Ron Herring
Beyond high school, most of Ron Herring's education occurred at Stanford University in economics, anthropology and international affairs. For several years after obtaining his B.A. degree in 1958, he taught in California’s K-12 schools and worked with the Peace Corps in educational and research roles in the Philippines. He was then employed by Stanford and, for most of 20 years, supported and helped to develop the University’s research, teaching and graduate student programs in international studies. As these programs developed linkages into K-12 schools and the community, Ron helped to establish a California network of privately funded regional sites, located in universities, that supported the development of K-12 teacher professional competence in international studies. He subsequently guided an effort to establish this network legislatively in the state, which was accomplished in 1985 as the California International Studies Project (CISP). He has served as the CISP Executive Director since that time, first at Stanford and, since 2004, at the University of the Pacific. In the late 1980s, he also helped to establish a national organization, the Alliance for Education in Global and International
Studies (AEGIS), and served as its president for ten years.

Bill Hough
Mr. Hough’s early years were spent near the Amish area in Eastern Pennsylvania where he became familiar at an early age with principles of non-violence and peace and with the legacy of William Penn. He excelled in athletics and enjoyed nature, winning an Eagle Scout award when he was 15. His 10th grade world history teacher took his class on a two day tour of the United Nations in New York City and in his senior year he won a Time Magazine award for his knowledge of international affairs.

After two years of study at Kenyon College in Ohio he sailed to West and North Africa on a merchant ship experiencing the joy of the newly independent West African states and the brutality of the French in Algiers. After touring Southern France and Spain (then controlled by the Dictator Francisco Franco) he returned to complete his BA and MA in economics at the University of California, Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement.

After graduating he accepted an offer as a Lecturer in Economics at Amadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria and arrived in Nigeria at the beginning of the Biafran War.
His contract included ten weeks each year of paid vacation in Europe where he stayed in Southern France and the former Yugoslavia visiting Cairo, Egypt and Athens Greece. In 1968 he was in Yugoslavia when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia and in Paris during the student riots.

After three years, he returned to the United States and started a construction business in Santa Cruz, CA. While in Santa Cruz he had the opportunity of studying with two renowned scholars in the emerging field of peace education and became an advocate for the United States Institute of Peace. In 1986 he was invited to Marin County to compete for “major funding” from the Buck Trust proposing the Institute for Peace Development. The Institute organized public events featuring local, national and international leaders discussing their perspective on peace. One event featured then Congresswoman Barbara Boxer and former Senator Claiborne Pell, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He moved to Marin County and became active in the Democratic Party. In 1988 he was named co-Marin County Democrat of the Year. In 1989 he was invited to visit Israel and Egypt. In 1990 he served as campaign manager for now Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey in her pre-primary campaign and as an advisor until she was elected to Congress in 1992.

In late 1992, he was asked to serve as the President of the 12 chapter Northern California Division of the United Nations Association, USA where he led the Division in preparations for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in 1995. In this capacity he was the principle organizer of the May 19, 1995, Roosevelt Tribute to honor the 50th Anniversary of the Commemorative Ceremony for President Franklin D. Roosevelt attended by the delegates to the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization held in Muir Woods National Monument.

In 1996, the UN Department of Public Information agreed to our proposal to establish the Resource Center for the United Nations in the Presidio National Park. Several high ranking UN officials accepted our invitation to meet with Presidio-based organizations including: Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF; Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Dr. Noel Brown, Director of the North American Office of UNEP; Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Deputy Director of the World Trade Organization. He also organized several video conferences connecting the Presidio with UN offices in New York and Geneva. In this capacity he was invited to serve on the steering committee of the Presidio Alliance, an organization of Presidio-based organizations sponsored by the National Park Service.

In 2002 working with Walter Johnson, then Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Labor Council and John Rizzo then President of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club we drafted a “Statement of Principles” that served as the basis for establishing the Phillip and Sala Burton Center for Human Rights that was incorporated as a 501 (c3) non-profit corporation in 2006.

Sharon Johnson
Sharon Johnson was born, raised and educated in San Francisco, California. She is currently the Navigator Coordinator for Project Homeless Connect upon leaving her position as Executive Director to the John Burton Foundation for Children Without Homes.  Sharon accepted this position following her work as San Francisco Chief of Staff to State Senator John Burton following her return from the United States Peace Corps serving in Grenada, West Indies as a community development consultant. Prior to the Peace Corps, Sharon was Executive Director to the Commission on the Status of Women serving between the years of 1989 - 1994.

Her long history of San Francisco politics includes being Executive Director to the San Francisco County Democratic Party, Special Assistant to Mayor Art Agnos and for eight years Administrative Assistance to Supervisor Harry Britt.

Walter Johnson
Walter Johnson is a co-founder of the Phillip and Sala Burton Center for Human Rights and is Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus of the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He has been a labor, community and church leader in San Francisco, the Bay Area and California for more than fifty years. Born and raised in North Dakota, Walter served in Europe during World War II where he experienced the horrors of Nazi atrocities and the malaise of racial segregation in America.

He returned to San Francisco where his parents had relocated from North Dakota. He eventually got a job at Sears Roebuck and joined the Department of Store Employees Union Local 1100. He became the Local’s Business Agent in 1957 then President and in 1964 became Secretary-Treasurer. In 1985 he was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Labor Council and held the post until 2004. He has served on the Board of Directors of KQED, Arriba Juntos, Bay Pacific Health Plan, United Way if the Bay Area and the San Francisco Private Industry Council. He also served as an advisor to the Labor Studies Program at San Francisco State University, Institute for Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkeley and the Bay Area Economic Forum. He is also the founder and former President of San Francisco Renaissance.

He has been an active member of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in South San Francisco for more than forty years, serving as President for six years and is presently a member of the Council.

The Honorable Harry Low
Phillip and Sala Burton won the admiration, respect and loyalty of The Honorable Harry Low in 1956, during Phillip’s first successful primary campaign for the California State Assembly. Burton was one of the few political leaders who defended the rights of the Chinese-American Community against the unconstitutional mass subpoenas issued by the U.S. Justice Department to obtain immigration records of the major Chinese-American organizations in San Francisco.

Together, with the help of others, Burton and Low formed the Chinese-American Democratic Party that brought the Chinese-American community into the mainstream of San Francisco political life. Justice Low now serves as a Dispute Resolution Specialist at JAMS, the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service. He served as California’s 38th Insurance Commissioner, Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeals and National President of the Chinese-American Citizens Alliance. He has won the American Bar Association’s 2002 Spirit of Excellence Award and in 2000 he received the Judge Lowell Jensen Public Service Award from the Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley. He was the Founding Chairman of the Board, Chinese-American International School and serves on the Board of Directors of the Phillip and Sala Burton Center for Human Rights at the Presidio National Park. In 2007 he was named San Francisco Man of the Year by the San Francisco Forum.

Douglas Perry
Doug was born and raised in Northern Michigan. His father, Albert, ran a small grocery store and later a casino, dance hall and hotel patronized by the lumberjacks who worked in the woods in that region. This was Paul Bunyan country. His mother, Mary Martin, was a nightclub singer and achieved some local fame with club appearances and radio play.

Doug graduated from Escanaba High School, then served for two years on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps reserve in California. He began his higher education at St. Norbert’s College in DePere, Wisconsin in 1958. He later transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles where he received his B.S. degree in Business Administration in 1962. His first job was with the Los Angeles Times in their marketing department.

He moved to San Francisco in 1963, where he worked for Bank of America, Pacific Gas and Electric and Wells Fargo as a business analyst and technical writer. In 1989, Doug was co-founder of Union Publications, Inc. along with his wife Hoda. He served as CEO and Hoda served as President from 1989 to 2008. The company published and acted as a marketing agent for several union newspapers, including ‘The Journeyman’ and the 'Northern California Teamsters.’ In 1995, Union Publications began publishing ‘Organized Labo,r’ the official newspaper for the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council. Doug’s reporting on state and national politics and union issues became a mainstay of that publication for many years. Research on union organizations and union history in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Northern California broadened his views on social justice and the rights of working people. In 1995, Union Publications put together a 100-year history of the construction trades unions in San Francisco in celebration of the San Francisco Building Trades Council’s centennial.

Doug has also written and published the ‘Directory of Multiemployer Trust Funds-Western States’ annually from 1994 through 1998. The Directory served as an investment guide in managing union retirement funds.

He lives with his wife Hoda and their many cats in their home in Kensington, California, across the Bay from San Francisco. Since his retirement, Doug has focused on his photo collection, which he amassed as the working photo-journalist for Union Publications. He has also assembled a large collection of photos of Egypt from his travels there over the years with his Egyptian spouse. He currently serves as Treasurer of the Phillip and Sala Burton Center for Human Rights and remains strongly committed to social justice, economic equality and environmental protection.