CCA Presidential Search

Past CCA Board Chair / Member of the Executive Committee
President and CEO, Manzanita Management Corporation
Board member since 2004

Diane Christensen is the president of The Christensen Fund, a San Francisco-based private foundation that focuses its support on programs at the interface between natural environments and human cultures in five different regions of the world. She served as executive director of The Christensen Fund from 1988 to 2002. Christensen currently works at Manzanita Management Corporation, a Palo Alto asset management firm. She taught African history and served as an assistant academic dean at Tufts University; later she founded and ran the Christensen Research Institute, a biological research facility in Papua New Guinea.

CCA has been a grantee of The Christensen Fund and CCA's Carmen M. Christensen Production Stage is named in honor of Christensen's mother. Christensen serves on the board of the Wildlife Conservation Society. She’s a member of the Cantor Arts Center Director’s Advisory Board and Stanford University's Humanities and Sciences Council, Arts Initiative (SICA) and Archaeology Council. Christensen completed her undergraduate work at Stanford University and her graduate work at Columbia University in African history.

CCA Board Vice-Chair / Member of the Executive Committee
Founding Partner, Schnitzer West
Board member since 2018

Ken Novack is a founding partner of Schnitzer West, one of the West Coast's leading real estate development firms. Concurrently with founding Schnitzer West, he served as chairman of Schnitzer Steel Industries and Liberty Shipping Group, as well as chairman and CEO of Schnitzer Investment Corp. and Lasco Shipping Co. Novack was also a partner in the law firm Ball, Janik & Novack.

Novack serves on the boards of Bridge Housing, Eisenhower Medical Center, and Festival Napa Valley. He is vice-chair of the board of California Pacific Medical Center and a lifetime trustee at Lewis and Clark College. Novack received a bachelor’s degree from Claremont McKenna College and a JD from the University of Southern California.

Chair of CCA Board Committee on Trustees / Member of the Executive Committee
Institutional Director of Undergraduate & Graduate Medical Education for TPMG, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center
Board member since 2001

Calvin Wheeler is the institutional director of Undergraduate & Graduate Medical Education for TPMG at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. Prior to this appointment, he was physician-in-chief in the Department of Neurology of Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont, California, where he served as regional sub chief of pediatric neurology and director of the Hayward EEG Lab. Wheeler has been with Kaiser Permanente since 1984, when he was hired as a staff pediatrician and neurologist at its Hayward facility. He’s also a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Academy of Neurology.

Wheeler is active in the Bay Area’s medical community, currently working as a clinical instructor at the University of California, San Francisco, in the Department of Pediatrics. Additionally, he serves on the board of directors of the Epilepsy League of the East Bay and the Agency for Infant Development. Wheeler’s also a founding member and past president of the Kaiser African American Professionals Association (KAAPA). Born and raised in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, Wheeler received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy and his MD from the University of California, Irvine. He completed his residency in pediatrics at Boston City Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. He and his wife, Sarajane, own CaSaj Gallery near Jack London Square in downtown Oakland.

Founder & President, Suzanne Randolph Fine Art
Board member since 2021

Suzanne Randolph has been an entrepreneur for more than 30 years, beginning with the creation of her fine art advisory firm, Suzanne Randolph Fine Arts. She has worked within both the private and public sectors: developing art collections for corporations and commissioning public works of art that contribute to the engagement of urban communities. Her expansive knowledge of the visual arts community has enabled her to work with artists of national and international recognition at all stages of their careers. Randolph was a member of the first cohort of CCA’s DMBA program, which was launched in 2008. With the knowledge gained from the critical perspective of design thinking, she created The ALIX Experience to bring together women who travel solo for business and leisure through events and international tours.

Randolph also serves on the board and chairs the Governance and Nominating Committee of the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, which recognizes the exceptional creative talent of high school students across the U.S. through the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

Architectural Photographer
Board member since 2021

Abby Sadin Schnair is an architectural photographer with over 40 years of experience. Her photography has been published in Architect Magazine, Architectural Digest, and Architectural Record. She has exhibited her work at various galleries and museums. After receiving her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Sadin Schnair co-founded the first women-owned professional architectural photography studio in Chicago. For 16 years she photographed architecture and interiors for a national and international clientele. In 1994, Sadin Schnair relocated to San Francisco, where she consulted for the design community in digital imaging. She transitioned from her consulting practice in 2005 to focus full-time on her own fine art photography and community involvement in the arts.

Sadin Schnair was appointed to the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2013, and she continues to serve the commission, including as a member of the Visual Arts and Civic Design Review committees. Sadin Schnair has served on the board of the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) since 2006 and is past chair of the A.C.T. MFA Conservatory board; she recently stepped down and was elected to the Emeritus Board. She and her husband are sponsors of the nonprofit urban planning policy organization SPUR. Past nonprofit leadership includes serving on the boards of Drew School in San Francisco, Mary Meyer School and LaSalle Language Academy in Chicago, and Parent’s Coalition of Bay Area High Schools. She is married to Gene Schnair, an architect, and they have two grown children involved in the arts, a musician and a poet/educator. Sadin Schnair's son and daughter-in-law are alumni of graduate programs at CCA.

Vice Chairman and Lead Independent Director, Poly
Board member since 2021

Marv Tseu has had a long career as an executive across the technology, media, and telecommunications landscapes. A graduate of Stanford University, he began his career at AT&T and spent many years at Plantronics. As an operating executive, he was a key member of the company’s management team, taking the Plantronics private in 1988 and public again in 1994. He was appointed as chairman of the board in 1999 and served in that capacity until 2018 when he assumed the vice chairman role, coincident with the $2 billion acquisition of Polycom. In 2008, Tseu established his own consulting practice, Waypoint Strategy.

Tseu serves on the Fine Arts Museum Foundation Board of Trustees. He and his wife, Mary Mocas (MFA Fine Arts 2016), have been patrons of the San Jose Museum of Art for over 20 years. They also support the Institute of Contemporary Art San José and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. Tseu is a graduate of Stanford University.

Senior Vice President, Advancement

Susan Avila is a career non-profit leadership professional with over twenty-five years of experience in the San Francisco Bay Area. She specializes in creating and managing comprehensive development and outreach programs that engage target audiences and ensure the overall financial health of arts and education organizations. She joined California College of the Arts as Vice President for Advancement in 2000, helped lead the school as Interim Co-President during 2007, and was promoted to Senior Vice President in 2008. Her portfolio of responsibilities includes fundraising, marketing/communications, alumni engagement, and industry partnerships. During her tenure the number of CCA donors increased by 350%, the college undertook a successful Centennial Campaign raising $27.5 million, and is now is the quiet phase of its largest fundraising effort to-date to support creation of a new San Francisco campus. Ms. Avila served as Director of Development at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1998 to 2000. Prior she’d served as: Associate Vice President, Development at California College of Arts and Crafts; Manager of Government, Foundation, and Corporate Support at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; and Fund Development and Market Research Associate at Harder+Kibbe Research. She holds a B.A. in History from the University of California, Berkeley and a Masters in Non-Profit Administration from the University of San Francisco. She’s served on numerous accreditation committees for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. She received the Smithsonian Institution Award for Museum Leadership and the Girl’s Inc. of Alameda County Woman of Distinction award.

Vice President of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging

Tricia Brand has a 20+ year higher education career, with a focus on student success, equity, diversity, and inclusion. She joined the California College of the Arts in 2022 as the inaugural VP of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. Her leadership is informed by theories of social transformation through narrative change and data-informed design for equity-conscious leadership.

Prior to joining CCA, Tricia served as Portland Community College’s (PCC) Chief Diversity Officer and Interim Dean of Student Development. She has also served as a senior-level administrator at small colleges and large research universities–supporting persistently marginalized students and engaging college equity and diversity strategies at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR and the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ.

Tricia currently serves as a senior leadership mentor for the AICAD BIPOC Academic Leadership Institute and is a trained facilitator for the American Council on Education (ACE) Learning Circle on Shared Equity Leadership. She also participates in the National Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) and the Northern California chapter. She has also been a regional board member for the National Association for Student Affairs Administrators (NASPA) and the Gender Advocacy and Inclusion Network in Higher Education (GAIN).

Faculty Senate President / Chair, Graphic Design Program

Rachel Berger is the chair of graphic design at California College of the Arts. She has held that role since 2014 and has taught in CCA’s BFA graphic design and MFA design programs since 2010.

As chair, Berger’s primary focus has been on developing innovative curriculum and championing diversity, equity, and inclusion. She is project director of Studio Forward, a multi-disciplinary studio course exploring the future of belonging, with sponsorship from Google. She is also a co-founder of CCA’s Decolonial School, an interdisciplinary cohort of CCA faculty committed to building a new curricular model for art and design education that foregrounds Indigenous practices and acknowledges decolonization as a continuous process.

In her creative practice, Berger investigates the relationship between design and culture through writing, self-initiated projects, and freelance work with non-profit organizations. In 2021, Berger received a Berkeley Civic Arts Commission grant to work with middle school students to explore the past, present, and possible futures for the city of Berkeley. Her recent project, Shooter Box, a multi-disciplinary investigation of the U.S. military’s use of Microsoft Xbox controllers as battle equipment, was featured in Forbes and Boing Boing. Berger’s book A Toolkit for Gathering was published by Art Practical in 2020. Berger’s writing on design, culture, and education has been published by MIT Press, Bloomsbury, and Chronicle Books.

Faculty Senate President / Chair, Graphic Design Program
Dean, Humanities and Sciences Division

TT Takemoto is the dean of Humanities & Sciences at California College of the Arts where they have taught in History of Art and Visual Culture, graduate Fine Arts, graduate Visual & Critical Studies and the college-wide curriculum since 2003. Takemoto has held key leadership positions at CCA including serving as chair of the Appointments, Promotions and Tenure Committee, where they did important collaborative work on promotions policy and process.

Takemoto is a visual studies scholar and artist whose work explores issues of race, queer identity, memory, and grief. Takemoto's current artwork and research explores same-sex intimacy and queer sexuality of Japanese Americans incarcerated by the US government during World War II. Takemoto has received grants and fellowships from the Mike Kelley Foundation, Lucas Artist Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Center, the Fleishhacker Foundation, Art Matters, ArtPlace +LAB Artist Residency, James Irvine Foundation, and San Francisco Arts Commission.

Takemoto's work has been exhibited and performed at Asian Art Museum, de Young Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, GLBT History Museum, Sabina Lee Gallery, Sesnon Gallery, SF Camerawork, SOMArts, SFMOMA, and the Vargas Museum. Takemoto was awarded Grand Jury Prize for Best Experimental Film at Slamdance and Best Experimental Film Jury Award at Austin LGBT Film Festival. Other screenings include Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, BFI Flare, CAAMfest, Frameline, MIX Milano, MIX NYC, Outfest, Hamburg Queer Film Festival, MIX Mexico, and Rio Gay Film Festival.

Takemoto's articles appear in Afterimage, Art Journal, Hyphen Magazine, Performance Research, Radical Teacher, Theatre Survey, Women and Performance, and the anthologies Queering Asian American Art, Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories and Thinking Through the Skin. Takemoto serves on the board of Queer Cultural Center and is co-founder of Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts.

Takemoto's teaching interests include contemporary art, visual culture, performance art, Asian American visual culture, queer art and theory, postcolonial studies, and theories of illness, trauma, and grief.

BA, University of California, Berkeley; MFA, Rutgers State University of New Jersey; MA, PhD, University of Rochester.

Director, President’s Office

Adriana Lopez Lobovits is the director of the president’s office at California College of the Arts (CCA) where she partners with senior leadership and the board of trustees on institutional initiatives. She is a member of the college’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Task Force, which supports critical DEIB projects across the college. She has worked in the arts and education for over a decade working in both higher education and non-profits. Before joining CCA in 2016, Adriana served as the manager of programming, development, & community outreach and interim executive director at the Mexican Museum in San Francisco.

BA, University of Florida; MA, New York University; EdD Candidate, San Francisco State University

Managing Director-Private Wealth Advisor, Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management Group
Board member since 2001

Lorna Meyer Calas is a managing director-private wealth advisor with Merrill Lynch’s prestigious Private Wealth Management Group in San Francisco. She joined Merrill in 2001 to provide comprehensive wealth management services to executives, venture investors, and ultra-high-net-worth families. Calas has 45 years of experience in the financial services industry and oversees a group of seven experienced professionals with more than $3 billion under management.

Prior to joining Merrill, Calas was a managing director at Hambrecht & Quist (now JP Morgan) and Alex. Brown and Sons, currently a division of Raymond James. During her fifteen-year career at Alex. Brown, Calas worked closely with the investment banking team to help establish Alex. Brown’s highly acclaimed Corporate and Executive Services Group. In conjunction with this work, Calas developed the first Cashless Stock Option Exercise Plans for Silicon Valley corporations. This business model provided a unique service to some of the most important technology companies that had recently completed initial public offerings (IPO’s). These programs were directly responsible for raising billions of dollars for the wealth management division of Alex. Brown.

Forbes has recognized Calas as one of the top 250 wealth advisors in the nation and one of the top 25 women wealth advisors nationwide. Barron’s also has recognized Calas for many years as one of the nation’s leading financial advisors, ranking her among the top 25 advisors in California and top 10 woman advisors nationwide. Additionally, San Francisco Business Times has named Calas the number one “Woman Wealth Advisor” in the Bay Area and honored her as one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business.”

Lorna Meyer Calas is dedicated to philanthropic work in both the arts and higher education. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for over 20 years and is currently the president of the Foundation of the Fine Arts Museums (DeYoung and Legion of Honor).

In addition, Calas is the co-chair of the advisory board of the newly founded Manetti-Shrem Museum at U.C. Davis. The museum program highlights the university’s legacy artists, including internationally acclaimed artist Wayne Thiebaud.

Calas is co-founder and president of the San Francisco Advocacy for the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). The Advocacy is a support group for the museum serving Northern California. NMWA is located in Washington, D.C., and she serves on the museum’s advisory board.

Director, Rotasa Foundation
Board member since 2006

Susan Cummins is director of the Rotasa Foundation, which supports exhibitions and publications of the work of contemporary jewelry artists. She owned the Susan Cummins Gallery in Marin County for 18 years and helped found Art Jewelry Forum, a national nonprofit organization, in 1997.

In past years, Cummins was on the board of the Headlands Center for the Arts, The Grabhorn Institute, and the American Craft Council (ACC). As a board member of ACC, she helped develop two conferences, Shaping the Future of Craft and Creating a New Craft Culture. Cummins is currently the board chair of Art Jewelry Forum.

Advisory Director, Morgan Stanley, and Honorary Chairman, Morgan Stanley, Asia
Board member since 2011

Jack Wadsworth spent the first decades of his career with Morgan Stanley and was based in the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong. During his years with the company, he organized its first leveraged buyout fund and served as a member of the investment committee. He also initiated its high-tech IPO business with the Apple IPO. Wadsworth is founder and chairman of Manitou Ventures and Ceyuan Ventures; former director of Pixar Animation Studios and Shinsei Bank; advisory director of Morgan Stanley; and honorary chairman of Morgan Stanley, Asia.

Wadsworth and his wife, Susy, donate generously to numerous museums and educational institutions, many of which are dedicated to cultural exchange with Asia. He is CIO of the W.L.S. Spencer Foundation, which funds educational and creative cultural activities all over the world. Wadsworth is trustee emeritus of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Foundation, the Asia Society, and Williams College. Wadsworth holds a bachelor’s degree from Williams College and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Founder and Managing Director, Baccharis Capital Inc.
Board member since 2005

Noel Perry is the founder and managing director of Baccharis Capital Inc., a private venture capital firm in Menlo Park. He’s a founding director and former vice-chair of Conservation International and the founder of Next 10, a nonpartisan organization working at the intersection of the economy and the environment to educate and empower Californians.

Perry is the founder of 100 Families Oakland, a neighborhood social-change art project that ran programs in partnership with CCA’s Center for Art and Public Life. He also developed the California Initiative at CCA, a three-year program aimed at confronting the major challenges facing Californians over the next 20 years. He served as chair of the CCA Board of Trustees from 2009 to 2013 and is also an artist.

A confidential search means that to attract the strongest candidates, individual names will not be made publicly available throughout the process. Members of the Search Committee have committed to maintaining confidentiality and will not be able to comment publicly on the search.

The reason for a confidential search is to attract the strongest candidates with the most experience who currently hold senior leadership roles. Preserving confidentiality allows prospective candidates to explore the opportunity and pursue the presidency without risk of compromising their current positions.

Internal candidates are welcome to apply for the position and will participate in the same thorough evaluation process as external candidates. Isaacson, Miller, our search firm partner, has provided a process for the submission of individuals who may be considered as candidates. If you feel someone from our internal community is a strong candidate, you can also submit nominations online.

The identification of potential candidates, initial outreach and vetting, exchange of documents and information, and official interviews will be conducted by our search firm partner Isaacson, Miller.

The CCA Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees will ultimately select the next president. The Search Committee will review qualified candidates, conduct extensive in-person interviews, and then recommend the strongest and best qualified candidate(s) to the Executive Committee.

It is anticipated that the process for selecting the next president of California College of the Arts will take several months. The goal is to have a new president identified and announced by the fall of 2023.

This will be determined once a new president has been designated

Thank you to those who have already participated in the in-person community listening sessions or the online community survey. We continue to welcome input at our online community survey, which will be shared with the Search Committee. You can access the survey online.

The search committee will begin their initial review of candidate information in the summer. In late summer/early fall, the Search Committee plans to conduct interviews with the semi-finalist candidates. Soon after, the Executive Committee will meet with and interview the finalist candidates. The selection of the next President of California College of the Arts will occur in the fall.

The CCA community will be kept informed through periodic email updates from the chair of the Search Committee, Diane Christensen.