Category Archives: Profiles

Leslie Dinaberg Sits Down with Steven Crandell

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Steven Crandell courtesy photo

Steven Crandell courtesy photo

Between his calming Kiwi accent and his towering 6-foot-6-inch presence, working with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for the abolishment of nuclear weapons seems a natural fit for Steven Crandell. There’s something soothing about spending time with this former Stanford basketball team captain, journalist, biographer and fund-raising consultant, who now devotes his days to working for peace.

Leslie Dinaberg: Tell me about the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Steven Crandell: The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been working on the abolition of nuclear weapons for 25 years and it has a great reputation. (President and founder) David Krieger is well known; he has international relationships and reputation and yet the question that always comes back is, “What do you do?”

LD: So you’ve created this DVD about nuclear weapons to help explain. What are the main things you want to communicate?

SC: I have this story of three numbers, and if you know them you can take a big step toward awareness about nuclear issues.

How many nuclear weapons are there in the world? And the answer is 26,000. Most people don’t know that. Most people are pretty surprised that it’s that many.

The second question is how many nuclear weapons are on high alert, which means they can be fired in moments? 3,500 can be fired in moments.

OK, we’ve got two numbers: 26,000 nuclear weapons and 3,500 on high alert.

How many does it take to kill a million people? One.

And I think those numbers tell the story probably better than anything. We’ve got a weapon that’s so terrible it’s impossible to imagine it being used.

LD: Now of those 26,000, how many belong to the United States?

SC: About 10,000. Russia has a few more than we do and I think it’s around 90 percent are Russian or American.

LD: You have said previously that three-fourths of Americans are against nuclear weapons. What can we do to stop them?

SC: The first thing they can do is get informed … (We have a) new local program which is Santa Barbara Peace Community, and the basic goal of that is to train peace leaders in Santa Barbara. They’ll watch our DVD, and next year we’re adding a simple quiz so you’ll have the right answers. We’ll ask people to sign a pledge that says what we want the U.S. to take leadership for de-alerting weapons and no first use, getting back to working with other nations working toward the goal of a nonproliferation act and using the money, the billions of dollars — the U.S. alone spends $6 billion a year on nuclear weapons. Another step is e-mail five of your friends and ask them to watch the DVD, that’s something you can do right now on our Web site, which is www.wagingpeace.org. And the fifth step is you give to us. The sixth step is actually coming in here … they’ll get trained on how to present things to people and also more background information about nuclear weapons. And seventh is a very important step, especially for today’s peace leaders: They’ll come up with their own individual plan for who they want to approach.

… It’s kind of like a personal journey of development, if you like, except you are developing your knowledge about nuclear weapons and your ability to actually be involved and make a difference.

LD: I understand the work obviously is very admirable, but why did you choose this particular job?

SC: I’ve got four reasons and their names are Isaac, Luke, Josette and Nathaniel, my children. And I don’t try to, I’m far from an expert on nuclear weapons, but I don’t think you have to be. I think this is a legacy issue and by that I mean it’s an issue about what do we give to our kids, what world do we leave to them.

LD: Were you actively looking to go from being a consultant for a bunch of different organizations to working for a single organization?

SC: I think that was always a temptation. I had a great, great time as a consultant with my dad, we had our little company, the Crandell Company, the highlight was of course the book (Silver Tongue), which you’ve heard a lot about, which in itself was a fund raiser. But one of the things I felt as a consultant is that … fund raising is so strongly connected to the program, and when you get people who will give the time so that you can present the case, they want to know that you know it in and out and you believe in it. I think that makes a difference. And it’s not that I didn’t believe in the other charities I was helping, but I was helping a number of them and I was a consultant. Now there’s no question what I’m about and which team I’m on, and that makes my job easier in the end because I think that’s one of the things that I do probably better than other things, which is just speak from the heart.

LD: What do you like to do when you’re not working?

SC: I play the guitar and sing. I’ve been running with my brother, Michael, who is a marathoner. I can’t run that far but just to get away at lunch and go for a run by the beach is great. That’s the advantage of Santa Barbara. And I’ve got two little kids — 2 and 5 — who I spend a lot of time parenting when I’m not working.

LD: If you could be invisible anywhere in Santa Barbara, where would you go and what would you do?

SC: The whole invisibility thing isn’t all that attractive to me so. … I guess I’ve gained a lot of humility through life in various different ways, and I have a real sense of my own clay feet, so I don’t mind being myself. There’s an acceptance that has come with that, an acceptance of my foibles and more glaring faults as well, not as an excuse, just that I’m going to disappoint people in some ways somehow. But that’s not really the point of life. This point is, and I actually said this. John Zant interviewed me, or Mark Patton, when I was 18 and I was going away on a basketball scholarship and the headlines said, “He just wants to enjoy life.” … This is still me. I want to enjoy my life.

Vital Stats: Steven Crandell

Born: Feb. 15, 1959 in Harrisburg, Pa. Moved to Santa Barbara in 1960

Family: Wife Kathleen, children Nathaniel, 2; Josette, 5; Luke, 14; and Isaac, 18

Civic Involvement: “I do my best to my limited capability as a father and I think that, in the end, fathers and mothers are the key to community health. We don’t all have children but we all are children, all sons and daughters, and so that relationship is the key and often colors the relationships we choose for ourselves, how we approach life. My thought is if I’m going to invest time in anything I’m going to invest time in my kids.”

Professional Accomplishments: Author of Silver Tongue, about the life of his father, Larry Crandell; producer of the national news in New Zealand for 15 years; director of development/public affairs, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Originally published in Noozhawk on December 24, 2007.

One on one with Kate Parker

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left to right): Santa Barbara School Board members Dr. Pedro Paz, Gayle Eidelson, Kate Parker, Ed Heron, Monique Limon (courtesy photo)

left to right): Santa Barbara School Board members Dr. Pedro Paz, Gayle Eidelson, Kate Parker, Ed Heron, Monique Limon (courtesy photo)

Coming up on the tail end of what she calls one of the most “fascinating and stressful years of her life,” the newest member of the Santa Barbara School Districts Board of Education, Kate Parker, took some rare time off to share her experiences.

Leslie Dinaberg: What’s it like to be on the Santa Barbara School Board? Are you the only elementary parent?

Kate Parker: I am. It’s a lot of meetings. It’s hard because I really feel like it’s important to have parents serve on our school boards. They can offer a really unique perspective, especially in Santa Barbara (where the secondary and elementary boards are combined) … but it’s really hard when you have young kids. … I couldn’t do it if my mother (Jan Wharton) didn’t help.

But … I’ve learned so much. I feel like I’m really contributing to our community and it’s just been a fascinating year, and it’s also been the most stressful year of my life.

LD: I would imagine it’s more challenging as the parent at an elementary school because it’s a smaller community.

KP: Once you get on the board, you really quickly get the perspective of the whole district, rather than me being just an Adams parent … when I came on it was really the toughest teacher negotiations that the district had in decades, and I was the only school board member that was on a campus every day picking up kids. So I was having a lot of direct contact with teachers, who are always so kind and respectful of me, but also had lots of questions and concerns.

LD: Did you feel like you knew what you were getting yourself into?

KP: I went to most meetings for two years, so … I understood the business of the board; I understood the way the board ran. What I didn’t anticipate, I think, is how emotional these issues are to so many people and so many people come to the board when there’s a problem. … We do have celebrations … there’s so many great things going on that people will come just for that moment and celebrate, but when they come to speak to the board it’s because they have a concern. … They come in with a lot of misconceptions, and that part I didn’t anticipate. … These people are really upset and I can’t make a decision that’s going to please everybody.

I have to always keep in mind what is best for the students even though that may make everybody unhappy. And so that has been the biggest challenge for me.

LD: There’s a vast difference in the resources that the different schools can bring with parent volunteers and fundraising, especially at the elementary level. Is the board involved in that?

KP: Right now it’s a site level thing, but we certainly have been looking at it, and I think that is a discussion for the coming year.

… You’re starting to create these schools that have very different feels to them. … For me personally it’s starting to feel quite uncomfortable to see this developing and seeing situations where parents will say I’m going to choose that school because look at how much money that they raise. … I don’t like to see that kind of disparity in this community but I’m not sure what the solution is at this point. It’s time to start that discussion.

LD: It’s very challenging, and I can see as an administration not wanting to discourage the generosity of families.

KP: No you don’t want to. What I would personally like to see is more going to the district level to be sure that students throughout Santa Barbara are able to have the same educational opportunities. It is hard enough for us to see because we have these Basic Aid Districts (where school dollars are tied directly to property values) in elementary level right next to us: Cold Spring, Montecito Union and Goleta, Hope District’s about to go. The interesting thing is Santa Barbara is also about to go, we’re probably about three years away from becoming Basic Aid, and that will be nice, but we’re never going to catch up to Montecito.

LD: What do you think are the biggest challenges right now for the district?

KP: For me I’m always trying to keep an eye on what are the goals of the district. The over-arching goal is an excellent education for students. The biggest issue that I see that we’re working with right now, and I feel like we’re working with it quite positively, is our budget. It’s hard enough to be in declining enrollment, but this has been an incredibly difficult year for me to come on the board and see that our business services department has a lot of problems and the budget was not accurate. I feel like I will feel so much better in January. Right now we’re going through a fiscal review with a company called School Services of California … I’m feeling so much better that this review is going on.

LD: What do you feel like has been your biggest accomplishment on the board so far?

KP: Everything feels like it’s so in process right now. That’s one of the things I’ve learned is that it’s actually really slow to make reform happen. … Pushing for the junior high electives to be restored once we knew that there was some money back … I really wanted to make sure that there were services in place for kids this year and not have them be completely eliminated and then we attempt to restore it the next year. … I’m glad that I was able to work with the rest of the board to restore elementary music.

LD: If you could be invisible anywhere in Santa Barbara, where would you go and what would you do?

KP: I would love to be invisible in a closed session of the City Council, see what’s really going on behind the closed doors.

Vital Stats: Kate Parker

Born: June 23, 1967, Clark Air Force Base, the Philippines

Family: Husband Ian, Adam (11), Simon (7) and Nicola (3)

Civic Involvement: Former Adams School PTA President; Current Board of Education Member, Santa Barbara School Districts

Professional Accomplishments: Assistant Librarian, Cate School

Little-Known Fact: Her father was in the Air Force and she lived in Taiwan for five years when she was in elementary school.

 

Originally published in Noozhawk on December 17, 2007: http://www.noozhawk.com/article/noozhawk_talks_leslie_dinaberg_sits_down_with_kate_parker/

One on one with Paige Shields

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After being a stay-at-home mom for several years, Paige Shields was looking for a way to use her extensive computer skills to reenter the workforce in a child-friendly, flexible and sociable way. Not finding an existing job that fit the bill, in 2005 she created Whiz Kidz computer gaming and education center.

Leslie Dinaberg: When you started out, had you ever seen anything like Whiz Kidz?

Paige Shields: Not really. But there was a shoe store downtown (Global Kids), … they had these game cubes and (my then three-year-old son) Hayden would just turn on like fire when he saw those games, and he didn’t even know what they were. I got to where I would go once a week so he could play the games, but I would guiltily buy the cheapest pair of shoes I could find.

… So much of my life centered on technology that, when he was a baby, I thought I don’t even want him to see a computer until he’s 30. … I wanted him to be a surfer poet and have no computer skills whatsoever… we had a separate office, we tried to keep the door closed all the time, but he was a smart baby. And every time I left that door open he was in my chair at the keyboard.

LD: I remember you told me that he learned his ABC’s easily from playing a Spiderman game, after you spent months trying to teach him the old-fashioned way.

PS: Then I started experimenting with other games, asking him what he liked. … I would help him and he would get frustrated and I would get frustrated. … he would say “Mommy leave me alone. Just let me try.” So, I would walk away for 20-30 minutes, get distracted and I’d come back and he’s passed a level. …I was amazed at that. So that was our first big training lesson at Whiz Kidz: don’t hover over kids.

LD: When you’re learning anything that has to do with computers or technology it’s so hands-on, it’s different than passively sitting in a classroom.

PS: And that’s one reason I think that we can teach our classes to considerably younger kids, is that they don’t even have to be able to read for about 70% of our classes, not that it doesn’t help.

LD: But kids are so much more advanced, the schools keep needing to adjust the technology standards higher.

PS: I think that’s the challenge at Whiz Kidz and computer education in general. One of the reasons it’s so expensive is that it changes so fast, and you’re trying to stay up-to-date. We’re at a slight advantage probably over the schools simply because we are only doing computer education. And I can bring in any expert I think can teach the latest thing … Nine times out of 10 the people who even consider coming to do a class at Whiz Kidz are amazingly great people. … When I ask, “Why are you doing this?” They usually say, “I just think this is a great thing. This is so cool, I wish this existed when I was a kid.” We’re the anti-boredom, anti-testing center. That’s our other name.

LD: Does Whiz Kidz still have a focus on education?

PS: Yeah, absolutely. Now that we’ve expanded (taking over the Captain Video space in the Turnpike Shopping Center), even more so. … The first year was mostly about gaming and birthday parties … then after our first spring break and certainly our second summer when we sold out almost every class, which was phenomenal. …we offered enrichment programs after school for the first time and only one class didn’t fill up in our second session. And that was with almost no advertising because I couldn’t afford it because we were paying for so much new equipment.

LD: What about the film classes? Most kids I know like to make movies of doing dangerous skateboard tricks or blowing things up.

PS: Yes, we’re all over that. That’s what half of the Whiz Kidz movies are, that’s what happens. The first year the film festival came out we took some heat because there were kids playing soldier in their back yard and they had put in realistic sound effects to the water guns … but our only rule was it had to be PG-rated … Mainly our focus is … are you telling a story, are you learning how the program works, how the camera works, how the lighting works … the result is often potty humor or whatever kids do …If you want to know what’s going on in a 9-year-old’s mind, watch the film festival reel.

In the first film class … the very first question… “So what do you use for blood? Jam or ketchup? Do they teach you that in film school?” Oh man. Very first question.

LD: And that tells you a lot. What are the most popular games?

PS: Lego Star Wars is still really, really popular. World of Warcraft, every Star Wars game really, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty and Super Smash Brothers.

LD: What are some of your favorite moments at Whiz Kidz?

PS: My favorite time is when kids are all playing a game together …ten kids all playing the same game at the same time and they just are screaming, you killed me, I’m going to get you. It’s almost chase in your backyard but on computers. I just really love it when they’re so happy and having so much fun and doing something they cannot do anywhere else. It’s awesome.

LD: If you could pick three adjectives to describe yourself, what would they be?

PS: Crazy, jiggly, softhearted, kind of a pushover.

LD: Don’t tell the kids that.

PS: I think they know. I think Whiz Kidz is based on those three qualities (laughs).

LD: If you could be invisible anywhere in Santa Barbara, where would you go and what would you do?

PS: I would probably jump into the ocean naked–I’ve always wanted to do that.

Vital Stats: Paige Shields

Born: Oklahoma City, January 26

Family: Husband John, son Hayden (6)

Civic Involvement: CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), Robo Challenge robotics competition

Professional Accomplishments: Worked for the Department of Defense as a political scientist and database expert in the field of nuclear non-proliferation; computer and database consultant for the private sector; founded Whiz Kidz in 2005

Little-Known Fact: “The thing that the kids are always most shocked about is that I used to work for the Department of Defense and that I have a top-secret clearance. They always go, ‘Wow, were you a spy?'”

 

Originally published in Noozhawk on December 10, 2007

One on one with Wendy Read

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Wendy Read, courtesy CEC

Wendy Read, courtesy CEC

Santa Barbara County faces huge challenges with foster children, especially as they reach their teenage years and it becomes almost impossible to find homes for them. Funded by a grant from the Santa Barbara Foundation, Founder/CEO Wendy Read and her team have been working to create the Children’s Project, which will be the state’s first residential charter school, located on 60 acres of oak-studded hills north of Los Alamos.

Leslie Dinaberg: How did the Children’s Project get started?

Wendy Read: When I was 20 years old, I … was a volunteer with foster kids. I followed a young boy from the time he was six to the time he was 18, … to 27 different placements, including prison, where he spent the last six years of his life.

I was an actress at the time (appearing on TV shows such as “A Team,” “Knight Rider,” and the “North & South” miniseries)… but I realized that my real passion wasn’t acting, it was advocating for change in the foster system. That’s what drove me to go to law school. … There’s really not a day that goes by that I don’t think of that boy and … what would have made his life different. What could we do that would change the trajectory of people like him that are now following through the system.

LD: How did the idea for a boarding school come about?

WR: We received funding from the Orfaela Family Foundation which allowed us to start the steering company and we met once a month … it was all of us sitting around the table saying who are these kids, why are we sending them out of county and how do we bring them what they need.

LD: So at that point there was no specific agenda to build a school for foster kids?

WR: Oh no. … We just said who are the kids, why are we sending them out of town and how do we bring them home.

… We were surprised at how many times our kids moved and how many times they moved out of town, and how many times they were separated from their siblings… We were surprised at how many referrals were made … it made us say we don’t just want to bring them home. We want to bring them home and do a better job of raising them than their parents were.

LD: Why foster children?

WR: There are so many kids to be helped in the county, but there’s a big difference between foster kids and at risk kids and homeless kids or kids that need help. Maybe it’s because I’m an attorney that I see it that way, but we elected the judge that sits on the bench and says to a parent, “You know what, you’re not doing a good job of parenting your children. Based on the values that we as a society have created, you’re not doing a good job. We’re going to take your children away from you and care for them ourselves until you clean up your act.” And in that moment, we not only have a moral responsibility to care for these kids, but we have a legal responsibility to care for them. …We become the parents … fewer than 50% of them graduate from high school nationwide, so we’re doing a pretty bad job of parenting.

LD: Are there other models for this type of school?

WR: A program in San Diego called San Pasqual Academy (www.sanpasqualacademy.org/), which is a boarding school for foster youth, opened our eyes to what is possible. We asked for their advice, and they said they would start in 7th grade, so you could do two full years of remedial work. They talked about starting it as a charter school … to have the flexibility to say if you get reunited with your family or you get adopted, you can still be a day student. The charter school gives us that flexibility.

LD: What about the idea that being in a home is best?

WR: All we’re trying to do is provide an option for some kids that don’t want to be in a foster home or can’t be placed in a foster home, they can’t reunify with their families and would like to get a great education.

…Right now the judge has to say to a parent, “You have six months or a year to clean up your act and you get your child back,” it’s either/or. You clean up and you get your child back 24/7 or you fail and all rights are terminated. We really feel like one of the advantages of the campus is that a parent can start the healing process and still maintain a connection to the child … which is best for the kid if he wants to be connected, but not having the responsibility of having the child live with them, which is what caused those problems in the first place.

My whole thing is I want to stop arguing about where the pillow is at night and make sure the desk is in the same place every day.

LD: What’s the timetable for opening?

WR: With an aggressive timeline, we’re hoping to open in September of 2010.

LD: And the idea is to raise them up through better education?

WR: Exactly. Some of these families, it never occurs to them that the kids could go to college. You start talking about these things and it changes the whole family dynamic and then it changes the whole community dynamic. And then we talk about the ripple effects of this campus …I think this is really an opportunity for the entire community of Santa Barbara to do something that’s going to change things on a national level. That’s what seems to be appealing to people. … The idea is education being a way to solve a problem that we all know is there.

Vital Stats: Wendy Kilbourne Read

Born: June 29, 1964, Hollywood, CA

Family: Husband James, son Jackson (16), daughter Sydney (12)

Civic Involvement: Founder/CEO The Children’s Project; Cate Parents Organization, Current President; Katherine Harvey Fellow at Santa Barbara Foundation 2004

Professional Accomplishments: Cover of T.V. Guide in 1985; Passed the CA Bar 2002; Junior League Woman of the Year 2007

Little-Known Fact: Wendy has her Private Pilot’s License

 

Originally published in Noozhawk December 3, 2007.

Noozhawk Talks: One on one with David Starkey

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David Starkey (courtesy photo)

David Starkey (courtesy photo)

Spending five minutes chatting with David Starkey is enough to make any writer feel like a slacker. The Poet-Playwright-Nonfiction Author-Editor-Santa Barbara City College Professor-Television Show Host is a busy guy. It’s no wonder that family members–he is a father/stepfather to eight children–mime him typing on a keyboard when they play Charades.

Leslie Dinaberg: What are you doing these days?

David Starkey: Right now I’m working on a book length memoir. … I just finished writing a creative writing textbook, which combines four genres, poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction. I have three books of poetry out in the last year and a book, Living Blue in the Red States … that I edited. It’s about progressives living in conservative parts of the country.

LD: Are you able to incorporate it into your teaching at City College?

DS: I haven’t yet. If we had a class on political writing or something like that I might. … I wrote a play about Alzheimer’s. We had a stage reading at this little theatre in Ojai, Theatre 150. …. It is called Crossing the Bar.

LD: Do you have somebody in your family that has Alzheimer’s?

DS: No. I read an article in the LA Times about this camp outside San Francisco where people who are caretakers take their loved ones who live with them up for a weekend so they can get a break, because it’s so overwhelming. … The caregivers are together, the Alzheimer’s patients are together and they finally join up at the end. And a hidden conflict is that this woman has made a deal with her husband that if she finally goes too far she wants him to kill her. So the play is him trying to make up his mind whether or not to go through with it.

LD: Sounds really interesting.

DS: It seemed to me like there was a kind of crazy poetry in a lot of the ways that you hear people with Alzheimer’s speaking. It sounds almost like avant-garde poetry. …

LD: Are you still hosting the Creative Community Show (on Santa Barbara TV Channel 21)?

DS: Yeah, we just won another award. There’s a body that all the community and educational access stations belong to, nationwide, and they submit shows and the last two years it’s won the best talk show in the country.

LD: Congratulations.

DS: Yeah. I’m not sure what the competition is, but it’s a neat thing. … What I enjoy about this is meeting interesting people and getting a chance to talk to them.

LD: Coming from Chicago to Santa Barbara, what’s your take on the cultural arts scene here?

DS: … I think it’s pretty lively for a small town. It’s extraordinary. I know that some of the artists that I speak with say that we’re a community that claims to embrace the arts and yet ultimately it’s more lip service than not. I don’t know. As a poet I don’t really expect to get much money anyway, so it’s not that big a deal to me. There happen to be a lot of people to interview for my TV show, so that’s nice. But I do think that we have a pretty thriving community and even if there are problems.

LD: How do you do all these different things? Do you just never sleep?

DS: I guess I get enthusiastic about things, and I think I’m pretty good at finishing off. So if I have an idea that kicks around with me for a while, I’ll just look for ways to make sure it happens.

LD: Just the fact that you’re showing me these four books that you’ve had published in the last year and the play and you’re in a band (with poet Barry Spacks) and you’re teaching and you have a pretty young daughter, it’s impressive. That’s a lot to get done.

DS: I guess I feel when I get enthusiastic about something I just follow it. And I guess I get enthusiastic about a lot of different things.

LD: That’s great.

DS: And you know a lot of the things that I do are things that can be accomplished in real time in a relatively short span of time. So for instance, to write a poem and to revise it, you can do that in small chunks of time. … I try to make sure that I get a little something done every day. I think that’s important when you’re working on a really long project. When I wrote that creative writing textbook I tried to do that. School inevitably gets in the way, grading papers and stuff like that.

LD: I know how hard it is to work with kids in the house. The idea of writing something where your deadlines are self-inflicted is very impressive to me.

DS: You sort of feel like you want to finish it so badly, because if you don’t do it now you know you never will … there’s obviously gender issues involved in this. When I was with my first wife she worked and I was at home a lot with the kids and while they would ask me for things a little, I think I was able to ignore them in a way that a mom can’t. Or to address them more quickly … I guess that’s partly the way that my mind works. It can focus really intently on a task and then switch off and then switch back on, and I know that some others don’t work that way.

LD: What do you like to do when you’re not working?

(Loud laugh from wife Sandy in the other room) Work.

DS: To me that’s not work. Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a writer. So that’s what I want to do, that’s my thing. And it might seem like work or it might seem like a way to get me out of this family (laughs).

LD: So seriously, what else do you like to do?

DS: I spent a lot of time on the City College Creative Writing Program where he is the director). I got some release time this year, so we have a website, http://creativewriting.sbcc.edu/ if you could put that in your story I’d be grateful. … I’ve been Fundraising for that. We’ve got some generous donors that put some money in to bring writers to campus to fund contests. …

LD: What kinds of students are in the creative writing program?

DS: There’s a real community college profile–you’ve got the person with the PhD in English literature and the person who’s never written anything who’s just signed up because it fit into their class schedule. It’s always interesting that way.

Vital Stats: David Starkey

Born: June 28, 1962, in Sacramento, CA

Family: wife Sandy, children Elizabeth (23), Carly (21), Stephen (15), Miranda (6) and stepchildren, Serena (24), Andrea (20), Julia (17) and John (10)

Civic Involvement: Creative Community Show, SBCC Creative Writing Program

Professional Accomplishments: Seven small press books of poems, editor and contributor, four full length plays produced, three plays with staged readings, five 10 minute plays, professor of English and Director of Creative Writing program at SBCC

Little-Known Fact: That he has so many children and step children (8 in total)

Originally published in Noozhawk on November 28, 2007

Noozhawk Talks: One on One with Ben Romo

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Ben Romo

Ben Romo

As Director of the County Education Office’s Center for Community Education, Ben Romo oversees a variety of different programs designed to serve the needs of foster children, homeless youth, low income students and children that have been neglected for a variety of reasons. He also works closely with the business community as the Executive Director of Partners in Education, a nonprofit organization working to help children succeed in school and in the workforce.

Leslie Dinaberg: How did you go from politics (as the District Representative and Primary Political Consultant for Congressman Walter Capps and Congresswoman Lois Capps) to education?

Ben Romo: In 2005 I had reached a point in my business where I wasn’t really learning anymore… and I realized that the only way I could continue learning was to go to a much higher level like statewide and multiple congressional campaigns, and that would have been just an absolute life-consuming process.

When this opportunity came to be a part of the education office, it was something that was very appealing to me personally, in terms of the work that we do here at the center, but also was appealing to me intellectually. Plus, it brought me back to Santa Barbara where I was born and raised.

LD: Are you enjoying this work?

BR: It’s been eye opening, what I’ve come to learn about public education and particularly the areas of impoverished, neglected and delinquent youth. It’s been really eye opening. I thought I knew a lot about public education and I didn’t. I didn’t know exactly what schools are being forced to deal with and I didn’t fully understand the level of misperception that I think exists in the community about just how daunting those challenges are and how unfair it is for society to expect schools to meet those needs.

LD: It’s very challenging and in our community particularly, because there’s so much wealth, it’s really the haves and have-nots.

BR: We’re losing our middle class. We’re a community out of balance. … Since 1991, our student population went from 34% Hispanics, it’s now 57%; Anglos were 55%, they’re now 32%. There’s just a complete flip-flop. Almost one in five, 17% of children in Santa Barbara County live below the federal poverty line, and the federal poverty level is $19,000 for a family of four. So that’s a federal measurement that has a completely different reality on the ground here in Santa Barbara where $900 a month might get you a one-bedroom or studio apartment.

LD: I know that Computers for Families works on this issue by targeting the digital divide and providing computers and Internet at home for every student in the fourth grade. What else does Partners in Education do?

BR: Partners is a nonprofit. We are not a school, we are not in the business of doing what schools should already be doing themselves, we’re not about supplanting, we are about finding the right role that the community can play to be supportive of schools. But schools are charged with a particular set of things that they should be doing. We’re not here to take that burden off them. That should be their responsibility. We are here to support them, number one, and also to give business a voice in how schools are preparing the next generation of the workforce.

LD: But a lot of the things that should be the school’s responsibility, like for example technology, they just don’t have the dollars to back it up. It’s not that the will isn’t there, but there isn’t the money.

BR: Exactly. We just talked about this in our last board meeting, we’re very clear that we are not going to be in a position to go find all that money. We found a very cost effective way to meet some of the needs that low income kids have in accessing the Internet and technology and we found that that’s really significantly impactful in their ability to achieve academically and in the school’s ability to achieve system wide. …

I don’t think it’s really been clearly stated to educators and the broader community just what technology can bring in key areas that teachers are worried about, student achievement, parent involvement, student engagement in the classroom, and the saving of teacher’s time, which is a huge issue for educators.

LD: In my experience it still comes down to the level of an individual teacher’s engagement and comfort with technology. If they’re into it, they’ll use it and their kids will really benefit from it and if they’re not, it’s not a factor.

BR: And who can blame them when they’re so stressed and so focused on core curriculum areas? It’s difficult for a teacher to take any time away from a student who is below grade level in math and English.

LD: What do you think are some of the biggest challenges that we have in education?

BR: Schools are doing a really good job actually. If you look at student achievement system wide in the state of California, student achievement in every group has gone up. In English learners, in Latinos, in Anglos, in every group, student achievement in math and reading has gone up. The achievement gap is being addressed, but there are societal problems that are being thrust on schools and schools are being forced to deal with these. And I think, in some cases, in a lot of cases, they are unfairly held accountable or they are unfairly expected to do a job that they were never intended to do and that is being a social worker. Teachers are supposed to teach kids how to read and write and how to be good citizens. So I think the biggest challenge in public education are the challenges that society thrusts upon them unfairly.

LD: Switching gears now from society to you, if you could pick three adjectives to describe yourself, what would they be?

BR: Modest, good looking and visionary

LD: That’s the best answer I’ve had to that question–and the fastest.

(Laughter overheard from the office next door): Irritating, annoying, deluded …

BR: (Laughs) OK, I like to have fun, I try to be honest, and sometimes I’m insecure.

Vital Stats: Ben Romo

Born: At Goleta Valley Hospital; August 21, 1973

Family: Wife Geordie and daughter Ruby, 4-1/2 months

Civic Involvement: The Granada, Coastal Housing Coalition, CALM, Nonprofit Support Center, Student Aid Committee of the Santa Barbara Foundation

Professional Accomplishments: Founded Romo & Associates; District Representative and Primary Political Consultant for Walter and Lois Capps

Little-Known Fact: When Ben was a child his nickname was Benny Big Ears; he also went by Benjie the Dog.

 

Want to know more about Partners in Education?

A breakfast event, featuring State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, will be held December 7, 2007 at Earl Warren Showgrounds from 7:15-9:00 a.m. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Ben Romo by emailing benromo@sbceo.org or calling 964.4711 ext 4401.

 

Originally published in Noozhawk. Click here to read the story on Noozhawk.com.

Leslie Dinaberg Watches a Game With John Maloney

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Courtesy Freeimages.net by Naypong

Courtesy Freeimages.net by Naypong

Think herding cats is tough? Try organizing 2,900 kids into 268 teams, then dispersing them among 25 fields for games and practices each week. Once the kids are settled, then try keeping their parents in line. Sound like a challenge? It’s all in a day’s volunteer work for AYSO Commissioner John Maloney.

Leslie Dinaberg: When did you start volunteering with AYSO?

John Maloney: I started as a referee a long time ago, when I was 12.

I grew up around soccer. I played in college (at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA) and then when my youngest daughter Meghan started playing I started to ref and just went on from there, so that’s 12-13 years.

LD: And what was it like then?

JM: We had about 2,500 kids back then…we used to practice all over town and games were all over town. We didn’t have UCSB back then, Girsh Park didn’t exist, so on a given Saturday you had kids (all over town). You would have about one or two fields per location so it was tough getting goals set up and making sure we had refs at each field.

LD: What a huge logistic nightmare.

JM: We probably have actively involved over 20 people to help make things happen. Each age group has administrators that run it.

LD: How do people begin as volunteers?

JM: They start out coaching, and then they say “Have you guys ever thought of …” and we say, “No, how would you like to…” Suggestion is a great foot in the door to being a volunteer.

…We’ve got referee administrators for both genders. Making sure we have refs. …(There’s our) picture day coordinator, our volunteer coordinator, ….our party angels, that run the volunteer party at the end of the year. … People find things they like, you get them doing it and you try to get them to do it for five or six years so you get some consistency, and it helps.

LD: Do people generally stay for the life of their child’s involvement?

JM: Generally but … we get a lot of people who stick around after their kids grow up.

LD: What are the biggest challenges you face?

JM: There aren’t enough fields … we’re by far the largest youth sports organization in town. And for most kids it’s just from the week after school starts until the week after Thanksgiving, but for the talented kids that want to keep playing we have all-stars and that goes all the way to June or July.

LD: After all these years of involvement, do you think the girls and boys teams behave differently?

JM: Oh, absolutely. I’ve coached both and yeah, there’s a difference. You motivate them differently. In AYSO you don’t yell at kids, you try to keep it positive, but you can discipline a boy differently than a girl. … But both are really rewarding, especially this age group (8-10) because you see so much improvement throughout the year. You look at the first game and the last game and there’s a huge improvement. I just love to see kids when it starts to click for them.

LD: Do you have any tips for parents to be a better soccer/sports parent?

JM: Just watch. Every year we have problems with parents … the cheering stuff is good, but the parents that try to get into coaching that aren’t coaches … we get some that stand behind the goal and talk to the kids. We get some that counteract what the coach is trying to tell them to do. That’s kind of frustrating sometimes.

LD: I assume you’re not going to be the commissioner forever and ever and ever.

JM: Not if my wife has anything to say about it.

LD: What kind of advice would you give to your successor?

JM: Get a lot of people to help you, and don’t let things get to you. We’ve talked about mostly good stuff, but there’s stuff that I have to deal with every year that’s not too pleasant. We’re dealing with almost 3,000 kids, and 6,000 parents, and we’ve got divorces, restraining orders, one parent on the other, child protection issues come up.

LD: What’s your favorite thing about AYSO?

JM: What everybody says on the board is, “If I got paid I’d quit. You couldn’t pay me enough to ref this game with some of these parents. It’s a good thing I do it for free.” The board members get a really rough time at time. We’ve had these new coaches get hit with some of these parents who are just high maintenance…

For every little bad thing there’s like 20 good things. There’s so much. When you watch these kids just having a blast and get so excited at the end of the game is the best.

Name: John Maloney

Born: New London, Connecticut

Family: Wife Valerie and daughters Meghan, 17, and Carleigh, 14.

Civic Involvement: AYSO Commissioner; Sunday School Teacher at Holy Cross Church; runs the Society of Professional Engineers’ Math Counts Program for Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties

Professional Accomplishments: Electrical Engineer, owner of JMPE Electrical Engineering and Lighting Design with offices in Santa Barbara and Bakersfield.

Little-Known Fact: John’s first job after college was as a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey clown.

Originally published in Noozhawk

One on one with Rachael Steidl

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Rachael Steidl (courtesy photo)

Rachael Steidl (courtesy photo)

Recognizing the need for a centralized place for parenting information in Santa Barbara, Rachel Steidl created SBParent.com, which quickly became an indispensable resource for parents when it launched in 2002. Part Internet portal, part calendar and part bulletin board, today her business not only serves locals, it’s also the model for 18 other cities that have licensed the ParentClick.com technology.

Leslie Dinaberg: How did SBParent start?

Rachael Steidl: I was watching the frustration of how much work it was for parents to find resources. When I looked into it and tried to find out why it was so hard to get information, one of the things I realized was that advertising is so expensive and most businesses can’t afford to do it. My goal was to bring all of that word-of-mouth information under one central spot by making it affordable for businesses and nonprofits.

LD: How is ParentClick different than SBParent?

RS: Prior to (starting ParentClick) we were getting a lot of inquiries from people wanting to know how to get something like this going in their community. So we looked at what we had done over the last three years and decided that we could help fast forward them getting to where SBParent has gotten to by not having to do so much of the learning. So we created ParentClick. What we do is provide service agreements to these territory owners, which builds the technology for them, the website, gives them training and ongoing support, but they are in actuality their own business.

LD: So is it a franchise?

RS: It’s not a franchise in the sense that they have their own business name, their own business model, they set their own pricing. … We’ve also expanded services … for people who don’t have it in their city …we added travel with kids, children’s book and movie reviews, the recipe club and articles.

LD: Have you found that the other sites are different from Santa Barbara?

RS: It’s up to each territory whether they want it to make money and if they’re going to do sales, but to me, no matter what–and I have committed to this since the day I started, whether I was getting a check or not–is there will always be information for parents so that it’s not a waste of their time. Some territories are definitely stronger than others in terms of the consistency with which they are posting information.

But on SBParent, new information is going up every single day. When I was in Greece this summer I was posting information … we just don’t ever stop, because to me it’s a business, but we always look at it from the parent perspective.

… I would rather talk a potential owner out of doing the site than take a check from them for the wrong reasons.

LD: Is it still mostly a solo operation?

RS: Locally Julie Sorenson helps me, and she is really a huge, huge part of SBParent. But ParentClick has been solo. But we’re hiring.

… My daughter said to me the other day, “Mommy,” because she always told me she’s going to do my site when she grows up. She says, “I don’t know if I’m going to do SBParent.com when I grow up. I just think it’s too much work.”

LD: How and when do you work?

RS: My standard working hours, now that all my kids are in school, are really 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. I’ve gotten really disciplined, even though I still work out of the home, at not working on anything going on in the home–just working.

From 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. are my mom hours and then from 8 p.m. to midnight are usually work hours again. … My kids’ biggest complaint is my pulling up to pick them up from school on my cell phone, because I am literally doing calls until I pick them up. One of the things I tell a lot of the territory owners, as wonderful as it is working from home and as wonderful as it is being your own boss, it’s no less work–actually I think it’s a lot more juggling–it’s just that you get to control what those hours are.

I would not change it for the world because I get to be at all my kids’ things. … To me it’s worth working at night to be able to have that time with the kids during the day.

LD: Do you ever think it would be easier to have a job with set hours?

RS: Sure, but the funny thing is that even on my worst day where I’ll look at the big picture and go, did I make a mistake growing the company, did I make a mistake starting a business, I look at how it’s affected people and the emails we get or the great conversations with some of our territories, and I think you know what–I love what I do.

Vital Stats: Rachael Ross Steidl

Birthdate and place: 7/17/70, Los Angeles

Family: Twins Ashley and Whitney (9) and Emily (5); husband Jamie.

Civic Involvement: Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation, Board President; Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara, Oversight Committee; Santa Barbara Foundation, Katherine Harvey Fellows; Junior Philanthropists, Fund for Santa Barbara; Hope School PTA.

Professional Accomplishments: Goleta Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year, 2007; 40 under 40, Pacific Coast Business Times; ParentClick.com is now licensed in 18 cities, with more on the way.

Little known fact: Rachael’s parents had a great cookware store in Santa Barbara in the late 70s-80s called D. Crosby Ross, which was a cross between a Pottery Barn and a Williams Sonoma.

Originally published in Noozhawk

Noozhawk Talks: One on One With William Macfadyen

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Bill Macfadyen (courtesy photo)

Bill Macfadyen (courtesy photo)

Soft-spoken, with a courtly politeness that seems more Southern than Southern California, William (Bill) Macfadyen doesn’t exactly conjure up images of your typical work-into-the-wee-hours, Red Bull-drinking, pimply-faced Internet entrepreneur. But with this week’s launch of Noozhawk, Santa Barbara’s first comprehensive, free online newspaper, he’s aiming to be the local daily on everybody’s lips–and laptops.

Leslie Dinaberg: Tell me about Noozhawk?

William Macfadyen: It is a community newspaper without the paper. There are two parts to it: it will be professional reporters, like yourself, doing original reporting on news, business, sports, real estate, nonprofits, schools. So there will be original content that we provide on the site, and then the real hook to the site will be to get the community involved through contributions from what I’m calling community contributors.

LD: Do you mean blogs?

WM: No, what we want to do is tie Noozhawk into the community by getting involved with all the networks that exist within Santa Barbara, communities within the community. That would mean a church or a club sports program or a school or a nonprofit or a business even …They can tell the story, submit their stories to Noozhawk and then we can help them get that word out about their organization.

LD: Will there be some way for readers to distinguish whether they are reading something from a member of an organization versus a professionally written and reported story?

WM: Yes, because the consumer needs to know what’s professional objective reporting, and what is a contribution from somebody who has an agenda … when it comes to a small nonprofit group or a school, they’re just really enthusiastic about their mission and want to get that word out. I think a community newspaper is uniquely suited to tell that story and we think Noozhawk will be able to do that in a way that a [printed] community newspaper, with all of its infrastructure, can’t possibly tell or afford.

LD: Explain the economics of that. Why is it easier to do that online?

WM: It’s so much easier to do that online because the Internet is infinite space. It’s basically free. There’s not an artificial or arbitrary limit on paging or a time.

LD: Will there be an editorial page?

WM: Noozhawk itself won’t take editorial positions or make endorsements on candidates or projects, what we want to do is foster debate on community issues that aren’t being covered or serviced anywhere else in town.

Santa Barbara is the greatest community in the world but we do have some really big challenges ahead of us: housing, transportation, the change in demographics, all of those issues are crying out for some kind of community dialogue and it just isn’t there. So what we want to do is offer a place where people can have that debate and discuss those issues and ask the questions that need to be asked, and maybe through that process we can help develop some solutions to some of those challenges.

LD: One of the things that I hear from people that are relying on the Internet now for most of their local news is that “it’s out there but there’s so much other stuff to sift through.”

WM: That’s kind of where this whole concept came in because anecdotally many, many people in town have come up with their own routines to find out what’s going on in their community. …The problem with that is … you’re not trained to go out and search for the news. …You’re not a journalist. And the news delivery really should be brainless … it should just magically show up on your doorstep, in your driveway, in your inbox, wherever, and you shouldn’t have to go looking for it. … What we’re trying to do is pull that all together and then basically be a one stop shop for people to get their news and then move on with their day. … There is no newspaper of record or information source of record. Noozhawk aims to change that.

LD: Where does the name Noozhawk come from?

WM: News hawk is slang for a newspaper reporter, so we just had a little Web 2.0ish fun with the news end of it and named it Noozhawk. Plus hawks are flying everywhere and they see everything.

LD: Why are you personally doing this?

WM: Because I’m not qualified to do anything else.

I’m too old for the Dodgers, although they could use me. I’m personally doing this because I’m very committed to Santa Barbara. I’m proud to live here. I love this community and I don’t like the fact that it’s not being served by its media. I think I know how to put together a quality news product, and I know I know the community, and what I’m trying to do is marry those two and fill a void.

LD: Why will this succeed when other start-up news ventures have failed?

WM: I have no idea what you’re talking about. (Laughs) Henry Ford said, “Failure is an opportunity to start anew only more intelligently.” And that’s what I am doing. I would not have undertaken this endeavor without the Beacon experience and part of that is, I think the Beacon was a fantastic newspaper. Certainly it served its readers very well. … But it failed as a business because we weren’t able to connect with the advertisers quickly enough. And so with Noozhawk, the genesis and evolution of that has been the opposite. I started out talking to advertisers first.

LD: So it feels like they are ready to embrace the Internet?

WM: That’s interesting because when we had the Beacon and we talked about the web part of it, the readership just wasn’t there yet … That dynamic and that whole attitude has changed. What I found in talking to those advertisers is that when I went back to them last fall and started talking to them about this project, their reaction was, “I’m done with print, it no longer works for me, it’s all about the Internet. Internet, Internet, Internet.”

When I first had the idea, older readers, retirees, who had been the core newspaper readers for generations, were resistant to the concept. …Then as time went on, and the Santa Barbara situation kind of deteriorated, I was finding even at the retiree level, the former newspaper reader level, those people were saying, “You know what. I’m actually finding my news online and it’s not that bad. I don’t really miss that routine.” Plus it’s environmentally friendly

LD: Are there any other models or any other communities that are already doing this kind of thing successfully?

WM: Not that I could find with a successful advertising model. … For this to succeed, the business community needs to support it and see it as a worthwhile endeavor that’s effective for their needs.

Without going into the details, I think Santa Barbara has some unique circumstances that are lending themselves to this idea here at this time. That said, I think you need to have some authenticity, and you need to really know the community. And I think we have some advantages in that area. The folks we have involved really know this community. Both Jim Farr (former publisher of the Goleta Valley Voice and Noozhawk’s Operations Manager) and I, obviously, were both community newspaper publishers. We don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things in the political spectrum but we’re both passionate about this community and want the best for it, and I think we have a certain respect and credibility in the community, at least in the business community.

LD: What’s the business model? How will this venture actually make money?

WM: Advertising revenue. It’s advertising supported, it’s free to use. We’re asking people to register for the daily email that goes out, but the idea would be that advertising is paying for the site in most cases.

LD: What about if the people at the table next to us were talking about Noozhawk, what would you want them to be saying?

WM: We want them to be talking about it all the time, like my gosh, it’s the most effective, more informative source for news and Information I’ve ever seen. I think at its heart, we want them to recognize Santa Barbara within Noozhawk’s website, The community that they know, we want to make sure that it’s reflected on the site.

It’s a great community, you know, I know it, everybody knows it, but too often it’s just invisible.

LD: What do you know now that you wish you would have known when you started the Beacon?

WM: You know, I thought when we started the Beacon that I really knew Santa Barbara and I didn’t. I had lived here at that time about 17 years, and just didn’t quite know or appreciate how interconnected everything was. And I think partly through the Beacon and partly through the Goleta Valley Chamber of Commerce, I think I have a great understanding and greater appreciation of how it all works, which is why I’m confident about Noozhawk’s success.

LD: When you’re not working, what do you like to do?

WM: It’s Dodgers Baseball and it’s killing me now.

LD: If you had to sum yourself up with just three adjectives, what would they be?

Persistent

Principled

Confident

LD: Is there anything else you want to tell our readers?

I would say that Noozhawk is as much about them, actually is more about them than it is about our community, and so for them to take ownership of the site and get involved, our community will benefit, because at the end of the day, they have more knowledge about what’s going on in the community collectively than any single news source does individually. We really want their involvement.

Vital Statistics: William M. Macfadyen

Born: Sept. 8, 1960, Chicago

Family: Wife, Missy; children, Will, Colin and Kirsten; one Alaskan malamute

Civic Involvement: Board chairman, Goleta Valley Chamber of Commerce; board secretary, Regional Legislative Alliance; board member, Coastal Housing Coalition and Santa Barbara Community Housing Corp.; past senior warden, All Saints By-the-Sea Episcopal Church

Professional Accomplishments: Co-founded the late South Coast Beacon newspaper, recipient of the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s General Excellence Award in its first year of eligibility; charter member, American Copy Editors Society

Little-Known Fact: Grandfather, Jack Macfadyen, founded the Malibu Times newspaper in the 1940s

Originally published in Noozhawk on October 16, 2007. Here’s the link to the original story.

Lionesses of Winter

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They Take Pride in Giving Back

It takes passion, money and a lot of hard work for Santa Barbara’s most treasured nonprofit organizations to thrive. This community tradition of giving back by supporting education, caring for those in need, and sharing a love for nature and the arts has an incredibly generous cast of leading ladies at its helm. Not content to simply be the torchbearers, they are also keeping an eye toward the next generation of the philanthropic community.

“I’m trying to spread the circle,” says Shirley Ann Hurley. “I’ve brought young women into my life who care passionately about these sorts of things that I do and they stimulate me and …I love the excitement that is getting to know all of these wonderful people.”

Let’s meet a few of the women who help keep the community alive and well.

The Leading Ladies

Betty Hatch

La Belle Foundation, Granada Theatre, Girl Scouts, Girls Inc., Hospice, CAMA, Cottage Hospital, Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse, the Arts Fund, Santa Barbara Zoo, Santa Barbara Art Association, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, Santa Barbara Ballet

“My life has been dedicated to the teaching of self-esteem,” says Hatch, founder of La Belle Modeling Agency (1963-1991), and now executive director of the La Belle Foundation, which offers young women free training in self-esteem, self-development and personal and social responsibility.”

“Giving to the community is just a pleasure; it’s a demonstration of our gratitude and our love for everybody here.”

Shirley Ann Hurley
Santa Barbara Scholarship Foundation, Family Service Agency, Santa Barbara Public Education Foundation, CALM, Anti-Defamation League, Santa Barbara Foundation

“The things I’ve wanted to spend my time on are the things that help children and young people become the best that they can be, which means to live up to their full potential … The organization that I have probably put the most years into and time is the Family Service Agency. The concept that we could intervene early in a child’s life and with that child’s family and help them raise a more secure child was what hooked me.”

“People keep saying what do you do for fun. I said everything. All of this is fun. And it is. It’s work, but it’s fun. There’s nothing I like better than working with a group of deeply caring people. It is so exciting. And the fact that you know that together you can make a difference in somebody’s lives and your community is just such a reward.”

Gerd Jordano
Cottage Hospital Building Campaign, Westmont College Foundation, CALM

“Board members are ambassadors for those organizations. They are sort of cheerleaders and are able to sort of talk and share what that organization is and what it’s all about. It’s really an opportunity to educate people about that organization and that gives me great joy to share my passion and my knowledge about that particular organization.”

“I’m a former cheerleader so I continue that same passion, only I’m just not jumping up and down anymore (laughs). But I do get very passionate about what I get involved with and it just brings me a lot of joy.”

Carol Palladini
Santa Barbara Women’s Fund

“The concept of the Santa Barbara Women’s Fund (which will have given away more than $1 million by the end of the year) is making your time and money most effectively used by a lot of women writing checks and putting them together and doing direct fundraising, so that you’re not spending a lot of money to make money… Our umbrella is giving in support of the greater Santa Barbara area; it has to be local, to benefit unmet needs for women, children and families.”

“A lot of the work that I’ve done in the past, on and off boards, has some Heartache mixed in with the joy of it. This has been a pleasure from the beginning.”

Joanne Rapp
Santa Barbara Foundation, Santa Barbara Scholarship Foundation, CALM, Cottage Hospital, Botanic Gardens, Laguna Cottages, Montecito Community Foundation

“I have enjoyed working with organizations that are targeted at helping youth with their educational goals, in particular the Scholarship Foundation and the Santa Barbara Foundation student loan program. Everything that you work on and within the nonprofit community enhances the quality of life and the effectiveness of our community, but helping the students transfers anywhere. … It will strengthen the fabric of whatever community that they land in.”

The Next Generation

Tiffany Foster
Storyteller, Crane Country Day School, Howard School, All Saints by the Sea Parish School, Lotusland, Lobero Theatre, Santa Barbara Museum of Art SMART Families

“When I arrived in Santa Barbara four years ago … it seemed that every fabulous, intelligent person I met was volunteering for either Storyteller or Lotusland. Before I knew it I was in the center of a vibrant group of caring women and men who dedicated their energy, financial resources, and business acumen to help make a difference in our local community.”

“Storyteller Children’s Center provides daycare and preschool to homeless toddlers in Santa Barbara as well as support services for their families. Young children deserve security, safety and a stable environment. … It is difficult to find a more worthy cause.”

Kisa Heyer
Lotusland, Santa Barbara Museum of Art SMART Families, Crane Country Day School, Storyteller, Lobero Theatre, Sarah House, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, CAMA

“Even after being involved with Lotusland for so long, I’m still amazed by it–not only with its collections, design, architecture, and programs–but also with the story behind the garden. Madame Ganna Walska’s wonderland is such a benefit to our community. It’s magical to see joy that children (all 4th graders visit) and adults express after visiting the garden, and no surprise, really, that we are becoming world-renowned as a one-of-a-kind experience.”

Jill Levinson
Lotusland, Visiting Nurse and Hospice Care of SB, Storyteller, New Beginnings Counseling Center, Lobero Theatre, All Saints by the Sea Parish School, Santa Barbara Museum of Art SMART Families.

“I think everyone has a need for hospice care for themselves or their loved ones at some point in their life. I just feel like it’s very important to support these organizations because they’re necessary. If they disappeared that would be a travesty for our community. Our community is so fortunate to have so much to offer everyone. I think that’s part of what’s really special about Santa Barbara, it tries to take care of people.”

Laura Shelburne
Storyteller, Crane Country Day School, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Stanford University, Lotusland, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

“Winston Churchill once said, ‘We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.’ I spent a number of years practicing corporate law, working around the clock during the Silicon Valley boom, and I always regretted that I didn’t have enough time to do worthwhile pro bono work. While I was one of those oxymoronic happy lawyers, I have to say that now it is wonderful to be able to choose my own “clients” based on causes I believe in and use my skills and experience to help non-profits. I also feel strongly that I should set an example for my children by doing things for others and for institutions that will outlast us and continue to benefit future generations.

Lisa Wolf
Santa Barbara Ballet, CAMA, Storyteller, Lotusland, Santa Barbara Zoo, Lobero Theatre, Santa Barbara Museum of Art SMART Families, French Heritage Society, Laguna Blanca

“We started a group at the art museum because we had a feeling that the art museum was reaching out really effectively to kids in town, elementary school students and underprivileged kids and it was also a great resource for very very serious art collectors, but there was nothing in the middle. … So we created this group called SMART families (and it’s Santa Barbara Museum of Art, not that we think we’re especially bright) but a really wonderful group.”

“When you know that you’ve helped make it possible for somebody to attend a program or for somebody to be exposed to opera or some great cultural moment, or to just alleviate human suffering, it’s a great privilege to be able to do it.”

Originally published in Santa Barbara Magazine, 2007