Board of Visitors

Dr. Yolanda Aguerrebere

Dr. Aguerrebere graduated with a Master of Science in School Management and Administration from GSEP in 1983, and earned her Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership from GSEP in 2009. She retired in 2010, after 35 years of service; she spent 24 years with the Los Angeles Unified School District and 11 years with the El Rancho Unified School District.

Dr. Aguerrebere has been a teacher, instructional advisor, elementary and secondary principal, mentor, consultant, researcher, and international speaker. Dr. Aguerrebere resides in Placentia, California

Dr. Fereshteh Amin

Dr. Amin received her BS in statistics from Shiraz University and graduated with an MBA in 1993 from Industrial Management Institute in Tehran. Prior to her move to the US, Dr. Amin was an organizational development consultant at the Industrial Management Institute, and an academic editor at the University Publishing Center, both in Tehran. She earned her Doctorate in Education in Organizational Leadership from Pepperdine University in 2006.

Since 2006, Dr. Amin has been the principal of Amin Leadership Center, a leadership development training and coaching organization focused on multicultural leadership. She has published several scholarly articles on multicultural leadership. Her dissertation was published in Germany and translated and published in Iran. She also joined California Polytheistic University Pomona College of Business Administration as an adjunct professor in the Human Resource Department in 2014-present. She lives in Los Angeles.

Dr. Shreyas Gandhi

Dr. Gandhi has been with Raytheon Company for 15 years and is currently a Production Program Manager on the Trident Program. The United States maintains a nuclear triad comprised of a sea, land, and air deterrent based system of delivery vehicles. The Trident is a Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM), standing over 44 feet tall, with a range of > 4000 nautical miles. Prior to this role Dr. Gandhi managed the Component Engineering Department comprised of 165 employees located in CA & TX with expertise in component failure analysis, component test and evaluation, and parts & obsolescence management for Raytheon's $6B Space and Airborne Systems Division. Prior to that he was the Nuclear Survivability & Vulnerability lead on several classified programs, a deputy program manager for the Trident Integrated Support Facility, program advisor to the Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems Engineering Rotation program, and is currently an instructor for Principals of Program Leadership and the Leading with Focus courses sponsored by Raytheon Professional Services.

Prior to joining Raytheon, Dr. Gandhi spent 3 years at Lucent Technologies in the Supply Chain Network organization located at Lucent's corporate headquarters in Murray Hill, New Jersey and participated in the sale of the Oklahoma City Works factory to contract manufacturer Celestica.

Dr. Gandhi started his career at TRW's Electronic Space and Technology Division (since purchased by Northrop Grumman) in Redondo Beach, CA where he spent 5 years as a member of technical staff.

Dr. Gandhi holds a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Irvine, a Master's in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and a Master's in Business Administration and Doctoral degree in Organizational Leadership from Pepperdine University. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Global Leadership & Change from Pepperdine University, and is expecting to graduate May 2019. He joined Pepperdine GSEP as an adjunct faculty member in 2013, and teaches courses in research methods, participates in Dissertations as a committee member and chair, and administers Comprehensive exams. Dr. Gandhi was nominated to the Board of Visitors in 2017.

Dr. Claudette McLinn

Dr. McLinn received a Master of Science degree from GSEP in 1983, and a Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership degree from GSEP in 2006. She is the executive director of the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children's Literature, an organization which advocates for multicultural children's literature. She is a life member of the American Library Associations and has chaired and served on many prestigious book award committees in the organization.

Dr. McLinn has been a teacher, school librarian, district supervisor of ESEA Title V Library Services, and field administrator for elementary and secondary school libraries in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She retired from Los Angeles Unified School District in 2011.

Mrs. Mariellen Pepperdine Ostwald

Mariellen Pepperdine Ostwald graduated from Pepperdine's Seaver College in 2000, with a bachelor's degree in liberal arts and a minor in psychology. She earned a master's degree in education with a teaching credential from GSEP in 2001. She taught at Woodland Hills Elementary (LAUSD) to a combination of general and special education students.

She has a passion for many areas of education, including the field of special education. Since having her own special needs child, she has educated herself and other parents of special needs children of their legal rights within the educational system. She advocates for these children as needed.

She currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with her loving husband and two amazing daughters. She is an active volunteer at her local church as well as her children's schools. She enjoys tennis in her spare time. Mariellen is blessed and humbled to be the granddaughter of the founder of Pepperdine University, George Pepperdine.

Dr. Kent Rhodes

Dr. Kent Rhodes serves as Senior Consultant with the Chicago-based Family Business Consulting Group and is Clinical Professor with Pepperdine University’s Executive program in Organization Development and Doctoral programs in Global Leadership and Change. He has also taught courses with Pepperdine’s Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution with the Caruso School of Law and chaired the Graziadio Business School’s Executive MBA committee.

Kent was invited to join FBCG in 2006 and enjoys working with families and their enterprises across multiple industries, where he aligns both business and family strategy in ways that facilitate business success and family harmony. Prior to joining the Family Business Consulting Group, he founded and served as CEO for an Internet education company. He negotiated the sale of the company to a Silicon Valley publicly traded corporation where he continued as a Principal, serving as Managing Director until successfully completing its acquisition and integration growth strategies. Shortly after that, he accepted a faculty appointment with Pepperdine’s Executive Programs.

Raised in Lubbock, Texas, Kent currently makes his home in Orange County, California. He is an active member of the Academy of Management, the Family Firm Institute, the Executive MBA Council, the American Psychological Association, and the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Dr. Earnestine Thomas-Robertson

Dr. Thomas-Robertson is an alumna of George Pepperdine College and of GSEP's Doctor of Education in Institutional Management program, for which she wrote her dissertation on Globalizing in Community College Curricula.

She is the president of the Los Angeles-Lusaka Sister City Committee, Vice President of Business Relations for Born Ready Industries, Inc., and Dean Emeritus of Los Angeles Southwest College. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Dr. Betty Uribe

Dr. Betty Uribe is the Executive Vice President at California Bank & Trust, where she leads Commercial and Personal Banking throughout Southern California. With three decades in the financial industry she is recognized as a top financial expert in her field. Her entrepreneurial background has given her a broad and universal understanding of various industries and businesses within the U.S and International Markets. A recognized authority on the psychology of leadership, organizational turnarounds, and peak performance, she has been honored consistently for her strategic intellect and humanitarian endeavors.

Dr. Uribe has worked with leaders from every walk of life – CEOs of multinational corporations, military generals, political leaders, advocates for humanity, psychologists, universities, and parents. Included in the many honors bestowed upon Dr. Uribe are "The Most Prominent Latina in Los Angeles" and "Top 25 National Corporate Elite."

Dr. Uribe is an international speaker, consultant, coach, author, and is recognized for her expertise in "Values Based Leadership." Her work has been published in four continents.

Dr. Edward J. van Luinen

Edward J. van Luinen, EdD is CEO and Board Advisor at Global Talent Builders, LLC, a worldwide recruiting, change, and workforce development company in Pasadena, California. His clients include Fortune 100, 500, and mid-size companies, universities, and non-profit organizations, with his consulting spanning advisory, planning, and implementation services.

Edward has over twenty years of effective leadership experience in global human resources specializing in talent and change. His experience includes Fortune Global 100 and 500 companies (Disney, Sony, and Avon Products, Inc.) and entrepreneurial companies (Heineken USA, IAC, and DoubleClick). He speaks Dutch, French, German, and Spanish and had a successful expatriate assignment in Italy implementing a global-regional-local learning strategy and delivery model for the Avon EMEA region.

As co-leader of Authentic Collaboration, Inc., a partnership with his former Disney colleague Tricia Cerrone, Edward is co-author of The Power of Collaboration, a roadmap to building stronger leaders, happier teams, and big results in an increasingly competitive marketplace (Bloomsbury, World Rights, Fall 2026).

Edward received a Bachelor of Arts in French from Calvin College. After college, he was a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Guinea, West Africa, serving as a high school English teacher. He received a Peace Corps Fellowship at Columbia University Teachers College, graduating with a Master of Arts in International Education Development. In 2016, he obtained his doctorate in organizational leadership from Pepperdine University. He resides in Pasadena, California with his husband and energetic standard poodle.

Dr. Marilyn Wright

Dr. Marilyn Wright attended BYU-Hawaii before transferring to UCLA where she graduated with a degree in psychology. Dr. Wright received both her Master's and Doctoral degrees from Pepperdine University as well as completing a two-year Psychology residency at Berkshire Medical Center in Massachusetts. For almost 20 years, Marilyn was on the Adjunct Faculty of Pepperdine and she has served on the GSEP Board of Visitors for 10 years, since its inception. In 2005, Dr. Wright was honored with Pepperdine's Distinguished Alumna of the Year Award. In 2008, The California Psychological Association awarded Dr. Wright with The Silver Psi Award.

Dr. Wright was in private practice from 1998 - 2008 in Pasadena as well as on medical staff at two leading psychiatric hospitals in the area. She is past-President of the San Gabriel Valley Psychological Association and for 11 years, Marilyn was the Director of the Los Angeles Area Chapter of AMCAP – The Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists. She currently serves on the editorial Board of the Journal "Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy".

In 2008, after 42 years of holding out for "Mr. Wright", he finally came along, and shortly thereafter, she married and moved to the East Bay. She currently resides in Moraga and enjoys navigating the wonderful world of 6 grown children and 20 grandchildren (and counting!). She has a private practice in Moraga and Walnut Creek.

Ms. Victoria Brown, Board of Visitors Scholarship Recipient

Ms. Brown is concurrently a Ph.D. student in the Global Leadership and Change program and a student in the Certificate program at the Strauss Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University. She holds a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy from GSEP as well.

As Chief of Staff for TheCaseMade Inc., a consulting firm in Columbia, MD, and as Consultant to the Department of Health and Human Service's Office of Equity in Long Beach, CA, she is able to exercise her passion for keeping the voices of those who are marginalized and disenfranchised at the table during community development. This passion led her to volunteer in the most rural parts of Selma, Alabama through Pepperdine's service opportunities.

Ms. Brown's research interests pertain to the social implications of Artificial Intelligence on our society as Technology, Big Data, and Robotics continue to advance, and the influence of these implications on Public Policies. Through her leadership, scholarship, and service Victoria hopes to continue to collaborate with communities by connecting them to the resources needed for systems change.