Sonoma Valley Fund names five new directors

The Sonoma Valley Fund, an affiliate of the Community Foundation Sonoma County, has named five community leaders to its board of directors: Barbara Hughes, Penney Magrane, Valerie Pistole, Mandy Bolling and Richard Dale.

“Each of these new board members brings enormous experience and a wealth of community knowledge to our board, and will be invaluable resources for Sonoma Valley Fund and all of our nonprofit partners”, said Joshua Rymer, Sonoma Valley Fund’s newly elected president.

• Bolling has worked as an environmental activist, journalist and marriage/family therapist. She began her professional career working as the Northern California Campus Coordinator for Earth Day 1990. She then became director of Special Events for Friends of the River, the largest river conservation organization in the west, headquartered in San Francisco. Bolling went on to become editorial coordinator at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. In 2002, she became a licensed marriage and family therapist. As a therapist she has worked with at-risk students in schools throughout Sonoma and Marin Counties, with nonprofit agencies in Sonoma and Marin Counties and in private practice. Currently, Bolling is the senior clinical health educator in the Department of Pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa. She holds a BA from Oberlin College and a master’s in counseling from Sonoma State University. She lives in Glen Ellen with her husband and 8-year-old daughter, Kate, who attends Flowery Elementary School.

• Hughes served Community Foundation Sonoma County as president and chief executive officer from 2009 until her retirement in 2013. Prior to joining the foundation, she advised a range of nonprofit clients on business planning, governance and leadership. Hughes served as the senior vice president and controller at Fireman’s Fund Insurance in Novato. She began her career at South Jersey Savings Bank in New Jersey, where she led the community lender’s credit and compliance operation.

Hughes is a graduate of Rutgers University. Her community involvement includes service on the board of directors for the Center for Responsible Funding in Philadelphia and the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa. She presently serves on the advisory councils for the Jack London State Historic Park and for 10,000 Degrees/Sonoma County. Hughes lives in Sonoma with her husband, Greg.

• Magrane is a custom, residential landscape designer who founded Magrane Associates Landscape Design in 1986 in San Francisco. By fusing her horticultural knowledge with attention to detail, classic design and cutting edge sophistication, she built Magrane Associates from the ground up. Thirty-two years later, Magrane still runs the business, which now has offices in San Francisco and Sonoma, has completed more than 650 projects and has received countless awards.Magrane and her wife of 27 years, Dr. Joan Howley, are fulltime residents of Sonoma. Magrane and Howley have long raised Yorkshire terriers, but have now adopted their first mixed-breed rescue dog, Professor Henry Wiggins.

• Pistole is a principal in the law firm of Walter & Pistole. She was admitted to the Supreme Court of California in 1975 and, prior to moving her practice to Sonoma, she was a trial attorney in civil and felony criminal matters in the nine Superior Courts of the Northern California counties and the Northern and Eastern District Federal Courts of California. She now works primarily in estate planning and business law.

Pistole was commended by the State Bar of California Board of Governors in 1985 and was a co-founder of the Napa Commission on the Status of Women. She was an associate professor in the Management Studies Department of Sonoma State University and a member of the Legislative Committee of the State Bar. She was a host of the radio program “The Resource Network” on KSVY and was a guest columnist for “Legal Matters” for the Sonoma Sun. She is currently a member of the State Bar Committee of Trusts and Estates and the attorney coach for the Sonoma High School Mock Trial team. The Sonoma Valley Hospital Foundation honored Pistole as Woman of Year.

• Dale is executive director of the Sonoma Ecology Center (SEC) and has nearly 30 years of experience in environmental policy and nonprofit management. Dale joins the Sonoma Valley Fund board as the nonprofit partner member.

He cofounded the Sonoma Ecology Center in 1990 and has been director since 1992. In his tenure, SEC has developed into a locally driven, regionally respected agency working through extensive partnerships to conduct technical research, education and restoration to sustain and enhance ecological health at the watershed scale.

Prior to his work with SEC, Dale worked in a national grassroots effort resulting in passage of the Alaska Lands Act, and lectured extensively to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He was recipient of the John Muir Conservation Award in 1997.

He built a unique partnership of local nonprofits to reopen and manage Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Kenwood, and he is a founding member of the North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative, a group of natural resource scientists and managers promoting tools for maintaining the North Bay’s natural heritage in a changing climate. He is a contributor to the Sonoma Index-Tribune.

The Sonoma Valley Fund, an affiliate of the Community Foundation Sonoma County, was created and is managed by respected community leaders to help sustain and improve the Valley’s unique socioeconomic, environmental and cultural qualities for generations to come.

The Sonoma Valley Fund promotes and facilitates local philanthropy and legacy giving by serving as a bridge to the future, helping nonprofits build successful legacy and endowment programs, encouraging estate-planning professionals to discuss Sonoma Valley bequests with their clients, offering prudent investment options for donors and nonprofits, and providing trustworthy, responsible, and thoughtful stewardship of donor gifts.

For additional information, visit sonomavalleyfund.org.

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