New Sonoma Community Center director settles in

“I’m officially on the job, and I’m even going to my first board meeting today,” laughs John Tamiazzo, the new executive director of the Sonoma Community Center.

Arriving early at his new office, the newcomer jokes about his confusion with the center’s phone system, but expects to have it sorted out long before his first working session with the SCC board.

Says Tamiazzo, “I’m looking forward to learning about exactly what’s on my plate for the future. And from what I’ve seen, I certainly expect it to be a pretty full one.”

Tamiazzo, most recently from Sedona, Arizona, was officially introduced to the community at a reception Tuesday evening, at which outgoing Executive Director Toni Castrone was honored for her eight years of service.

“It was good to meet so many members of the community,” Tamiazzo says. “This is clearly a community that cares deeply about this center.”

In Arizona, Tamiazzo was the executive director of the Sedona Community Center, roughly similar in size and scope of services to the Sonoma Community Center.

The major difference, he says, is the Sedona center’s operation of a Meals on Wheels program and other public food services. Like Sonoma, however, the Arizona facility also offered a number of arts programs, though not on the same scale, Tamiazzo points out, as what is offered here.

“There are definitely more expanded arts programs in Sonoma,” he acknowledges. “We have ceramics, fiber arts, and things like that. Sedona did have some programs like that, but far fewer.”

The size of the Sonoma facility, too, is impressive, Tamiazzo remarks.

“This is a big facility,” he says. “It’s over 33,000-square-feet. There are classrooms upstairs, downstairs, and out in the barn area across the parking lot.”

Previous to his years in Arizona, Tamiazzo lived for 25 years in Santa Barbara, serving as executive director of Jodi House Traumatic Head and Brain Injury, then the Educational Kinesiology Foundation.

A native Californian, Tamiazzo says he considers his four-and-a-half-year stint in the high desert as just a “geographical tangent.”

“Sedona is a very beautiful place,” he says, “but I have to say it’s nice to be back in California.”

During his time in Arizona, Tamiazzo wrote a weekly column for the Red Rock Times, telling inspiring stories of folks using diet and health practices to transform their lives.

“My columns had a pretty huge following,” he says, adding that he’d love to incorporate some writing programs into the offerings of the Sonoma Community Center.

“We had a couple of book clubs in Sedona,” he says. “We had some writing groups and classes, which we don’t have here right now. But I think writing and journaling are fundamental to life.”

To that end, Tamiazzo is the author of two self-help books, “Love & Be Loved: a How-To Book,” and “Returning to the Land of Oz: Finding Love. Hope and Courage on Your Yellow Brick Road.”

In his first eight days on the new job, Tamiazzo says, he’s primarily been familiarizing himself with the facility, its staff, and the Sonoma Community Center’s various programs and renters.

“I’ve really been enjoying getting to meet everyone,” he says, “finding out what the staff sees as possible changes or improvements for the future. This is a very experienced staff, and many of the renters and teachers and others who have programs here are just incredibly committed to the community and the people who visit the center.”

As for the future for the center, Tamiazzo points to last year’s hiring of a new ceramics department director.

“So that’s a program that will very definitely be continuing to expand and grow,” he says. “My hope is that, as I settle in here, the community will feel free to drop by and meet me, and check out the center while they’re at it.”

“If there are people who’ve never been to a program here, or taken a class, or seen a play, then we’d like to give them a tour and show them everything that is going on here,” he added.

Email David at david.templeton@sonomanews.com