020 term. Yavuz founded the Rotary club of Silicon Valley STAR in 2009 and Rotary club of Carmel Sunset in 2017. Yavuz joined the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group (ESRAG) in August 2019 and currently serving as the ESRAG Western North America Regional Chapter leader since April 2020.

Yavuz was born in a Black Sea town of Sinop, Turkey. He graduated from the Turkish Naval Academy in 1984. During his 8-year Navy career, he served on Turkish frigates that operated in the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. In December 1990, he received his M.S. degree from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. After resigning from the Turkish Navy in 1992, he worked as the Information Systems Director for the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. In 2003, he founded his own company, Monterey Bay Technologies, Inc.; providing IT solutions, sales and services to the small to mid-size businesses and organizations.

Paul Johnson is in his fourth year as superintendent of the Los Gatos Union School District and twenty-first year as a superintendent in California school districts.   Prior to Los Gatos, he worked as superintendent of schools in Mill Valley for seven years and Loomis in the foothills area of Sacramento for six years.   In his spare time, he loves to spend time with his family and especially his grandchildren.  He will cover a wide variety of topics from school reopening, strategic plan, and the district’s financial standing with the upcoming parcel tax expiration.

San Jose Magazine named him one of Silicon Valley’s 100 most powerful leaders. Pulitzer Prize winning author and Washington Post reporter, Haynes Johnson, described Larry Stone in his bestselling book, Sleepwalking Through History, as “bright, articulate; an American rarity, a proven political success in a time of political failure.”

He was first elected Assessor in 1994 and overwhelmingly re-elected six times by the residents of Santa Clara County, which stretches north to Palo Alto, south to Gilroy, and includes San Jose, the “Capital of Silicon Valley.”  The County boasts a population of 1.9 million – greater than that of 13 states.

Stone has been a financial manager on Wall Street and co-founded a successful Bay Area real estate investment and development firm.  He served 16 years as a council member and mayor of Sunnyvale, a period during which the city earned an international reputation for effectiveness and became a model for President Clinton and Vice President Gore’s efforts to reform the federal bureaucracy.  President Clinton said, “The National Performance Review was modeled in part upon the remarkable reinvention efforts pioneered by the City of Sunnyvale, where Larry Stone served as mayor.”

As County Assessor, Stone has overseen remarkable improvements to streamline the operations of his office, eliminate backlogs, and achieve higher levels of public service, all while consistently operating substantially under budget.  The State Board of Equalization acknowledged his office as one of the best-managed assessors’ operations in California.

Larry Stone also has been an active and effective civic leader in many fields ranging from the arts, to education, to the environment.  He was instrumental in co- founding an innovative $11 million education endowment foundation that has contributed nearly $20 million to benefit a local, public elementary school district.  A native of Seattle, he has an MBA from the University of Washington and has studied at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  He and his wife, Carmen, have lived in Sunnyvale since 1970, where they raised three sons.