Founders & Board of Directors

Elisa Pacini Knudson, cofounder and board chair, received a B.A. in political science from Mount Holyoke College in 1982 while spending her junior year at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1981. She received her J.D. from The American University, Washington College of Law in 1987. Lisa was a law clerk to judges Marianne Short and Roger Klaphake of the Minnesota Court of Appeals from 1988-1989 and 1990-1991 respectively. She was a guardian ad litem for the Ramsey County Guardian Ad Litem Program (advocating for abused and neglected children) from 1992-1995. Lisa was active for three years on a St. Paul public school site-based improvement council from 1999-2002. She is the parent of four children, two of whom attend Nova Classical Academy.

Simon Fung, cofounder and board member, received a Ph.D. in Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1983. He worked at the Eastman Kodak Company before moving to St. Paul in 1990 to work for a local corporation. He is the parent of three children, the youngest of whom is a student at Nova, and was active for three years on a St. Paul public school site-based improvement council.

Teresa Schulte, cofounder and ex officio member, received a B.A. in Music from the College of St. Benedict in 1978. She has worked for the past 17 years in the title insurance industry. She is the parent of two children and was active for two years on a St. Paul public school site-based improvement council. Teresa wrote the charter school proposal that was approved by the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning.

Patrick Mathews,director, is a parent with three students currently attending Nova. He has been actively involved in the school since it opened and has been a member of the Governance Committee for the past three years assisting in volunteer recruitment and annual Board elections. He has a B.S. from the University of Minnesota and over twenty years of business experience in the insurance and consulting industries.

James H. Day, director, has been immersed in higher education finance, marketing and management arenas for nearly 20 years. For just over a decade he has been at the helm of Hardwick-Day, the Bloomington-based consulting firm he founded in 1994. Hardwick-Day consults exclusively with private colleges and universities to achieve enrollment and net revenue goals, create new opportunities, and enhance position in an increasingly competitive higher education marketplace through measured outcomes.

Earlier in his career, Jim was senior vice president of the Minnesota Private College Council where he developed a policy and management research operation that earned national recognition. He also served as executive director of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, as director of college relations for Cornell College, and as a member of Beloit College's Board of Trustees.

As a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow in 1986 and 1987, Jim earned an M.P.A. with a concentration in finance at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He holds a master’s in English literature from the University of Iowa and a bachelor’s degree in English literature and government from Beloit College. Jim and his wife Janice have three children ages 17, 15 and 4.

Becky Lund, director, is a second grade teacher at Nova Classical Academy and has taught at Nova since it opened. She has directed many Nova students in several dramatic productions in the past three years. She has also served on the Curriculum Committee for three years and is currently the secretary of that committee.

Becky earned her BA in Elementary Education from Augsburg College and is working on completing her MA in Education at Hamline University.

Richard Stempkovski, Jr., director, has spent over eight years in the intellectual property law arena, focusing largely on domestic and international patent and trademark acquisition, licensing, enforcement and defense. He is currently an intellectual property associate with the firm of Nawrocki, Rooney & Sivertson in Minneapolis. Before embarking on his legal career, Rick accrued more than six years of operations, engineering and project management experience, working in the areas of soil and groundwater restoration. He spent a total of nearly 10 years with Groundwater Technology, Inc., working for the company in New Hampshire, California, Colorado and New Jersey before relocating to the Twin Cities in 1993.

Rick has a bachelor's in chemical engineering from Boston's Northeastern University and earned his law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in Saint Paul in 1998. He has a son who is a Nova second grader and a daughter who is in kindergarten.

Dianne Krizan is the parent of a second grader and a future kindergartener. She brings to the Board expertise in management and fundraising. Dianne held positions of increasing leadership scope in the for profit sector for eighteen years, including director of Research and Development for General Mills. In these positions, she was responsible for leading divisions of over sixty people and managing budgets of $8 million.

Four years ago she transitioned into the nonprofit sector. As senior administrative director of the Development division at Minnesota Public Radio, she leads a staff of 30 people in raising more than $20 million annually. Dianne holds a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering and a master's degree in public affairs.

Michael A. Ricci served for five years as Executive Director at New Spirit Schools, the K-8 Core Knowledge charter school in Saint Paul's Frogtown neighborhood that he co-founded in 1994. He also co-founded Saint Paul's K-12 charter school, Community of Peace, where from 1994 to 1997 he was on its Board of Directors and also worked as its business manager.

From 1987 to 1997, Michael was Executive Director of Choice Education Foundation, a statewide association of parents, educators and concerned citizens advocating for parental choice of any qualified public, private or parochial K-12 school with the help of state tax revenue. He served for five years as President of the Minnesota Private College Fund, an association of 16 private colleges raising $2 million annually from Minnesota corporations and foundations.

Earlier in his career, Michael spent over a decade at Saint John's University, working first as Alumni Director and later as Development Director, Capital Funds Director and finally as Associate Vice President. He earned a B.A. in Economics from St. John's, and completed some courses in graduate economics at the University of Minnesota.