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the third Wednesday of every month.
Members of the Board are:
Brigid Barton
Pat Bashaw
Bern Beecham
Dory Toft Bleich
Linda Craighead
Michael Dreyfus
Jeannie Duisenberg, President
Joanne Gee
Anne Gregor
Marcie Kay
Mary Kelley
Patty McGuigan
Lee Middleman
Cornelia Pendleton
Kristen Rampe
Carol Rutlen
Loren Saxe
Jan Schachter
Elaine Tajima
Teri Vershel
Robin Welles
and we gratefully acknowledge our liaison from the City Council
Jack Morton
Brigid Barton comes from a six year stint on the Palo Alto Public Art Commission. Her background is as an art history professor at Santa Clara University and the former director of the de Saisset Museum on the university campus. Her particular interests are in outreach and education.
Pat Bashaw a Palo Alto resident for over 30 years, has been actively involved with local non-profit arts and service organizations in parallel with a career as a human resources executive in several high tech biomedical companies. For the ten years prior to her “retirement” in 2005, she consulted to early stage, venture funded companies in organization and human resources development. She has been a Board member and Chair of both the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence. Her two sons attended Palo Alto schools, and two of her four grandsons live in the Bay Area. Pat lives in Palo Alto with her husband, Gene Segre, who is also a long time supporter of the arts.
Bern Beecham is a former mayor and councilmember of Palo Alto. He has a business background in Silicon Valley and continues to be involved in technical efforts, such as bringing Fiber To The Home in Palo Alto, and other volunteer efforts such as improving Palo Alto libraries and Stanford University's hospitals.
Dory Toft Bleich has provided graphic design and copywriting services in Palo Alto since 1999. In addition she recently co-founded Meridian I.D., providing promotional marketing services to Bay Area businesses. Dory lives in Palo Alto with her husband and two children, all of whom have taken classes, toured many exhibits and enjoyed countless events at the Art Center.
Linda Craighead is the Executive Director of the Palo Alto Art Center.
Michael Dreyfus is a residential real estate broker with Dreyfus Properties in Palo Alto. He has worked in the residential brokerage business since 1990 and holds a B.A. from UCLA and a Juris Doctor from Hastings College of the Law. He is also a member of the California Bar Association.
Jeannie Duisenberg, a Palo Alto resident, recently retired as the Director of Communications at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale. In the late 1970s, she sat on the Palo Alto Cultural Center Guild (now the Foundation) Board of Directors, after founding Project Look! under the Guild’s umbrella. Jeannie is an emeritus board member of the San Jose Repertory Theatre and she has long been interested in promoting arts and arts education in the community. Her interests and activities clearly coincided with the Foundation’s mission, and Jeannie joined the Board in 2001. Jeannie is president of the Foundation board.
Joanne Gee worked with many national businesses as a senior project manager until early retirement two years ago from a large telecommunications corporation. She previously served as a member of the Belmont Arts Council and on the board of trustees of a non-profit, Peninsula dance company. Her interest in art has been primarily as an art enthusiast. She has dabbled in brush painting and stained glass. Her passionate belief is that everyone should have an early introduction to all forms of art and then have that introduction develop and grow with attentive nurturing.
Anne Gregor brings to the Board a dozen years of experience with the Junior Arts Center in Los Angeles, where she served as president and board member. Anne is particularly interested in the role art plays in child development. Anne is the Associate Director of Web Publishing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and past President of the Foundation Board.
Marcie Kay
Mary Kelley has held senior positions at Charles Schwab & Co., Foote Cone and Belding, Tradenable, Communications Satellite Corporation and Prodigy and served as a consultant to venture capital companies. She learned to support the arts from a young age in Cleveland where her family was deeply involved with the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Art Institute. She holds a Fine Arts degree
from Harvard and an M.Sc from MIT's Sloan School of Management. Mary worked for several arts related publications in New York, including Artforum and Art in America. She is particularly interested in ensuring there is continuing support for local access to art classes, artists and exhibits.
When Patty McGuigan started in the commercial real estate business in the 1980s, she was one of the first women in her field. She now is a Senior Vice President at Cornish & Carey Commercial, where she has completed thousands of transactions in the 25 years of business. Before joining Cornish & Carey Commercial, Patty, a UCLA graduate, taught high school English for 13 years. Patty served on the board of the Triton Museum for 7 years, is a member of the Council of 100 at the San Jose Art Museum and belongs to 24 other museums everywhere. A list of things she loves: bicycling, yoga, reading, art, sketching, writing, traveling, golf, her husband, her children, her grandchild, Palo Alto and Aptos.
Lee Middlemanis a ceramic artist living and working in Portola Valley. He creates highly textured, organic surfaces on classic forms. His work has been chosen for numerous regional and national juried shows and exhibitions. Museums in Japan, Korea and China have selected his work for their permanent collections. He combines his ceramic career with his strong interest in Asian cultures by accepting invitations to several artist-in-residences or cermic woodfire festivals in Asia each year. He is the past president of the Association of Clay & Glass Artists.
Cornelia Pendleton, CFO for University Art Center, lives in Los Gatos with her husband Nathan and two children. She has been a Foundation Board member since 2000. Cornelia has a long history of volunteering with the Palo Alto business community, including serving as Chair of Downtown Marketing, a committee of the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce. Cornelia and University Art Center are strong supporters of children’s art programs in many Bay Area communities.
Kristen Rampe is a manager with Frank, Rimerman Consulting a division of Palo Alto based Frank, Rimerman & Company, LLP. She is a CPA and art enthusiast, having filled her life with art since a young age including a summer abroad at the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in France. Kristen has worked with the Foundation since 2005.
Carol Rutlen is a CPA and the managing partner of Rutlen Associates LLC. Carol brings to her clients over 25 years of experience with extensive concentration in tax and human resource issues associated with international tax, expatriate assignments and global stock plans. Prior to starting her own business, Carol was a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers and was the partner-in-charge of their global stock practice and the International Assignment Services in northern California. Carol also founded and served as CEO of ExpatEdge, a software company focusing on the unique needs of mobile employees.
Loren Saxe has lived in Palo Alto for the past 50 years except for 6 post-Paly years in southern California where he received MBA from UCLA and subsequently earned his CPA. He has servied in various financial/investment capacities since then. Loren has served on the boards of many local non-profit organizations over the past 30 years, most recently, Theatreworks, where he served a term as Board Chair. He has no artistic talent but rather a deep appreciation of the transformative power of the arts in its many forms. His interests include cycling, running, travelling and sports, especially baseball.
Jan Schachter is an award-winning ceramic artist, working out of a studio (Plum Tree Pottery) in her home in Portola Valley. Jan enjoys making pots for everyday use. Her casserole is in the permanent collection of the Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Jan is a member of Baulines Crafts Guild and serves on the board of the Association of Clay & Glass Artists of California.
Elaine Tajima, founder and CEO of Tajima Creative in Menlo Park, started her visual communications and marketing services company out of her living room in 1996. Tajima Creative has evolved into a design industry innovator with an impressive list of Fortune 500 clients in the banking, food services, and retail industries. Elaine regularly works with some of the most cutting-edge artists in the country, and her passion for the arts and design is what encouraged her to get involved with the Foundation Board. She has also served as a curator for traveling exhibitions, including a recent retrospective by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Hume Kennerly, whose work had its Bay Area premiere in Palo Alto. Elaine has been a Palo Alto resident since 1989. She has one grown daughter, Aimee.
Teri Vershel brings over 13 years of experience working at many high-tech companies, including Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Netscape, to the Art Center. More recently she has been involved in Palo Alto schools, serving on various boards and chairing fundraising efforts. Her love of art has spurred volunteerism in various Bay Area art museums. She joined the Foundation Board in 2003. She lives in Palo Alto with her husband, Mark, and two children, Rachel and Leo.
Robin Welles has lived in Palo Alto for 18 years. She travels extensively with her husband, Daniel. She has been a committed volunteer at the Art Center since 1987. Robin’s early background is in dramatic and musical arts, but more recently she has taken up sculpting.