Board of Directors
E. Alex Albert
Friedman Fleischer & Lowe, LLC
Alex Albert is an investment executive with Friedman Fleischer & Lowe. Prior to joining Friedman Fleischer & Lowe, Mr. Albert worked for the investment bank Goldman, Sachs & Co. in both London and Los Angeles, where he was involved in a variety of mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate advisory transactions. He holds an M.Phil in Economics from the University of Oxford, an M.A. in Quantitative Methods from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Economics from Vanderbilt University. Mr. Albert has been involved in numerous community projects and is committed to assisting non-profit organizations reach their full financial potential.
Anthea Case is the Principal Adviser to the Arcadia Fund, a U.K.-based charity whose mission is to preserve endangered culture and nature. She is also a Commissioner for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), and Chair of the National Trust East of England Regional Committee, as well as a Trustee of HEART (the Norwich Heritage and Economic Regeneration Trust), of the Institute for Philanthropy and of the Lakeland Arts Trust. Until December 2010 she was Chair of Heritage Link (England’s national umbrella body for historic environment voluntary bodies), and between 1995 and 2003 Chief Executive of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Heritage Lottery Fund, funding heritage projects across the U.K. She was awarded a CBE in 2003 for services to heritage. Prior to this, Ms. Case’s career was spent in Her Majesty’s Treasury.
Carola Donnerhak
Occidental College
Carola Donnerhak is Associate Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at Occidental College. Prior to joining Oxy, she was director of the historic landmark and artists' residence Villa Aurora and served in various positions in the Office of Advancement at the California Institute of the Arts. She also worked for the World Affairs Council of Charlotte as a program and development manager. Primarily educated in Germany, Carola holds an MA in Arts Management and studied abroad at Carnegie Mellon University.
Rick A. Feldman
Consultant
Rick Feldman is the former
President/CEO of NATPE (National Association of Television Program Executives),
a global, non-profit organization dedicated to the creation, development and
distribution of televised programming in all forms, across all platforms. He is
credited with revitalizing the organization during the ten years he was its
leader and for shifting the agency’s focus to the international scene with
worldwide activities in Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America. Before
joining NATPE, Mr. Feldman was Executive Vice-President and COO of USA
Broadcasting and was responsible for four TV stations in Miami, Dallas, Atlanta
and Boston and supervised all program acquisitions and development. At KCOP
Television, where he worked from 1983 through 1999, he became President and
General Manager with operational and managerial responsibility for all
departments and more than 200 employees. KCOP earned more than 30 Emmy Awards
for its locally-produced programming under his guidance. Mr. Feldman holds a
B.A. from the School of the Arts at New York University. He is on the Boards of
NAPTE, Cableready and the Israel Film Festival.
Gabriele Hayes
OneWorld Language
Solutions
Gabriele Hayes was born in Jena, a university town and home of Carl Zeiss Jena, outside of East Berlin. She was never permitted to leave East Germany until a few days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her request to exit with her American husband, Mark, was finally granted as the country came apart in November 1989. Ms. Hayes left Jena with a degree in Russian and English and headed for New York. After experiencing culture shock, she and her husband relocated to Dallas, Texas where she put her linguistic skills to work. Ms. Hayes opened OneWorld Language Solutions, a language company that provides foreign language and English training, translation, interpretation, voiceover and subtitling to companies such as IBM, Cisco, eBay, HBO, Prudential, Hewlett Packard, Nestlé and Texas Instruments. In 1991, she returned to Germany with her husband and produced a 30-minute documentary about the reunification, which aired on PBS in Texas. Ms. Hayes reprised these efforts in 2010 with a new documentary “One Germany, The Other Side of the Wall” focusing on the political and cultural impact of the reunification.
Alan R. Jampol
Partner, Jampol
Zimet Skane & Wilcox LLP
Alan R. Jampol is partner of Los Angeles law firm Jampol Zimet and a graduate of the UCLA School of Law. He has been practicing in Southern California for over thirty-five years and is “AV”® rated by Martindale-Hubbell. Mr. Jampol specializes in the litigation and arbitration of substantial matters related to errors and omissions claims against professionals including lawyers, real estate brokers, insurance brokers and agents, engineers, architects and other professionals, title insurance and real property matters, construction disputes, claims against nursing homes and other extended care facilities, and commercial matters. Mr. Jampol has tried a large number of jury cases to conclusion with a stellar record of success and has served as an arbitrator (either a single arbitrator or as a member of a three-arbitrator panel) in commercial and construction claims. He has lectured before Bar Committees, written articles in legal periodicals relating to insurance matters and title litigation and taught in a private law school. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association and various other committees. He is also a member of the Defense Research Institute, the Association of Southern California Defense Counsel, and the Professional Liability Underwriting Society.
Justinian Jampol
Executive
Director/Founder, The Wende Museum
Justinian Jampol is founder and Executive Director of the Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Modern History from Oxford University. His doctoral dissertation is entitled “Swords, Doves, and Flags: Evolution of Political Iconography and Cultural Meaning in the GDR, 1949-1989.”
Wayne Ratkovich
The Ratkovich Company
Wayne Ratkovich is the founder and President of The Ratkovich Company (TRC), a Los Angeles-based development firm focused on projects that improve the quality of urban life in the United States. Specializing in urban infill and rehabilitation projects, his firm’s accomplishments range from large-scale urban planning and entitlement endeavors to retail, office, entertainment, and mixed-use projects. The Ratkovich Company engages in both new development and the imaginative reuse of existing buildings – including historic landmarks.
Mr. Ratkovich has been a Trustee of The Urban Land Institute (ULI) for twelve years, currently serving as Vice Chairman. During his tenure, he has served as a Governor of the Urban Land Foundation, and served on a variety of committees and expert panels formed to tackle some of the country’s most difficult, and now successful urban development. Mr. Ratkovich is also an Emeritus Trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 1997 he received The Parkinson Award from the USC School of Architecture for contributions to the urban environment in Los Angeles. Mr. Ratkovich has also received the UCLA/Los Angeles Times 2001 Real Estate Forecast Award for exceptional contribution to the real estate industry and the community; The Urban Land Institute’s prestigious Robert 0’Donnell Award for his outstanding contributions to the organization’s Advisory Services Program; as well as the Legends Award from The Los Angeles Downtown Breakfast Club.
Teofilo Ruiz
Professor, UCLA
Department of History
Born in Cuba, Teofilo Ruiz fled to the United States in 1961. Dr. Ruiz was a student of American medievalist Joseph R. Strayer and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1974. Prior to moving to UCLA in 1998, he taught at Brooklyn College, the CUNY Graduate Center, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Princeton University as a 250th Anniversary Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching. Dr. Ruiz was the Vice President of the Research Division of the American Historical Association, and served as Chair of the UCLA Department of History from 2002-2005 and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese from 2008-09. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies. He has lectured throughout the world with speaking engagements in Spain, Italy, France, England, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Dr. Ruiz has published or has forthcoming thirteen books, more than 50 articles, and over 100 reviews and smaller articles in national and international scholarly journals. His Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile was awarded the Premio del Rey prize by the American Historical Association. In 1994, Dr. Ruiz was selected by the Carnegie Foundation as one of the four Outstanding Teachers of the Year in the United States. He has also been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the American Council of Learned Societies, and most recently, the Guggenheim Foundation in 2007 and was named Distinguished Teacher at UCLA in 2008.
Dennis Slon
Loyola Marymount University
Dennis Slon, Loyola Marymount University’s Senior Vice-President for University Relations, oversees LMU’s external relations efforts. Under his direction, the University completed its ten-year comprehensive funding effort: Right Place. Right Time. The Campaign for LMU and successfully celebrated its Centennial. LMU raised a total of $411.5 million, surpassing its $380 million goal in the effort ending March of 2012. He also directs the offices of communications and government affairs, alumni and community relations, special events and development services. Prior to his October 2004 appointment to LMU, Slon served for five years as associate vice-chancellor for development at UCLA. There, he oversaw fundraising at UCLA, most notably the highly successful Campaign UCLA, which raised a record-breaking $3 billion during the past decade. Before that, Slon served as vice-president for development at The College of William and Mary, and has held development positions at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Virginia. He holds a master's degree in education from Harvard and a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia.
Angela Thompson was born in Dresden, Germany. She survived the bombing of the city in February 1945, and in 1951 fled with her family to West Germany. In 1970, she moved to Los Angeles where she received her M.A. from USC and then her Ph.D. from UCLA, both in German Literature and philosophy. She has taught German and German literature at USC and other institutions in Southern California, and was Director of the Masters of International Business program at Pepperdine University until 1999. She continues to give lectures throughout the U.S. and Europe. In 1999, Dr. Thompson began writing her book, Bleib immer neben mir - Ein deutsches Frauenleben, which was published in Germany in 2005. The English translation was released in February 2010 as Blackout: A Woman’s Struggle for Survival in 20th Century Germany. Dr. Thompson is currently completing her second novel.
Michael A. Walsh
Writer, Journalist
Michael A. Walsh is a music critic, author and screenwriter, and is currently on the faculty of the University of Boston Department of Journalism. After graduating from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in 1971, Mr. Walsh became a reporter for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, where he won the New York State Publishers Association First Prize for Reporting for a series of articles about heroin in Rochester. He was named Chief Classical Music Critic for the San Francisco Examiner in 1977, and became a Music Critic for Time Magazine in 1981, where his cover stories featured James Levine, Vladimir Horowitz, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Mr. Walsh’s non-fiction works include Carnegie Hall: The First One Hundred Years (Harry N. Abrams, 1987), Who's Afraid of Classical Music (Fireside Books, 1989), Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works (Abrams, 1989, revised 1997), and Who's Afraid of Opera? (1994). His novels (all Warner Books), include Exchange Alley (1997), As Time Goes By (a sequel to the film Casablanca, 1998), as well as And All the Saints (2003), winner of the 2004 American Book Award for Fiction.
Meridee E. Williams
CFO, GEOSCIENCE Support Services, Inc.
Ms. Williams, a fifth-generation Californian, is CFO of her family’s ground water consulting business, GEOSCIENCE Support Services, Inc., which locates drinking water supplies for cities and water districts. Raised in Claremont, California and Tehran, Iran, she holds a B.A. in Economics and Psychology from Wellesley College. She received her M.B.A. from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She has also worked for the Boston-based management consulting firm Arthur D. Little, Inc.
In 1997 she fell in love with Russian art and started a collection of Russian Impressionist paintings, which focuses on artists who worked for the Communist government between the 1930s and 1980s. Although these were official artists, her collection is comprised of portraits and landscapes that the artists did in their private time. When asked about her collection, she often replies, “I prefer paintings of people and the countryside and do not own any paintings of Stalin or Lenin. Just as the French Impressionists concentrated on painting the bourgeoisie, the Russians spotlighted the lives of the peasants. And I think the Russians did a spectacular job.”