Jason Hofmann is out to Elevate Oakland. That’s the name of the nonprofit this Rockridge resident leads, along with jazz club owner and dancer Yoshi Akiba, renowned pop icon Sheila E., and Lynn Mabry, whom he calls “one of the best backup singers ever.” Although Hofmann has played guitar since the age of 12, he says, “I play for myself and friends.”
Elevate Oakland, formerly 51Oakland, provides music and art education to underserved Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) students. Since its founding in 2011, it has reached more than 3,000 students in more than 30 schools each year, according to its website. “We’re really trying to ensure equity across the board,” Hofmann said. “Our program gets kids to show up to school.”
Hofmann, 49, who has lived in Rockridge for more than 15 years, has come full circle. Although not born in the East Bay, he spent the latter part of his childhood in Moraga before college and traveling the world, journeying to more than 100 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, and South America.
“I knew I wanted to travel,” he said, and as a college backup quarterback, set his sights on the former NFL Europe league to see the world. But after graduating from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in sports and business management, a shoulder injury that still restricts his arm movement (“I can’t throw a football”) set him on a different path.
After visiting his uncle, an artist living in Japan, Hofmann spent several years backpacking around the world, financed by substitute teaching and profits from selling an advertising magazine he developed. He worked as a sports editor and travel writer for a newspaper in Caracas, Venezuela, until Hugo Chávez’s rule “got a little too dangerous for me.” That led to a year teaching in Madrid, “as I wanted to continue living abroad and speaking Spanish.”
However, what most influenced his life were three years spent teaching, coaching, and counseling at a small Catholic school in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. Its enrollment included students who had been expelled from public high schools. “I took it upon myself to build a program for a bunch of kids who had never played sports,” Hofmann said. “Three got scholarships to college. Supporting all of the students, getting them to show up to school, and building important life skills that can be taught through sport is some of the best work I’ve ever done.”
He returned to the East Bay because, “I wanted to stay involved with kids, but I also needed to have financial.” Starting his own little boutique financial practice gave him the ability to host fundraisers for several nonprofits.
Hosting a fundraiser at Yoshi’s Jazz Club was how he met Yoshi, who, it turned out, lived within easy walking distance of him. “I took a gift to her, and we talked for five hours a day for five days in a row,” Hofmann said. By teaming up — and through their merger with Elevate Oakland — Hofmann applied his experience using athletics to motivate underserved students to the fields of art and music.
“We put every OUSD music and art teacher in the same room, and that’s how we built our program,” he said. “Their main request was to send artists into the classrooms.” The program now features 25 resident artists, paid and trained by Elevate Oakland, who mentor and teach daily in schools where students have experienced high trauma.
Benjamin Green, a product of Elevate Oakland, is one of those artists. “I’m at various schools four days a week,” he said, and works with small ensembles at Oakland Tech after school. “I’ve been associated with Jason since high school,” said Green, a composer and arranger who plays saxophone, clarinet, and flute. “I am where I am because of Elevate Oakland and Jason’s leadership.”
It’s been six years since Hofmann stepped down as Elevate Oakland’s acting director to focus on fundraising. “Jason has been not only my boss, but my mentor,” said Natalie Cassidy, whom he hired to take his place. The organization has held fundraisers starring its students—with Sheila E. and other professional musicians often joining them—at venues ranging from Wood Tavern to the Fox Theatre.
That’s where, this past December, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee lauded the organization for its contributions to Oakland students through the arts. Although “a couple of years away,” plans are to spread Elevate to other cities, starting with Los Angeles, Hofmann said.
“I love living in Rockridge. It’s such a beautiful neighborhood,” Hofmann explained. His 1915 Craftsman house had been owned and renovated by David Gottfried, founder of the U.S. and World Green Building Councils. It was once billed as “the first LEED Platinum home in Northern California, and formerly the highest-rated in the country.”
Hofmann has made more than 25 trips to Japan over the years, producing concerts and music tours, “including one with Yoshi a month after the big earthquake and tsunami in 2011.” He opened a café, Pico, in Kyoto in 2018 with the family of his uncle’s best friend, Pico Iyer, the English-born essayist and novelist.
“It’s still open today, though I sold my shares back to the family three years ago,” he said. “I definitely have led a very unconventional life.”
To learn more, visit Elevate Oakland online.
