Who We Are & What We Do

Anne Milner began volunteering with the San Lorenzo Family Help Center after her retirement from corporate life as a software project manager.

Her volunteering started with packing bags a couple of hours once a week then quickly grew into several days a week, signing in clients and managing the drive-through during COVID times.

Anne brings her organization and leadership skills from her years in corporate life along with her strong ties to her church community, to the SLFHC Board of Directors in the role of President.

An involved an grandmother of six, Anne was born and raised a native of the American West (Utah, Oregon, Wyoming, Colorado, California) and loves the outdoors, hiking, scuba diving, and cross country skiing.

Bio coming soon

Anna has been volunteering with the San Lorenzo Family Help Center since 2020.  In 2024 she joined the Board of Directors and currently serves as Treasurer. Since 2020 she has been active in food recovery during this time, which is the majority of what beneficiaries of the pantry take home to their families.

Anna has been a professional actor for close to 25 years and has extensive experience in performance, teaching, coaching and touring productions across the country and around the world.  She also has extensive experience in community outreach initiatives which focused on local economic development, small, local, disadvantaged, and women-owned business development, and youth outreach.

She has a BA in English from Mills College (now Northeastern University) in Oakland CA as well as a vocational certificate in acting technique from the PCPA Conservatory for the Performing Arts. She is looking to get a master’s degree, but hasn’t decided a focus of study yet.

Elizabeth Brennan is currently serving as the secretary on the Executive Board. She has worked in HR for more than 30 years and holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri and a Master’s degree from Penn State University.

Elizabeth has been a resident of San Lorenzo for more than 20 years, and works with the SLFHC to do her part to ensure families in our community have access to food. 

Christine has been involved with the San Lorenzo Family Help Center since 2016. At first volunteering at the Holiday Events. After retiring from SLZUSD, she began helping 1 day a week, soon after she was helping 3 days a week with the Food Recovery Program. And from there became a Board Member.

Christine values the community we live in and has a passion for food, and love the satisfaction of providing, whether it’s from her kitchen, or a bag of essentials for someone else. Her parents installed the importance of contributing to your community, and she loves seeing the young adults at the Pantry making a difference.

“I feel very lucky to be a part of the San Lorenzo Family Help Center,” says Christine.

Jean Hembree’s corporate life included several decades working for financial institutions in the loan departments. In the last 10 years of Jean’s career she worked in the affordable housing sector  that provided Federal and State tax credits to residential building projects.

Jean was born and raised in Berkeley, California, a true Bay Area native.  She graduated from Sonoma State College (now a University) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Music-Performance (piano). 

In retirement, Jean enjoys reading, cooking, gardening, traveling in her Airstream trailer, solving Wordle in less attempts than her husband and being mother to two dogs, three goats and the occasional horse. 

Celeste believes that each human has some responsibility to support their community, to give back and not only take from. After moving to the East Bay from the Peninsula, Celeste started volunteering at SLFHC in January 2023 and joined our board in January 2024. 

Celeste is an active volunteer in the Bay Area.  As a PlayStation employee she participated in the PlayStation Cares volunteer program supporting programs like  Save the Bay restoring marshlands, the Second Harvest Bing Center, Habitat for Humanity Playhouse building for children, and a few other organizations. Before that, Celeste was a weekly volunteer at Second Harvest at the San Jose main packing facility.

During the day, Celeste is a program and project manager and has worked for companies like PlayStation, HP, Cisco, Intuit, Dolby, and even NASA. While she mostly helps technical people get their work done, she does know a thing or two around websites. You will find Celeste’s handy work as our website and content manager. In fact, she posted her own bio. 🙂

In her words “Being a part of a non-profit organization resets my perspective, away from the hustle of the tech industry, to one that is centered on community.” She signs in Saturday clients with a smile, making space for people to feel welcomed and respected and spreads the essential human experience that SLFHC brings to the community.