Administrative Staff Bios

James Brandt, Executive Director   
Jbrandt@tpi-berkeley.org

Jim is a seasoned non-profit professional with expertise in community, leadership, and financial resource development. He holds degrees in environmental design from the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An ordained rabbi, Jim has served congregations in Texas and California, and as a university chaplain at Vanderbilt University. Jim served as the Director of Advancement of the National AIDS Memorial and as the Director of Community Impact of the Reichek Family Foundation. For over a decade, he served as the CEO of the Jewish Federation of the East Bay and the Jewish Community Foundation. He is a spiritual counselor and a breathwork practitioner. The son of a Swiss-trained psychoanalyst and a clinical social worker, Jim has two grown children, Rudy Noa and Jesse David. Jim enjoys gardening, paddleboarding, backpacking, and traveling.

Sandra Gaspar, Director of Advanced Training Programs   
sgaspar@tpi-berkeley.org

Sandra is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. As a first- and second-generation Mexican American born in Los Angeles and raised in Mexico, she claims both Mexico and California as her homes. Sandra uses psychoanalytic sensibilities, liberation psychology, trauma and social lens, and collective healing frameworks in her community mental health work with immigrants, Black, Indigenous communities and people of the global majority who have been historically and systematically marginalized and minoritized. Sandra has been a practicing bilingual clinician and clinical supervisor for 16 years in community mental health clinics. In addition to serving as TPI’s Associate Director, she serves as a bilingual clinical supervisor at Westcoast Children’s Clinic and is an adjunct professor at San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis in the program Coalition for Clinical Social Work. Sandra is a bilingual consultant at A Better Way and is a Community Consultant at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. She holds a private practice in Oakland, CA.