Aaron Barnett Foundation

I co-founded the Aaron Barnett Foundation with the help of Zeina Ammar to empower & support K12 students to pursue their careers in CyberSecurity and Technology to keep the legacy alive of our dear friend and mentor Aaron Barnett. 

I volunteered over 2000 hours of work to establish this foundation. 
Journey of Aaron Barnett Foundation

Aaron was a dear friend and a passionate mentor to support the students at the K-12 level to pursue their careers in technology. He was committed and devoted his life to teaching the next generation's cyber leaders. He partnered with the big players in this technology to create excellent opportunities and incentives for the students.

My Responsibilities at the foundation 

As our foundation still is taking baby steps, I wear too many hats here being a cofounder. I believe the responsibility of a co-founder is much higher than anyone in the foundation. Zeina and I feel that we need to nurture this baby tree to grow to spread the love of Aaron among the young men and women who thrive on being technology leaders. I am dedicated and confident to make the foundation a success with the help of distinguished board members, honorable donors, and members of the advisory committee.

These are the following responsibilities I am currently fulfilling with the foundation: 

As a Secretary of the Foundation

• Takes minutes at board and association meetings 
• Co-signs formal papers with the president: authorizations for payment, resolutions, and formal letters
• Handles Foundation correspondence as directed by the president
• Maintains and preserves records and essential documents of the foundation
• Provide concise and complete minutes for a board meeting
• Recording – When taking minutes at a conference, focus on nothing special meeting or actions taken by the group in the order they took place. 
• Call upon an urgent special meeting on phone or web

Other responsibilities 

• Sending notices of board meetings
• Preparing a list of unfinished business from meetings for the president to follow up on
• Notifying officers and committee members of their election or appointment 

As an Executive Director & Co-founder

As the foundation is now at the preliminary stage of growth and cannot afford to maintain administrative costs, so to save the expenses and price, I manage all the operations and fulfill the responsibilities as an executive director to:

1. Any legal or general concern about foundation and decision-making process before it goes to Board of Directors 
2. General public communication as an Executive Director 
3. Ideas cultivation and proposal writing if needed
4. Marketing proposals on revenue generation 
5. Developed process & guidelines working with the president before submitting to the Board Members
6. Fund monitoring along with the treasurer & the president
7. Collecting all online responses and queries and discussing with the president and treasurer if needed 
8. Attending and organizing seminars, workshops and events if needed.

Managing Marketing, Web Development & Creative Services 

With my professional background and experience I feel proud to help this foundation in planning, strategizing & managing projects related to digital marketing, design & printing. 

1. Marketing planning researching, implementation including digital marketing & traditional marketing 
2. All digital marketing initiatives & social media presence and email marketing 
3. Manage creative work such as designing marketing and promotional materials, video editing, photo archiving, and others. 
4. Managing articles and write-ups 
5. Event idea creation, planning & executing
6. Marketing budget allocation
7. All technical documentation
8. All intellectual properties and media archiving 
9. Website maintenance and management

Milestones achieved: 

Please check the case study section of my website, to know more on my project success of the foundation.

The idea behind creating Aaron Barnett Foundation

Aaron Barnett is one of the pioneers to build the technical infrastructure in Moreno Valley Unified School District.

One evening when I was visiting him in 2018, he was sharing his dreams about how he wanted to empower students of Cyber Academic Pathway at K12 levels to pursue their career. An idea just flashed in my mind and I shared that I wanted to establish a foundation in the future in his name to empower and support the students so they could pursue their career in cybersecurity. He was very happy listening to my idea and suggested that I could seek help from Zeina, another best friend of his, Tim Kelly, a best friend and co-worker of 20 years at MVUSD, and Donna Woods who is an instrumental of Cybersecurity Academic Pathway at MVUSD.

After his battle of one and half years, Aaron passed away on November 13, 2018. I shared my idea with Zeina Ammar, who is also committed to helping young men & women to pursue their careers in technology. Zeina had completed a few significant projects partnering with Aaron for these causes.

Zeina agreed with me right away, and I started the process of registering the foundation. Zeina and I developed the mission and vision of the foundation. 

The foundation received nonprofit charity status from the State and the Internal Revenue Service within two weeks. With all our enthusiasm and dreams the Aaron Barnett Foundation was born on August 19, 2019. 

Launched ABF at CETPA Convention

The Aaron Barnett Foundation (ABF) first launched at the CETPA Convention on November 12, 2019. 

On the same day, I launched the ABF official website. The website was custom made with the programming language, Php Codeigniter & MySQL. I also created the branding for the foundation from concept to production. I led a team of 6 designers and developers to complete the site and the branding of the Aaron Barnett Foundation.

I dedicate a significant amount of volunteer work every year to manage the scholarship program and organize the award ceremony in order to maintain a steady momentum of progress. I spend a good amount of time researching and brainstorming ideas for the foundation's growth.