Board of Directors

 

Deb Stallings, President

Deb brings more than 34 years in non-profit management, fundraising, leadership, and organizational effectiveness to her practice at Full Circle. 

After moving to California from her native Tennessee in 1996, Deb brought leadership and resources to Equal Rights Advocates, a national civil rights organization dedicated to expanding economic and educational opportunities for women and girls. In 2000, Deb moved to Napa where she ultimately helped raise more than $36 million to restore the Napa Valley Opera House and Lincoln Theater. 

From 2009 to 2020, Deb served as Vice President of Development at Horizons Foundation, the world’s oldest and largest community foundation serving the LGBTQ+ community. She worked closely with Horizons’ staff, board, and committees in all areas of fund development, with a special emphasis on cultivating legacy gifts. She also served as a trusted philanthropic advisor to Horizons’ donor-advisors and Bay Area professional advisors. Deb’s visionary work engaging donors and other key stakeholders resulted in the foundation’s Now and Forever Campaign, which raised more than $100 million in legacy commitments for the LGBTQ community. 

In private practice, Deb works with social profit organizations and foundations that promote education, research, elder care, and cultural inclusion through fundraising and organizational development consulting. 

Deb has enjoyed board service at many non-profits including the founding board of the Napa Valley Unity League, Napa Emergency Women’s Shelter, and Napa Valley AIDS project. For the past year, Deb has served on the board of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. 

Jerome C. Roth, Vice President

Jerry Roth, a litigation partner in the San Francisco office of Munger, Tolles & Olson, specializes in business and international litigation as well as white-collar criminal defense.

Jerry is recognized by Chambers USA as a “leading lawyer” in white-collar litigation in California. He was named by Best Lawyers as the 2016 top lawyer in San Francisco for “bet-the-company” litigation.

Jerry is an active member of the international litigation bar and is also an ICC-trained international arbitration lawyer.  He speaks French, Spanish and Italian and works in German and Portuguese. Jerry is the current President of the Paris-based Union Internationale des Avocats, the world’s oldest international law association.  He has also served as co-chair of the ABA Litigation Section’s International Litigation Committee.  In addition to his Harvard College and Harvard Law School degrees, Jerry holds a French-language master’s degree in law from the Université de Paris.

Jerry has an active pro bono practice.  He recently served on a pro bono basis as General Counsel to the Blue-Ribbon panel set up by the San Francisco District Attorney to investigate potential bias in the San Francisco Police Department.  He has submitted many amicus briefs on LGBT issues including same-sex marriage.  In 2007, Jerry and other ABA members spearheaded a program to train Sudanese lawyers to represent victims of the Darfur tragedy before the International Criminal Court, and he has trained human rights lawyers in Haiti, Brazil and elsewhere around the globe.

 

Jane Hartley, Treasurer

Jane Hartley was raised in the East Bay. She moved to San Francisco after college and had a brief career teaching before she became interested in apartment renovation and has bought, renovated, and managed properties in San Francisco ever since.

As a 4th grader, she attended an Opera Guild matinee at the San Francisco Opera House. As a consequence, she joined the Opera Guild Board in 1983 to be involved in their opera education programs, including introducing opera to school children. She later became President and started an endowment for opera education. Subsequently, she has served on the Boards of Opera Volunteers International, Opera America, and is currently on the Board of the San Francisco Opera.

She lives in San Francisco with her husband, David. Her two children also live in the City with her three granddaughters. Jane has traveled extensively with her husband who was formerly the Travel Editor for Sunset Magazine. She enjoys cooking, gardening, hiking, and experiencing opera around the country.

 

Margie O’Driscoll, Secretary

Bay Area native Margie O’Driscoll has spent most of her professional career in the arts and cultural life of The City.  She has held leadership roles with various nonprofit organizations, including the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco; Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund; Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Arts Commission. She currently consults with a variety of local and national nonprofit organizations, including the Center for Design and Construction Industry.  

She is the mother of two college-age sons and is married to musicologist Niels Swinkels. Niels introduced her to opera when he served a the Arts Editor of Dutch newspaper Brabants Dagblad, and she was immediately hooked.

 

Clifford Cranna, PhD

Clifford (Kip) Cranna, Dramaturg Emeritus of San Francisco Opera, served on the staff for over forty years and was Director of Music Administration for over thirty years. He coordinated the commissioning and co-commissioning of more than 20 new operas. In 2008 he was awarded the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s highest honor, and in 2012 he received the Bernard Osher Cultural Award for distinguished efforts to bring excellence to a cultural institution. In 2014 he received the Star of Excellence Award for outstanding service to the programs of the San Francisco Opera Guild. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University. For thirty years he was Program Editor and Lecturer for the Carmel Bach Festival. He lectures and writes frequently on music in the Bay Area. He teaches opera appreciation at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco and at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI) at U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Dominican University.

 

Dr. Melinda Luisa de Jesús

Melinda Luisa de Jesús is Associate Professor and former Chair of Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts. She writes and teaches about Filipinx/American cultural production, girl culture,  monsters, and race/ethnicity in the United States. She edited Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory,  the first anthology of Filipina/American feminisms (Routledge 2005). Her academic writing has  appeared in Mothering in East Asian Communities: Politics and Practices; Completely Mixed Up:  Mixed Heritage Asian North American Writing and Art; Approaches to Teaching Multicultural Comics; Ethnic Literary Traditions in Children’s Literature; Challenging Homophobia; Radical Teacher; The  Lion and the Unicorn; Ano Ba Magazine; Rigorous; Konch Magazine; Rabbit and Rose; MELUS;  Meridians; The Journal of Asian American Studies, and Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth Century American Girls’ Cultures.  

She is also a poet and her chapbooks, Humpty Drumpfty and Other Poems; Petty Poetry for SCROTUS  Girls’ with poems for Elizabeth Warren and Michelle Obama; Defying Trumplandia; Adios  Trumplandia!; James Brown’sWig and Other Poems; and Vagenda of Manicide and Other Poems were  published by Locofo Chaps in 2017. Her first collection of poetry, peminology, was published by  Paloma Press in 2018.  

In Spring 2019 Melinda was the Muriel Gold Senior Visiting Professor at the Institute for Gender,  Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada where she organized the  Pinay Power II: Celebrating Peminisms in the Diaspora conference (see pinaypower.ca for more info).  

She is a mezzo-soprano, a mom, an Aquarian, and admits an obsession with Hello Kitty. More info: http://peminist.com

 

Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

A serial technology CEO, strategy consultant and board member, Marylene Delbourg-Delphis was one of the first European women to found (with Guy Kawasaki) a technology company in Silicon Valley. For 30 years, she has empowered organizations to continuously innovate as a full-time CEO (4 companies), shadow CEO, board member or advisor (over 30 companies), and has negotiated several acquisitions. She currently serves on the board of several companies and is a member of the National Council of the University Musical Society (UMS) of the University of Michigan. In 2018, she was awarded the French Legion of Honour, the highest order of merit for military and civil accomplishments.

A graduate of l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, she holds a Doctorate in Philosophy and minors in Formal Logic and History of Sciences. She studied under the tutelage of French Academician & Stanford Professor, Michel Serres. She has written several books on fashion and fragrances and curates content about Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Human Resources. She recently published a new book: Everybody Wants to Love Their Job—Rebuilding Trust and Culture.
Marcia Lazer

Marcia Lazer has over 40 years’ experience as a marketing and communications professional in the performing arts industry, including senior positions with the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Center Theatre Group (Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum), and South Coast Repertory (Orange County’s Tony-Award winning theater, one of the country’s foremost producers of new plays). She also held management positions with direct marketing firms specializing in arts and entertainment, with non-profit and for-profit performing arts clients nationwide, including Disney Theatrical. As San Francisco Opera’s Director of Marketing from April 2006 through her retirement in August 2017, she was responsible for all aspects of the Company’s marketing functions including marketing and advertising strategy, subscription and single tickets sales campaigns, pricing, institutional branding, patron relations, box office, and audience development through outreach events such as the annual AT&T Park Opera at the Ballpark simulcasts. At the Met, where she worked for fourteen years (including as Marketing Director from 1981 to 1986), she was responsible for marketing the Met’s annual 30-week opera season and American Ballet Theatre’s 8-week summer season in the opera house, among many other summer presentations. She holds a master’s degree in musicology from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree in music history from Wellesley College and completed Columbia University’s Institute for Not-for-Profit Management program.

 

Lisa Lindelef

Lisa Lindelef is a longtime advocate for women’s, children’s and civil rights. A second-generation Californian, born in Los Angeles who fell in love with San Francisco at the age of 11, she finally moved here permanently 25 years later. She grew up in an arts-connected family, but not opera because, in her childhood, there was no permanent opera in Los Angeles. She was introduced to opera by a former spouse. Lisa has been a long-term supporter of both SF Opera and Opera Parallèle. She is especially excited by Opera Parallèle’s promotion of new operas/productions, and making opera more available to all.

Lisa is a retired psychotherapist and lawyer who spent most of her professional career working in nonprofit organizations. She holds a BA in Psychology from Stanford University, a MS in Counseling Psychology from USC, and a JD from Stanford Law School. She has been a senior staff member with a number of nonprofit organizations and a board member with many nonprofits, including NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. She is currently a Leadership Council Member of Rise Up Together, a non-profit encouraging women and girls to expand their horizons and develop their skills, and has long been associated with the ACLU Northern California. She is a former Assistant Director of Public Service Programs at Stanford Law School and a former director of Berkeley Law’s Judicial Internship Program.

In another stage of her life, she was an intern and then associate producer for KQED FM – possibly the best job she ever had. Lowest pay, greatest challenge and fun.

 

Bernice Lindstrom

Born and raised in San Francisco, Bernice Lindstrom has been a subscriber to the San Francisco Opera for 45 years. Besides her family and friends, her greatest loves are opera and traveling. Having studied abroad at the University of Vienna where she fell in love with opera, and in Paris at the Sorbonne and the Institute for Foreign Teachers of French, she has taught high school and adult education German and later both French and German in middle school.  Bernice now manages her real estate investments and travels frequently to see operas around the US and in Europe. Her daughter, Lise Lindstrom, is a professional opera singer with an active career. In recent years Bernice has become especially interested in contemporary opera. Bernice graduated from Pomona College majoring in Comparative Literature and then received her Masters in Education from Stanford.

 

Simin Naaseh

Simin Naaseh serves as the CEO and President of Forell/Elsesser Engineers, a preeminent structural engineering firm in San Francisco. The firm has a strong structural design portfolio of cultural buildings such as SF Conservatory of Music, SFJazz, Berkeley Art Museum, Asian Art Museum, original SFMOMA, amongst other, as well as important public, institutional, corporate and privately-owned buildings. While building on the firm’s 58-year tradition of technical excellence and exceptional service, Simin takes a special interest in advancing the firm as one of the most innovative structural engineering firms in the nation. Simin is well recognized for her experience in seismic design and the implementation of innovative seismic protection technologies such as seismic isolation and has lectured internationally sharing her knowledge on the subject. She is very active professionally and has served as the president of the board of the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC). She has also served on the board of American Institute of Architects (AIA) San Francisco, and as a trustee of the California Preservation Foundation. She currently serves on the board of the Design Build Institute’s Western Pacific Region. She received a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Azar Abadegan in Tabriz, Iran, and a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Simin is a resident of Oakland and enjoys the nature and the art scene in the Bay Area.

 

Alan Olejniczak

Alan Olejniczak is a playwright, scriptwriter, and opera librettist.  He’s a member of the Micro Galleries International Collective, Associate Artist with Faultline Theater in San Francisco, and a scriptwriter for Punch Presentations in Hong Kong. Alan’s plays have been produced across the country and available on New Play Exchange. His opera Death of Ivan Ilych will have its workshop premiere next May with Opera Orlando. Alan is a former board member of Theatre Bay Area and a current member of the Dramatist Guild and Opera America.  In September 2019, Alan was chosen as an Artist in Residence for Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and the first playwright ever selected by the National Parks Arts Foundation. Alan’s other artist residencies include those in Pātan, Nepal; Skagaströnd, Iceland; along with the prestigious The Arctic Circle Residency, sailing the icy waters around The International Territory of Svalbard.

 

Peggy Otum

Peggy Otum is the Co-chair of WilmerHale’s Global Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources Practice. She’s a seasoned environmental lawyer who represents large corporations and universities on a host of environmental enforcement, environmental justice, crisis management, workplace safety, and other environmental issues. She has played key roles in two of the past decade’s largest environmental cases. She has been consistently ranked as a leading environmental lawyer and was recently inducted as a fellow of the prestigious American College of Environmental Lawyers, one of very few African American women so recognized.

In addition to serving on the OP Board of Directors, Ms. Otum holds several board and advisory positions, including the Bar Association of San Francisco, the Environmental Law Institute, and the National Women’s Law Center’s Leadership Advisory Committee.

Born in Montreal and raised in a Toronto suburb, Ms. Otum currently lives in San Francisco with her husband, two young daughters, and a rambunctious Portuguese Water Dog.

 

Nancy Petrisko

Nancy E. Petrisko’s career in arts management has spanned over thirty-five years. Currently the Director of Advancement at Merola Opera Program, she has held executive or major positions in a wide variety of performing arts organizations on both US coasts.   Many years were dedicated to presenting organizations– the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, San Francisco Performances, San Francisco Symphony, Washington Performing Arts Society, the Kennedy Center, and BlackRock Center for the Arts. However, she has worked extensively with new and established opera companies and organizations dedicated to the vocal arts–San Francisco Opera, Washington National Opera, Vocal Arts Society, Opera Lafayette, and Washington Concert Opera.

As an independent consultant, she is most proud of her work with young organizations to build resources, engage in successful planning to effect financial turnaround and establish fundraising efforts for success.  Her accomplishments include a successful capital campaign to build an arts education center for an underserved community, bi-coastal fundraising to establish ambitious music recording efforts, interim leadership during periods of organizational stress and change, strategic planning for staffing and governance success, and international effort to establish health care education and resources.

For a decade, she served as an adjunct professor in performing arts and public administration departments at American University.  Teaching graduate courses in non-profit management, finance, and fundraising, she is proud to have helped students begin careers in arts management and public service.  Additional work in the field includes panel review for the National Endowment for the Arts, Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations, Maryland Arts Council, California Arts Council, and Pennsylvania Performing Arts Program. 

She is married, has two sons, and lives in Davis, CA.  She is a lightweight competitive rower and prefers to spend time outdoors when she is not in the theater.

 

John Roevekamp

John Roevekamp is Co-Founder and Chief of Engineering at Cyrun, which builds law enforcement and security data-management software systems. He has 35 years of experience in business development with 30 years in computer software design and engineering. John also holds a BA in Music from University of California, Santa Cruz, and performs with great pleasure, whenever possible, as a tenor in the chorus of Opera Parallèle productions.