Carlos Carrera
chair
Carlos moved from the San Diego area to Santa Rosa in 2008 to continue his criminal defense investigator career at the Office of the Sonoma County Public Defender. He has been a Healdsburg resident for over nine years. Carlos has served for multiple years as a board member of the California Defense Investigators Association and also as an instructor in his profession. He also volunteers as a reading tutor for primary school students in the United Way Schools of Hope Program year after year. Carlos commenced community volunteering as an adult by participating in the Big Brother program while in his first year of college. He strongly believes that through unity and local service to the underserved, we can all gain the genuine satisfaction that this delivers and also, celebrate the great results that stem from sprout to flourish due to our active involvement.
Georgina Calderon
Vice Chair
Georgina Calderon is a board-certified Emergency Medicine physician born and raised in El Salvador. She completed her undergraduate education at Williams College, medical education at the University of California, San Francisco and earned her Masters in Public Health from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Outside of her clinical roles, her work has focused on health systems strengthening and capacity building and has worked in a number of settings, including Rwanda, Syria, Micronesia, Liberia, Honduras and the Palestinian Territories. Currently, she is faculty at the Ukiah Valley Family Medicine residency program and also serves on the Board of Directors of the Sonoma-Mendocino-Lake County Medical Association.
She has lived in Healdsburg since 2017 with her husband and two children.
Kevin Deas
Treasurer
Kevin Deas was born and raised in Healdsburg and part of a family that has been in town since his great grandfather. Kevin briefly left Healdsburg to attend college in New Orleans before returning to work for his family’s business EandM, where he serves as the Facilities Manager for the company. Kevin’s role includes construction project management and he is currently pursuing a MS in Construction Management through a distance program at Louisiana State University. Kevin’s desire to serve stems from his experience in the bilingual program from kindergarten through the sixth grade in the Healdsburg public schools, which provided him the opportunity to meet kids from all walks of life and to forge relationships that would carry through until today. In the years during and after this bilingual program, Kevin became aware of "gaps" in the community. He wants to help bridge those gaps in our community and Corazón offers a place, a structure, and a community that wants to do the same.
Bridget Doherty
Secretary
Bridget Doherty is the driving force behind Encore Events Rentals as the managing co-owner and serving as its President. After graduating from University of Southern California in 2000, Bridget took over the family business. What began in Petaluma was soon expanded as Bridget was eager to grow the inventory and services offered. Her ambition resulted in Encore’s largest showroom and warehouse, currently operating out of Healdsburg and serving as Bridget’s primary location since 2010.
On top of managing Encore Events Rentals, Bridget is also co-owner of Cal-West Rentals and is a former member of the Board of Directors for Summit State Bank, as the first woman appointed to the bank's board. Bridget will tell you that she’s all about teamwork and supporting her community. When she’s not busy engaging in both, you can bet she’s out enjoying a favorite local eatery with a glass of bubbly alongside good friends or seizing an opportunity to continue her travels around the globe.
Ariel Kelley
Ariel has been a member of the Healdsburg City Council since 2020 and is the current mayor. In the aftermath of the 2017 Tubbs fire, Ariel founded the Healdsburg Free Store, providing much-needed items to individuals and families. In recognition of this work, Ariel and other community leaders were awarded a $1 million prize from the Ellen show, which they used to create the Kinder2College Fund. She previously served as a Sonoma County Planning Commissioner and Healdsburg Parks and Recreation Commissioner. An attorney by training, Ariel holds both a law degree and MBA. Ariel was thee founding board chair of Corazón Healdsburg and previously served as the organization's interim CEO.
Ashley Mauritson
Ashley Mauritson lives in Healdsburg with her husband Cameron and three children, who are seventh-generation Healdsburg residents. Ashley owns her own event planning business based in Healdsburg and is involved in several local organizations. Ashley received her BS in Communication from the University of California at Santa Barbara. While in college Ashley studied abroad in Siena Italy. In Italy, Ashley participated in a local ESL program teaching English to local Italian students.
Cynthia Boaz
Cynthia Boaz moved to Healdsburg in 2008, although her family has roots in the area that go back to the 1970s (her father was the original proprietor of Spoke Folk Cyclery.) She is professor of political science at Sonoma State University, where she currently is in her 15th year on the faculty. Prior to that, Professor Boaz was on the faculty at State University of New York and University of San Francisco. She earned her Ph. D from UC Davis. Boaz’s areas of specialty in political science include gender, reproductive rights, civil resistance and nonviolent struggle, political communication and media, and the politics of science fiction. She also is an affiliated scholar with the UNESCO-sponsored graduate program in Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Castellon, Spain. She served for 15 years on the academic advisory council of the Washington DC-based International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and has spoken all over the world on civil resistance, including Australia, India, Spain, Canada, and Chile.
Jaime Licea
Katie Olsen
Katie Olsen is a Central Valley native and moved to Healdsburg in 2017 after completing college at Fresno State. Katie has worked in the accounting field since 2014 and obtained her CPA license in 2019. She currently works as a Consulting Senior Manager at Moss Adams specializing in outsourced accounting and business tax preparation services in the commercial, life sciences, development, and industrial real estate industries. Katie is known for her expertise in supporting complex real estate transactions across the United States including acquisitions, dispositions, and management of the ongoing accounting operations of properties in various stages of development. She combines her desire to help people and passion for accounting to provide the utmost service to her team and clients.
Leigh Stokes
Leigh is a native of Northern California. She graduated from University of Virginia, then went on to receive an MBA at Northwestern University after working for a nonprofit in Washington DC for several years. She worked as a consumer strategist for Bank of America in San Francisco, Citibank in Belgium, Banc One in Chicago and Bank of America again in Seattle over the course of nearly two decades before leaving that profession. Subsequently, she became a volunteer advocate for education funding and programming in the State of Washington, leading two nonprofit boards and joining several advocacy campaigns for legal reforms and funding.
In 2015, she received a Culinary Arts degree from Seattle Culinary Academy, having finally decided to pursue a lifelong passion for food and cooking. She moved full time to Healdsburg in 2015 and began working at Healdsburg SHED, first as a prep cook, then as a line cook, until SHED closed in 2019.
She now cooks as a volunteer for the Redwood Empire Food Bank.
She lives in Healdsburg with her husband, Tom Gerlach. They have two sons, John and Will. John is pursuing a medical degree at the University of Michigan, and Will is a musician in Los Angeles.
Marci Ellison
Marci Ellison, is a native of Santa Monica, California and has lived in San Francisco while working for the fashion company Esprit de Corps. After her time with Esprit, Marci moved to Southern Chile where she designed and renovated buildings and ranches associated with the largest private land conservation effort in South America. She moved to Healdsburg with her husband in 1996, had a daughter, and started a design/build construction business. In that profession, she works side by side on a daily basis with many members of the Latino community. She has supported Corazón from its beginning in many ways including the design and renovation of the Corazón office.
Tom Gore
Tom Gore was born and raised in Sonoma County, specifically in Healdsburg, Cloverdale, and Santa Rosa. He is the Director of Sonoma Vineyards for Constellation Brands, where he farms 1,500 acres of wine grapes all over Sonoma County and farms his own vineyards in Hopland and Ukiah. Tom has worked in vineyards for most of his life and is fluent in Spanish. He is passionate about the bridges that are built through Corazón with our diverse community members. Tom is a product of Sonoma County Public Schools and attended Cal Poly University.
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