Our Leadership Team
The Guiding Lights Network is a Seattle-based organization that designs and builds lifelong learning experiences. Our mission is to restore community and compassion through mindful mentoring, imagination and passionate engagement in public life.
Eric Liu, founder, is an author, educator, and civic entrepreneur. He is the author of Guiding Lights: How to Mentor – and Find Life’s Purpose, the Official Book of National Mentoring Month, and is founder of the Guiding Lights Network, a mentoring advocacy organization. His first book, The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, was a New York Times Notable Book featured in the PBS documentary “Matters of Race." His new book Imagination First, co-authored with Scott Noppe-Brandon of the Lincoln Center Institute, explores ways to unlock imagination in education, politics, business and the arts. Most recently, Eric co-authored The True Patriot with Nick Hanauer, and together the two have created the True Patriot Network to advance the book's ideals of progressive patriotism. Eric served as a White House speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and later as the President's deputy domestic policy adviser. After the White House, he was an executive at the digital media company RealNetworks. In 2002 he was named one of the World Economic Forum's Global Leaders of Tomorrow.
Jena Cane, partner, is an experiental program/event designer, producer, actor and teaching artist. She has worked on the stage, in the classroom, at the desk and behind the scenes with the Guiding Lights Weekend, Creativity Matters, Seattle Interantional Children's Festival, Interplay Experience Design, Entros, One World Theatre, ArtsCorps and in schools throughout the state.
Claudette Evans, partner, has worked for more than 15 years as a performer, event producer, project manager and nonprofit arts administator. She is a former vice president of the Washington State Arts Alliance Foundation and a former member of Seattle Central Community College's Arts Management Technical Advisory Committee.
Alex Martin, conference coordinator for The Guiding Lights Weekend, is an independent event planner and a partner at Jubilee Event Engineers. When she's not working on The Guiding Lights Weekend, Alex makes art and spends entirely too much time thinking about how to reduce her consumer footprint. She lives with her partner Freya and her son Ari in Columbia City, South Seattle.