Highland takes reins at PEF

After nearly a year as interim director, Maureen Highland has officially taken the reins at the Petaluma Educational Foundation. The board announced last week that it had selected Highland to oversee the 33-year-old Petaluma nonprofit.

Highland previously served as the organization’s director of development and marketing, and has a long history with the nonprofit that services all 37 of Petaluma’s public, charter and not-for-profit private schools. The organization assists all of Petaluma’s 13,000 students by providing scholarships and teacher grants, which can be used to enhance student education. In the 2014-15 school year, PEF gave out $217,000 in grants, raising their total number to $2,749,106, in addition to $2,462,000 in scholarships.

Highland is a Marin County native who attended the University of San Francisco. .

In addition to Highland, PEF welcomed two new board members recently. Jane Rabbitt and Michael Regan are both Petaluma residents. Rabbitt is a clinical nurse specialist at UCSF in neuro-oncology. Regan is principal at The Regan Team Home Loan Group who has participated in various local industry groups. The Petaluma Educational Foundation relies totally on the generosity of the community to raise essential funds.

to support grants and scholarships for all Petaluma schools. It also operates two downtown thrift stores, Alphabet Soup and Alphabet Soup @ Home, to support the mission of providing the public a way to participate through volunteering, shopping and donating items to benefit all local schools.