Doug Forbes

Doug’s daughter Roxie was the air in his lungs, the beat of his heart, the stars in the sky. He will stop at nothing to honor her in her death as he did in her life.

Doug earned his master’s in journalism from Harvard University where he achieved a 3.95 GPA and won the Director’s Prize for his capstone. He previously earned a BA in English/Creative Writing from Wittenberg University, voted One of America's best colleges (Princeton Review) and America's Top Colleges (Forbes).

In his role as MMF President, Doug regularly interacts with federal, state and local government agencies, health and safety experts, business leaders and community stakeholders. He delivers educational presentations, interacts with major and local market media and spearheads the organization’s strategic planning. Doug has been a persistent advocate and spokesperson for legislative change in both the largely unregulated $70 billion summer camp industry and the recreational aquatics industry.

He is responsible for the Elena Matyas Camp Safety Ordinance and Roxie’s Swim Safe Ordinance in LA County, the most populous county in the United States from which he received the Community Compassion Award from the Department of Public Health. He is also responsible for statewide camp safety legislation in California, which will impact millions of children attending thousands of camps. Governor Newsom personally commended Doug in 2024 for his 5-year effort. And in 2021, Doug and his now deceased wife Elena, also passed Roxie’s Wish: Drowning Prevention Week for Children, a perennial measure that draws attention to childhood drowning, the leading cause of death for children 1-4 and second leading cause of unintentional injury death for children 5-14. Doug is working with federal legislators on a potential national camp safety measure currently stalled by the Trump administration.

SInce May of 2022, Doug has been writing, producing, directing and editing a documentary feature film titled To the Moon and Back, a story about his personal journey through death, grief, love. advocacy and investigative journalism as he unravels a dark American secret of summer camp harm. The film is currently in post production with an expected release during the summer of 2026.

Doug spent more than a decade as VP Marketing Communications for a boutique hi-tech business strategy consultancy with global clients including Intel, Motorola, Avaya, Fortinet as well as regional tech dealers throughout the U.S. Prior to his tech role, Doug held internal marketing management roles for both large scale brands such as Caterpillar and Yellow Pages as well as small business operations including hospitality, education and retail. Following a trip to New Orleans post-Katrina, Doug decided to focus on social service nonprofits, including national homelessness and mental health. Doug co-owned and operated art galleries and produced high-profile music and cultural events for popular destination cities in New Jersey for which he was honored.

Doug was inspired to pursue grad studies in journalism after he discovered that the $25 billion summer camp industry is rife with safety issues, some of which led to his daughter’s death. He has authored pieces on gender-based employment inequities, the dearth of black journalists working in the nation’s second largest media market (Los Angeles), a First and Second Amendment dustup at a local high school and dwindling enrollment and resources in a public school district. Doug recently broke the story of the famous $70K Seattle CEO Dan Price accused of rape and and abuse and who defrauded the financial services industry. He also uncovered the shocking national story about the American Red Cross which was covered in the Washington Post.

Elena Matyas (posthumous)

Elena earned a BA in political science from Providence College and a JD from St. John’s University School of Law. Her early legal career was marked by terms at Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Fried Frank, two of the nation’s leading real estate law practices. Clients included world-renowned developers, mortgage lenders and investment banks.

In 2006, Elena became Principal Counsel at The Walt Disney Company, the world’s third largest media conglomerate. She was part of a team which managed the company’s worldwide real estate portfolio estimated at 30 million square feet. She regularly communicated with the company’s top officials, including its CFO, as she negotiated projects on multiple continents.

Elena had also co-owned and operated a retail operation where she learned the very essence of entrepreneurship. She volunteered with Disney Legal’s signature pro bono projects in conjunction with Public Counsel where she represented parents who adopted children placed in the L.A. foster care system due to abuse or neglect. Elena was also an active volunteer at San Rafael Spanish Immersion Elementary School where her daughter Roxie was enrolled.

Elena was in college when she earned her lifeguard credential. She served as a beach guard in New Jersey’s bustling Ocean Beach tourist area. After Roxie’s birth, she also engaged CPR training. Meow Meow Foundation.

As asserted in federal court documents, Summerkids Camp in Altadena, owned and operated by Cara, Joseph, Giancarlo and Maria DiMassa, committed grossly negligent, fraudulent, diabolical acts that caused Roxie to drown in their small pool supervised by their fake lifeguards. Elena subsequently battled severe depression which paved a gateway to Stage 4 cancer from which she died in March of 2022. Her legacy of unbridled generosity and devotion to her daughter Roxie, her husband Doug, her friend, her community and children at large will live on under the Elena Matyas Camp Safety Act which Doug established months after her death. Elena was and will forever be the love of Doug’s lifetime.

Gloree Centeno

Gloree Centeno is a seasoned IT transformation leader with over 25 years of experience driving complex change, strengthening operational rigor, and building sustainable systems across organizations. Her career has centered on accountability, governance, and thoughtful execution—skills she brings intentionally to her board service.

Most notably, Gloree rose through the ranks at the $8.5 billion Hertz Global Holdings corporation, the world’s third largest rental car brand. Over her nearly 20 year career with Hertz, she ascended from Associate Manager of Internet Marketing to Vice President of IT Digital in which she held executive leadership over the entire suite of customer-facing digital properties for the global enterprise. Gloree directed the global digital roadmap for the customer-facing eCommerce websites and apps, instrumental in successfully scaling digital revenue from $1B to $3B annually, representing a significant portion of overall enterprise growth. She also spearheaded the migration of the core hertz.com platform to the cloud, ensuring continuity and scalability to support three-fold revenue growth.

Following a 6-year stint as VP of Client Success at the tech pioneer Techolution that serves Government, Media, Healthcare, Retail, Banking and Insurance industries, Gloree is now Senior Director of Conduent which increases efficiencies and reduces costs for nearly half of Fortune 100 companies and more than 600 government and transportation agencies.

As a mother of two, Gloree is deeply committed to child safety and believes that protecting children requires both compassion and strong structures. She is passionate about ensuring that youth programs, especially camps, are safe and well‑governed environments where children can thrive.

As a board member of the Meow Meow Foundation, Gloree combines professional discipline with personal conviction, supporting the Foundation’s mission to advance meaningful, preventative approaches to child safety.

Bethany Schwab

Bethany Schwab is a Los Angeles native and Senior Director of Human Resources with a career built on connecting the right people to the right opportunities. Bethany brings deep expertise in talent acquisition, organizational development, and people strategy to the Meow Meow Foundation board.

Bethany graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Sociology after which she received a Masters in Translation from Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

She launched her career as a corporate recruiter with ValleyCrest Companies, which eventually became the nation’s largest commercial landscaping conglomerate. At Latham & Watkins LLP, she was part of a recruitment team that helped manage human resources for 3500 attorneys throughout 14 countries. Now as Senior Director of People Operations at Vaniam Group Bethany is an integral part of growth management at this biopharma innovator that brings transformative therapies to market.

Bethany’s connection to Meow Meow Foundation is personal — Roxie Forbes was a classmate of her daughter. Therefore, her commitment to the mission of protecting children in camps and aquatic settings runs deep. Bethany is a fluent Spanish speaker, an avid traveler, and a mother of two teenagers who believes that curiosity and human connection are the most powerful forces for change.

Chris Thurber (Strategic Advisor)

Dr. Christopher Thurber is a thought leader in positive youth development. He has dedicated his professional life to improving how caring adults teach and lead young people, as well as to enhancing the experience of adventurous youth who are spending time away from home. 

A graduate of Harvard University and UCLA, Dr. Thurber has served as a psychologist and instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy since 1999.

Dr. Thurber created two resource libraries—Prep4Camp and Prep4School—with entertaining videos that teach young people how to make joyful, successful transitions to boarding school and summer camp. One of Dr. Thurber’s first Prep4 videos won a Telly Award (Bronze) for best Non-Broadcast Instructional Video. The most popular Prep4Camp video, Summer Camp Success, is the only homesickness prevention tool backed by scientific research. Studies have shown that watching this 25-minute video lowers the intensity of first-year campers’ homesickness by 50%, on average. As a result of enhanced social-emotional adjustment, young people get more out of their experiences at boarding school and summer camp and are much more likely to return the following year.

Schools, camps, and companies on five continents have invited Dr. Thurber to deliver keynotes, contribute articles, and lead workshops for faculty, families, staff and students. His award-winning preparatory book for new camper families, The Summer Camp Handbook, was translated into Mandarin to help launch the youth camp movement in China. His most recent book, The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure: A Positive Approach to Pushing Your Child to Be Their Best Self, was described by The Atlantic Monthly as “a tour de force” and “the rare parenting book that respects both parents and children.”

Dr. Thurber’s writing has won several awards, including a National Parenting Press Gold Award and a Golden Quill Award. He has appeared on the Today Show, CBS This Morning, Martha Stewart, CNN, Fox-Connecticut & Boston, Canada AM, Beijing 57 and NPR. His research and musings on youth development and parenting have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Boston Globe and numerous magazines, such as Parents, Parenting, Men’s Fitness, Good Housekeeping, and Smart Money.

Internationally, Dr. Thurber has been featured on Serbian, Canadian, and Chinese television, as well as in Boarding (United Kingdom), Lights Out (Australia), and numerous blogs where he has shared best practices for on education, mental health, and parenting.

He and his wife, Simonida are the proud parents of two boys. They live in New Hampshire, in the northeast United States.