About Us

Amber Lin
Working Group

Amber Lin is already an accomplished bridge player, teacher, and advocate at age 26. She is a national champion and two-time world champion medalist in Mixed events and a frequent representative of Team USA on Women’s, Mixed, and Junior teams. She is a full-time energy consultant at Bain & Company in San Francisco and is currently on an 8-month internship with the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) Educational Foundation working on youth bridge programs. She is also the co-organizer of the USBF Junior Training Program and runs the U26 Women’s Intensive program with Kevin Rosenberg.

Amber grew up in New Jersey and learned bridge from her dad, who took her to her first tournament at age 11. When she was in high school, she started teaching new kids at her local Chinese School with her dad. These efforts gained her recognition as the 2015 ACBL Queen of Bridge, an annual scholarship for a high school senior. After graduating from Princeton in 2019, she moved to San Francisco for work and joined the Bay Area bridge community, through which she met her regular partner and significant other, Kevin Rosenberg.

Bridge is a huge part of Amber’s life, and she has seen how impactful the game can be to many, many young people. She is so excited to be restarting live programs through Silicon Valley Youth Bridge and is devoted to teaching the game to as many kids!

Amber is also an amateur musician. She is a classically-trained pianist and vocalist who has music directed many college theater opera and musical theatre productions. She also enjoys performing pop-rock songs with her company band.

See Amber’s interview with a popular bridge podcast, the Setting Trick, here.

Kai Eckert
Working Group

Kai Eckert, 20, first learned about Bridge after hearing about it from his grandmother when he was 14. He didn’t take it up immediately but when he went on a cruise with his family and there just so happened to be Bridge lessons, he decided that he would surprise his grandma by coming home having learned how to play Bridge. It grew on him a little more than he expected and now it has become an obsession.

6 years later he has built a life around Bridge. He has been a part of the USBF Junior Training Program for 5 years, goes to any tournament he can, is an official ACBL Club director; directing for his local club in Half Moon Bay, and has started teaching beginner and intermediate Bridge classes in the Bay Area.

When just starting Bridge he was introduced to Cheryl Haines, the previous marketing chair for SIVY. She would drive him to the pizza parties and the High School championships. He volunteered to help with her in their last summer camp and he also set up the discord server to help SIVY live through COVID time. Now in this new age of SIVY, he wants to do all he can to ensure that Bridge lives on through the youth!

Shankar Iyer
Working Group

Shankar Iyer of Cupertino, CA, retired from the tech industry a few years ago and decided to take up bridge seriously. He is a member of Unit 503 and is currently serving on the board of Peninsula Bridge Educational Foundation (PBEF). He is also a certified bridge director.

When not playing bridge, he likes to play his ukulele and tutor high school and college students in Physics and Math.

Kevin Rosenberg
Working Group

Kevin Rosenberg, 26, of Millbrae, CA is one of America’s most skilled young stars and youth bridge teachers. He graduated from Berkeley in 2019 and is now a full-time software engineer at Pure Storage in Santa Clara and part-time bridge professional.

His national successes includes winning the Soloway and 2nd in the Reisinger BAM in 2022, while his many achievements in junior bridge include the 2019 IBPA Junior Deal of the Year Award, three Junior Transnational World Championships, and four wins in the Junior US Bridge Championships. His parents, Debbie and Michael, are multiple time World Champions and bridge legends.

He has been playing for 15 years and teaching for 10 years. Together with his family Kevin is heavily involved in promoting youth bridge, founding Silicon Valley Youth Bridge, one of the major pipelines pumping youthful talent into our game. He is also a mentor for the USBF Junior Training Program and runs the U26 Women’s Intensive Program with Amber Lin,and spends around 10 hours a week teaching youth bridge total.

He also enjoys watching basketball, playing tennis, chess, and karaoke.

See Kevin’s interview with a popular bridge podcast, the Setting Trick, here.
See Kevin’s “ask me anything” with popular bridge website, Bridge Winners, here.

Will Watson
Working Group

Hailing from Connecticut originally, Will Watson is one of Northern California’s most beloved bridge teachers, mentors and professionals. He is a Certified Director and Platinum Life Master with countless regional victories and two second place finishes in the North American Swiss. He directs many times a week at the Palo Alto Bridge Club and also at the San Francisco QuickTricks Club.

Will has been a youth bridge mentor for many years through Silicon Valley Youth bridge (SiVY) and the USBF Junior Training Program. He was the coach of the USA1 U16 Junior Team this Summer at the World Youth Bridge Championships in the Netherlands and led them to a bronze-place finish.

Outside of bridge, Will is an avid runner and frequently participates and volunteers at the Palo Alto Park Run. He is also a talented juggler, able to juggle 7 balls in his prime and can still juggle 5 balls with tricks!

See this article about the Bay Area bridge community coming together to celebrate Will’s 50th birthday in 2021.

Debbie Rosenberg
Advisory Group
Founding President

Debbie Rosenberg is American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) and World Bridge Federation (WBF) Grandmaster, with victories in five world championship events and numerous national events. Debbie and her partner won the International Bridge Press Association (IBPA) award for best bid hand of the year twice, in both 2006 and 2010, and Debbie won the IBPA Sportsmanship Award in 2012.

Bridge has taken Debbie around the world, including to Italy, Denmark, Holland, Brazil, France, Iceland, Pakistan, China, and Morocco.

In addition to playing competitively, Debbie loves teaching the game, especially the play of the cards. The challenges a simple deck of cards can present offer a lifetime of fascination.

In 2011, Debbie and her family moved to the Bay Area from New York, where Debbie had 25 years’ experience teaching bridge players of all levels. She now teaches classes to, and privately coaches, adult players, primarily at an advanced level. At the same time, Debbie is loving introducing the game to beginning youth players, as well as helping the more serious youth players progress.

Debbie’s family includes husband Michael Rosenberg, one of the world’s top bridge players, and son Kevin, a UC Berkeley graduate who is also an avid player, and volunteer for SiVY Bridge. After moving to the Bay Area, Debbie’s mom, Judy Zuckerberg, took up bridge too, and it is wonderful having a common pastime connecting the whole family.

While Debbie has always enjoyed seeing new players learn bridge, recently Youth Bridge has become her passion. In 2013 Debbie started volunteering as a mentor in the United States Bridge Federation’s Junior training program, working to train young players for international youth competitions. Also that year Debbie founded Silicon Valley Youth Bridge (SiVY Bridge), with its mission to inspire the next generation of bridge enthusiasts. In 2015 the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) recognized Debbie as the ACBL Volunteer of the Year and in 2018 the ACBL recognized Debbie and husband Michael jointly as Honorary Members of the year

Debbie’s dream for SiVY Bridge is to make youth bridge BIG in the Bay Area! She is grateful to have such a fabulous team of volunteers to work with, and proud of the progress the organization has made.

Mukund Thapa
Advisory Group

Mukund Thapa played Bridge in college and then gave it up. When his daughter Isha showed interest, he picked it up again to be able to teach her. He realized that, for him, the best part of the game was being able to spend time with his teenage daughter; and that, given the opportunity, many more parents could benefit in a similar manner. He feels strongly that something needs to be done to attract more youth players to the game, and is excited to be a part of Silicon Valley Youth Bridge whose mission is to do just that. 

Mukund Thapa is the founder and chief technology architect for Video-Monet. He envisioned a comprehensive business oriented multi-point videoconferencing solution across all devices, including mobile, well before the smartphones were launched. He has over 25 years’ experience as an entrepreneur, software developer, mathematician and computer scientist. At Optical Fusion, Inc., he is responsible for the technology architecture and managing the US-based organization, as well as its subsidiary in Bengaluru, India.

Mukund Thapa graduated with a PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University. His past accomplishment include: 

• Prior to Optical Fusion, Inc., he founded Stanford Business Software, Inc. where he developed custom algorithms for satellite communications, large-scale mathematical models, databases, GUI, specialized algorithms, and financial models.
• He has been a consulting professor at Stanford University and has taught PhD/MS level courses there in the past. 
• His publications include two textbooks on linear programming with Professor George B. Dantzig, inventor of linear programming; and, a textbook on Linear/Nonlinear programming with Professor Richard Cottle of Stanford University.
• He has twelve published patents (one on satellite communications and eleven in videoconferencing). Several others have been filed and are pending approval. 

His hobbies include music, movies (including film making), and books. He plays percussion and harmonica with the rock band Switchblade Nixon.

Stephanie Youngquist
Advisory Group

Stephanie Youngquist began her duplicate bridge journey at a SiVY parent-child event and has been deeply involved ever since. She has volunteered at numerous SiVY pizza parties and school programs and has organized the Bay Area High School Bridge Championship for the last five events. She has two children who have benefited from SiVY.

Beyond the youth programs, Stephanie also enjoys mentoring and teaching bridge to adults. She serves on the Unit 503 and Peninsula Bridge Education Foundation (PBEF) boards.

Stephanie is a Bay Area native and earned a B.S. from UC Berkeley and Masters and PhD from Stanford University in Materials Science and Engineering. She worked as a process development engineer and integration engineer in the semiconductor R&D industry.