We are heartbroken to announce that our co-founder and Board Chair, Dina Hatchuel, passed away.

At HTA, she enriched the work and lives of so many of us with her warmth, compassion, generosity, intelligence, and playfulness — as teacher, supporter, inspirer, listener, and helpful and kind friend. Dina’s values are the foundation of HTA’s mission – to support social sector and educational organizations to plan, fund, and evaluate their efforts to create a healthy, educated, and just society. 

Dina was a leader in the movement to expand school-linked services, first as part of the Healthy Start program, and later in her work to promote Full Service Community Schools. 

She was the lead for the Bay Area training and capacity building for  school-linked services initiatives – including districts, schools, families, and staff throughout the Bay Area. She helped to pioneer school-linked services including physical and mental health services, after-school programs, family engagement, and program sustainability.

Dina launched and convened the Bay Area’s Community Schools Network, which served as the foundation of so much of the good work that is happening around the Bay Area today.

During the past few years, despite her illness, Dina was a virtually full-time volunteer for the Sausalito Sister Cities Program. This international exchange program brings teenagers from Sakaide Japan to live with host families in Marin County, California. In alternate years, Marin County youth go to live with host families in Sakaide. Dina was instrumental in the program creating scholarships for low-income youth from Marin to visit Japan. This cultural exchange has had a transformative impact on all of the young people who participated over the past decades. Anyone wishing to acknowledge Dina’s life and contributions to the community can make donations in her name to Sausalito Sister Cities.

Despite all she was going through, she amazed us all with her good cheer, her inspiring will to live, to be there for her daughter and family. 

Dina will be missed by everyone who knew her and by the thousands of children and families – locally and around the world – whose lives she touched through her work.