Whitney Olch
Founder, Advisory Board Member,
Contributor, Volunteer

Click for Letter of Resignation

Whitney has been with me in the first gen charity work since the beginning of Back to our Roots, The Eileen Bailey Memorial Scholarship Fund in 2006. She has been an integral part of organizing, planning, promoting and fundraising for the cause and transitioned to the original Bright Futures Advisory Board. She has been a consistent leader of the program since the inception. And only resigned after she was kept out of the PCEF board meeting in February for opposing the changes being proposed to the program.

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Moe Hickey
Founder, School Board President, Advisory Board Member, Director of Voices for Utah Children

Resigned December 2023
Moe did not submit a formal resignation.

Maurice “ Moe “ Hickey was an 8 year member and President of the Park City School of Board of Education during the years leading up to and including the establishment of the partnership between Bright Futures, PCEF and the PC School District. Moe was an original BF Advisory Board member and was integral in seeing that the BF program was folded into the school district and that it received the respect and cooperation of P CEF and PCSD as it grew and took hold in the PC High School. Moe never formally sent a letter of resignation from the BF Advisory Board and maintains his presence as the leader of the Voices for Utah Children’s program.

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Nikki Blumin
Founder, Assistant Program Director, Advisory Board College Counselor

Click for Letter of Resignation

Nikki wrote a beautiful letter of resignation citing her love for the Bright Futures program and her desire not to see or help the program be dismantled, but asked that the letter from January 2025 not be recirculated out of respect for the students and other co workers in the BF program.

Nicole Blumin was the second paid employee of the Bright Futures program. Nikki brought to the program a professionalism and expertise that became an invaluable piece to Bright Futures. She is a graduate of Syracuse University and worked there helping students navigating the pathways to higher education and career opportunities. Before her move to the PCSD, she earned an Utah Professional level license in school counseling , a Masters degree  in school counseling, and a degree in Spanish bilingual counseling. Once here with Bright Futures she assisted students (especially the first gen) in increasing their career awareness, scholarship access and options through the college application process. She assisted the students and their families in a collaborative effort with school staff, college counselors and community partners to find higher educational scholarships and opportunities. She raised their level of accomplishments and access to our whole BF family. 

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Rebeca Gonzales
Founder, original Program Director, Advisory Board Member

Rebeca was forced to resign May 2, 2025
No formal resignation letter as of yet.

Rebeca Gonzales was the face of the Bright Futures program from it s inception. A student in the PCSD, Rebeca was still a sophomore in college, assisted by the Back to our Roots scholarship program, when she became the first paid director of the initial Bright Futures program and original Advisory Board member. Rebeca tirelessly ran the program until she graduated from the University of Utah and became a full time teacher in the district at Ecker Hill School. She has remained a leader, Advisory Board member, spokesperson and advocate for the program to this day. And though she too, like Whitney Olch, were held out of the decision making meeting by PCEF in Feb of 2025, she has not resigned and is still hoping that the Bright Futures program will remain intact. She is a true champion and believer in this first gen educational program.

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Stacey Sayer
Founder, Advisory Board Member, Tutor, Volunteer Contributor

Resigned December 2023
Stacey did not submit a formal resignation. 

Educator with experience teaching at a ski academy/Steamboat Springs, St John’s School/San Juan/Puerto Rico, Rowland Hall/Salt Lake City. Previous owner of Utah Brewery. Directed and ran Park City Institute’s Mega Genius free tutoring program for Park City students and coached students with their TEDx Youth talks. Many of those students went on to enroll in Bright Futures. 

Bright Futures Board Member for eight years. Coached and support for Bright Future students as needed in high school as well as through college.

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Ernest Oriente
Founder, Advisory Board Member, Program Creator, Fundraiser

Resigned December 2023
Ernest did not submit a formal resignation.

Ernest O. is a first gen student himself. He and his 6 brothers and sister all got advanced degrees. Ernest is a consultant and run Power Hour consultancy. He was responsible for much of the mentoring, training, internships and role modeling of the BF students He also helped raise over $500,000 dollars for the BF program and donated over 500 hours per year to the program until he decided to resign in August of 2023 also during the Abby McNulty regime.

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John Wendolowski
Founder, Advisory Board Member, Tutor, Mentor, Fundraiser

Resigned December 2023
John did not submit a formal resignation.

John W. was one of the original founders of Bright Futures. John served as not only as a leader and mentor of these BF student but as a tutor, a teacher, a fundraiser and a leader. John resigned at the same time as Ernest during the summer of 2023 due to the disrespect and dismissiveness of the PCEF leadership. This occurred under Abby McNulty s regime.

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Additional Members that Resigned

Tina Goette
Most recent BF staff Program Director, organizer extraordinaire 

Click for Letter of Resignation

Franklin Morton
Founder, COO, CEO who devised the fund raising model 

Franklin did not submit a formal resignation.

Tommy Tanzer
Founder, Advisory Board Member, Volunteer and Contributor

Click for Letter of Resignation

In 2014 after spending 8 years working with 40 of his former 3rd grade students from the 1980s establishing the Eileen Bailey Memorial Scholarship Fund better known as Back to our Roots, Tommy decided that it was not enough just to fund scholarships for the first generation and the underserved communities of Summit County. In order to make a tangible difference and achieve lasting results, the charity needed to incorporate a hands-on training, mentoring and academic support aspect to the program. After meeting with Eric and Nancy Garen, the founders and creators of the Bright Prospect program in Pomona CA, the entity known as Bright Futures was born.

The Garens had derived this program over many years in several venues in California, with an emphasis on teamwork, crew building, daily assistance with homework, tutoring in standardized and college entrance testing techniques as well exposing students to many cultural activities while in high school. The hands-on mentoring and counseling continued on throughout the college years and included one on one interactions that are normally done by the parents of these students, but were outside of the realm of those parents’ experiences. Bright Futures was a perfect match with the local Back to our Roots program, but the problem was that Bright Prospects/ Futures had never been incorporated into a high school or school district in the venues in California. That is where Tommy went to work.

With the Bright Prospect/ Futures model in hand, Tommy went on a multi-phased approach with the PC school district. School board president Moe Hickey was instrumental in opening doors and cutting through the red tape of the district. Hickey, who had instituted the highly successful PC CAPS program, helped us get into the office of the Assistant Superintendent Tom Van Gorder, who loved the concept and got Bright Futures a place at the table. The late Bob O’ Connor, the principal at PCHS, also made sure that Bright Futures was promoted and accepted by the current teaching staff. The Latinos in Action Director and hero to the entire Summit County Latino population, Anna Williams, promoted the BF program as a necessary next step in helping her people get across the college educational finish line.

The next step was putting the BF model in front of Abby McNulty, at the time, the executive director of the Park City Education Foundation. By merging Bright Futures with the Ed Foundation (PCEF) the district leaders constructed a symbiotic relationship that allowed Bright Futures to operate independently, as it was intended to, using all of its techniques and proven formulas to achieve  the academic successes previously born out in Bright Prospects while under the auspices and umbrella of the PCEF., an accepted and respected inter-district 501-3C charity. PCEF didn’t run programs themselves nor did they want to. They funded vetted charitable endeavors  and chose BF as one of those potentially worthwhile ventures. The final step was getting the initial funding to get started.

Tommy along with long term friend and educational stalwart, Jim Doilney, contributed the initial $30,000 that McNulty said she required, one year of administrative funding . McNulty then added that she needed 3 years of funding to begin. Neither she, nor the PCEF, contributed or raised anything themselves, but historic PC fundraising champion, Katie Wright, and her crew at the PC Community Foundation, raised the additional $60,000 in a few days with the help of Hank Lewis, Bob Richer and other generous PCCF donors. Bright Futures was ready to roll, with a true cooperative effort, one of the few ever ,with a partnership between PCEF and PCCF.

BF hired its first director, Rebeca Gonzales, while she was still a sophomore in education at the U of U. Gonzales thrived in the job and became a role model for the students in the program. Next BF hired Nikki Blumin, a Syracuse University and Master s degree graduate, who combined with Gonzales to make an amazing team interacting with and preparing the students for the college experience. To top it off BF hired Franklin Morton, a highly skilled organizer and fundraiser from PCCF, as the CEO, a voluntary position, I might add. Morton was tasked with hiring new staff members to execute the program and interact with the students as they ascended the ranks. He also developed a strategic plan for fundraising, budgeting and accounting addressing the quirks of a rapidly expanding program that was planning to start to send students to college. Morton teamed up with Tommy, the Garens and Rick and Lynn Bleil, district parents who were educators, board of director types and fundraisers. They all had a particular desire to make sure that the best students and prospects were taken care of and ascended through the program.

Rick Bleil also took on the tutoring part and with friends like Greg Zayner and John Wendolowski, all who became BF board members, ramped up the tutoring, homework and study skills part of the BF services. Moe Hickey stayed involved and recruited local Mega Genius founder Stacey Sayer to bring her teaching expertise to the team. John Wendolowski and local business consultant, Ernest Oriente, began assisting Morton in his fundraising efforts and turned  Live PC/ Give PC, into a showcase for the superior achievements of Bright Futures. For 3 straight years BF was the darling of the Live/Give event breaking records with their fundraising totals and lifting the entire event to new donation highs for all the participating charities. In all BF was raising about $800,000 total per year and accumulated $ 1.9 million in funds earmarked for the future funding and scholarship obligations. In addition Ernest, John and Franklin began an internship program, like PC CAPS, helping these young BF students with summer and seasonal jobs in the community. We attracted local political talent to the BF advisory board, people like soon to be mayor Nan Worel, City council member Rebecca Gerber, PCCF leaders Diego Segura, Kitty Friedman and Whitney Olch. The BF program was thriving but headwinds to the successes were also mounting.

Then, PCSD Superintendent Jill Gildea, a big fan and supporter of Bright Futures, saw the potential of the project both for it s community successes and its financial possibilities. On or about May of 2023, Dr. Gildea, realized that the PCEF was living off some of the laurels of the BF program and it s money. She began to pressure McNulty, who was earning a lofty salary, to do more fundraising. McNulty, who had never faced this pressure or challenge before decided to leave for a bigger, better job with SLCC. But before leaving McNulty began hounding these amazing builders of Bright Futures and the dominoes started to fall.

The BF advisory board was made up of the founders, early supporters and involved volunteers. As McNulty’s planned to leave, PCEF’s added pressure, non support and the undermining of the board members roles, led to the resignations of Ernest Oriente, then John Wendolowski and Stacey Sayer. The PCEF had hired Joelle Kanshelpowsky, of the Pathway Group as a consultant in late summer of 2023 looking for ways to either raise or reallocate  BF monies to the greater PCEF budget. BF then lost Franklin Morton, the driving force of BF’s success, who had expressed concern over Pathway’s methods of the leadership and the undermining of his BF team members. But Bright Futures kept plugging along and was then serving 170 students between 10th grade at PCHS and the seniors in college. As Morton put it, “we have a moral obligation to each these students as we enroll them in the program and if we continue to succeed in our fundraising, we will have the means to fulfill that obligation”.

By early fall McNulty had taken her new job and Kanshelpowsky was helping to select her replacement and acting as the temporary director. Those on the BF staff that were still left, were made to work directly at PCEF, and were being tasked with running the BF program. At the same time 60% of school board members were resigning and Dr Gildea was on the ropes. She had an extended contract with the outgoing board but the incoming board was threatening Gildea with some difficult choices and she, too, decided to leave for a new job. An interim superintendent was chosen, Caleb Fine. Mr. Fine was repeatedly asked to mediate this conflict and on 3 separate occasions agreed to do so, but never kept his promise. By this time, Ms.Kanshelpowsky, who was not a permanent employee, was the driving force at PCEF. She had overseen Whitely’s choosing as the new PCEF Director and with their newly formed board, appeared to be pressuring Mr. Fine into allowing PCEF to accept her proposed strategic plan to completely change the form, purpose and effort of the Bright Futures program in ways that were inconsistent with BF’s long-term mission. PCEF wanted to keep the money BF had raised and continue to raise funds on the BF name, yet discontinue  running the actual BF program. They called this new idea “Bright Futures 2.0 .“ This is where, I, Tommy Tanzer, begin to fight back.

I had been writing to the PCEF leadership for over a year since McNulty’s departure and had held PCEF at bay from making their changes. Now with the political upheaval, the battle became imminent. I tried to involve Mr. Fine throughout November and December of 2024, and had been receiving vague, disarming emails from  him and Mrs. Whitley  for almost two months. BF and I were asking for a sit down meeting to discuss how to preserve the BF program or to sever the relationship with PCEF. These emails appear in TAB 2 on the Future of Bright Futures website. Also on the website are Mrs. Whitley and Mr. Fine’s responses. Bright Futures also had just finished its 10th anniversary Founders reunion in late October with resounding success and the publicity and videos of those celebrations also appear in TAB 5.

On Jan 6, 2025 after having our BF meeting with Mr. Fine, Mrs. Whitley and Ms. Kanshelpowsky, cancelled for the third time in 6 weeks, I had lunch with one of the departing BF staff members and coffee with 2 other BF staff members to gauge how close PCEF was to pulling the trigger on Bright Futures 2.0.  I was told emphatically that the wheel was in spin and that is why PCEF was putting off meeting with the BF leadership. I wrote to and called Mr. Fine, again, telling him that we needed him to mediate the dispute between the two sides or I was “going to blow up” the PCEF plan to destroy Bright Futures. Instead of doing as he said he would do, he ignored me and shared my email with Mrs. Whitley and Ms. Kanshelpowsky. I then stopped by the PCEF office the next day to pick up a poster from the departing staff member and to discuss the current situation with the PCEF leaders. Again, this is an office that I d been in thousands of times over my 18 years with PCEF. It is an office where I had brought them hundreds of thousands of donated dollars. It is an office where I had attended countless meetings and brought donuts, cookies, and pastries more times than not.  I had always been greeted there happily and always returned the joy and respect.

After having secured the poster I sought,  I was talking to two staffers, when Jennifer Billows, a long term employee of PCEF and a person I’d worked closely with for 18 years came rushing toward me screeching that I was trying to ruin the PCEF and that I needed to leave.  I was shocked by her response. She yelled at me that she had seen my email to Mr. Fine and that I needed to leave their office immediately.  I told her to calm down and that we needed to sit down and discuss what was happening. She again yelled inches from my face that if I didn’t leave, she would call the police. I followed her to her office where she was picking up a desk phone to make the call.  I made the mistake of choosing to push the button on the phone to hang it up. You are not allowed to hang up on a 911 and I know that now.  I asked Mrs. Billows to calm down and to discuss the situation with me but she started pushing me out of her office and toward the front door. I must have known that I wasn’t making things better and allowed Mrs. Billows and two other women in the office to keep pushing toward the door. As I looked up, there was Ingrid Whitley, the leader of the entire PCEF taking a video of me being physically pushed out the door instead of trying to defuse the situation. I looked right in Whitley’s eyes and yelled back “ You will not get away with this, I will blow this whole place up”.  For those that know me, and these people in front me certainly did, I never meant that I would physically “blow up” anything. I was referring to their plan to destroy our BF program. I was pushed out the door and we both waited, them in their office and me in the parking lot while each of us called the Park City police. Forty minutes later, the police had still not arrived.

The police called me later that night. We made arrangements to meet the next day at my house where I was told that I was being charged with disorderly conduct and hanging up on a 911 call. By the next day I heard that the PCEF offices were in lock down because they said I threatened to blow up the building and that any future meetings regarding the BF strategic plan would be held in an undisclosed place, by zoom only, and that the few allies I had on the PCEF board and none of the BF advisory board members would not be allowed to attend the meeting. We later learned that the PCEF board with the exclusion of our allies and BF advisory board members had voted to approve the strategic plan and had decided to move forward with BF 2.0, rejecting any chance that BF could take back its program and run it independently with funds ($1.9 million) that we had raised and that were being held by PCEF. I was told that, at the meeting, Mrs. Whitley and the PCEF showed an edited video of me being pushed out the door and used that to justify why the Bright Futures people should be excluded from any future BF/PCEF business.

I have dealt with charges against me, paid $158 fine for misdemeanor disorderly conduct and have been banned from the PCEF office for 6 months. But no mention or charges were ever filed about me blowing up the building. I believe that PCEF and Mrs. Whitley had purposely escalated and promoted the incident in order to eliminate me as a catalyst against or a threat to their “BF 2.0” plan. Is this any way to treat a longtime patron and 18-year board member? Yet this is hardly different than how the other resigning BF board members had been treated and shown the door. Unfortunately, just the other day on May 2nd, Rebeca Gonzales, one of the last BF Advisory Board members, was forced to resign. She was genuinely the face of the program and a much admired role model for her first gen community. This is further proof that PCEF has abandoned the original concept for the BF program, without any ongoing commitment to the community BF has served for a decade. 

I do not want the BF program to be dismantled and will not just go away quietly. I have offered to publicly debate Mrs. Whitley, Ms. Kanshelpowsky and the incoming PCEF president on radio and in public forums. but so far they have declined. The school district has said it won’t intervene, and are supporting  the PCEF ‘s effort to reallocate the BF funds into other first gen areas where the district is failing, I have requested that Mountain Mediators assist in finding a resolution to this dispute and they have accepted.  So far PCEF has refused to engage. I hope you will join me in urging the new Superintendent, now Principal Fine, the school board and the Utah State authorities (See TAB 6 on the website) to investigate and audit the purposes, intentions and methods of the PCEF in their efforts to alter and dismantle this hugely successful Bright Future program.