Current Board Members
Edward Hunter, PhD, President, is a technologist and serial entrepreneur with a strong background in building and managing technology companies. Currently, he is a managing partner of Hunter Mikic Callaway, LLC, a research and development consulting firm specializing in software engineering and image analysis technology for the drug discovery industry. Dr. Hunter also co-founded Vala Sciences in 2004 and Q3DM in 1999. He is the coauthor of many scientific papers and patents, and has been principal investigator for National Institutes of Health research commercialization grants. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from UCSD where he worked on machine vision and human motion capture systems. Dr. Hunter has been on the Board since 2004.
Stephen Silverman, Vice President, is Director of Planning for the architectural / planning firm of M.W. Steele Group. He has been a land use and policy planner since 1971, working with both the public and private sectors. He is also the Director of the San Diego Section of the American Planning Association and Vice President for Public Information for the California Chapter of the American Planning Association. Mr. Silverman is a long-term Board Member of the National Council for Conflict Resolution. He teaches planning at UCSD Extension and is a trained mediator. Mr. Silverman is the Chair of the Facility Committee and joined the Board in 2007.
Ed Koijane, Treasurer, is a Senior Tax Manager for Ernst & Young. He is a Certified Public Accountant with a BS in Accounting from Pepperdine University and has partially completed his Masters in Taxation from Portland State University. Mr. Koijane has 14 years experience with big four public accounting and previously served two years as Tax Director and Corporate Controller for an educational software company. He has studied for one year in Heidelberg, Germany and spent 2 years in Sydney, Australia, managing the US Tax Desk for Deloitte. Mr. Koijane is the Chair of the Finance Committee and has been on the Board since 2004.
Barbara Measelle, Secretary, earned her BA from the University of Michigan and taught secondary English in Michigan, Illinois and Rhode Island. Upon earning a Masters in Counseling from Rhode Island College, she taught there in a combined counseling/sociology program for ten years. Her experience in the nonprofit sector, includes several years as an administrator for the International House at Brown University and as manager of two major city festivals in Providence. She joined the corporate world as a trainer and organizational development specialist for the Navy Exchange, a worldwide retail organization. Ms. Measelle joined the Sushi Board in 2003 and is a member of the Nominating Committee.
Vernon Franck owns Metropolitan Mapping, a Land Surveying practice which focuses on development projects that enhance the core metropolitan communities of San Diego. He is a devout city-dweller and advocate of revitalizing San Diego's urban neighborhoods and is a member of the Greater North Park Community Association Urban Design/Project Review Committee. His advocacy of arts and culture includes serving on the AIA Orchids & Onions design awards committee and as an advisor to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego's monthly TNT event. Mr. Franck is the past President and joined the Sushi Board in 2003.
Michael Horvat is a development professional with UC San Diego. For the past 12 years, he has worked with leading nonprofit and public agencies, including The San Diego LGBT Community Center, The Literacy Network of Greater Los Angeles, and the Corporation for National Service’s AmeriCorps Programs. Mr. Horvat was raised in Western Canada, and received a BA from the University of Calgary and an MA from Chapman University. He is an active member of the International Association for Volunteer Effort and Association of Fundraising Professionals. His volunteer work includes ESL tutoring and HIV/AIDS prevention education. Mr. Horvat is the Chair of Development Committee and has been a Board Member since 2006.
Zlatan Vukosavljevic is a sculptor and installation artist. Born in Serbia, he studied architecture in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He has collaborated with Los Angeles artist Jason Rhoades and Franz West at the Kunsthause, Graz. Mr. Vukosavljevic, Franz West, and Heimo Zobernig created the installation Studiolo during the Venice Biennale 2005, which was presented by Thrust Projects, New York. He was Production Manager for inSITE 2005 and 2000. His recent residencies include the MAK Center for Art And architecture, Los Angeles (2004) and Quartier 21, Museums Quartier, Vienna (2006). His San Diego projects include installations for the Children’s Museum and the Flux Gallery. Mr. Vukosavjevic has been a Board Member since 2006.
Honorary Board Members
Guillermo Gomez-Pena an interdisciplinary artist/writer was born in Mexico City. He came to the US in 1978, exploring cross-cultural issues with the use of performance, multilingual poetry, journalism, video, radio, and installation art. Mr. Gomez-Pena is the recipient of a 1991 MacArthur Fellowship and a 1989 Bessie Award; his work has been featured at the 1992 Sydney Biennale, as well as the 1993 Whitney Biennale and the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. He was founding member of the Border Arts Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo, a contributor to the national radio program Crossroads, and the editor of the experimental arts magazine The Broken Line/La Lunea Quebrada. Mr. Gomez-Pena has a rich history with Sushi performing in seven shows since 1985, most recently in 2006. Sushi co-produced his award-winning video Border Brujo in 1990, filmed at the original Eighth Avenue Sushi space. pochanostra.com
Rhodessa Jones is Co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco acclaimed performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is an actress, teacher, singer, and writer. She has been honored with an Honorary Doctorate Degree from California College of the Arts and awarded the “GOLDIE Lifetime Achievement Award" presented by the San Francisco Bay Guardian; the Non-Profit Arts Excellence Award by the San Francisco Business Arts Council; the Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theater; and honored as Working Woman of the Year by the Working Women's Theater Festival. Ms. Jones creates autobiographical and provocative material that integrates inter-disciplinary performance utilizing film, comedy, theater and movement. As an actress she was featured in Eve Ensler's award hit play, "The Vagina Monologues” and as a writer, her film collaboration "We Just Telling Stories" won "Best Documentary" at the San Francisco Black Film Festival. This all parallels the release of a book on her work Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and the Theater for Incarcerated Women by author Rena Fraden, Ph.D. Ms. Jones has graced Sushi’s stages on many occasions beginning in 1983. culturalodyssey.org
Bonnie Wright is the Executive Director of Henceforth Records, which she founded in 2004. Based in New York City, Henceforth produces CDs by international soloists and groups whose vision crosses the boundaries and expands definitions of improvisational, electronic, experimental, and contemporary classical music. From1995 to 2002, she founded and directed Spruce Street Forum in San Diego, which presented interdisciplinary/ multicultural art exhibits; musical programs featuring jazz, improvisation and contemporary classical music; and forums discussing social and cultural issues. In 2004, she collaborated with the San Diego Museum of Art in presenting Spruce Street Forum's Fresh Sound Concert Series. Ms. Wright was recognized in 1997 and 1998, as "An Outstanding Woman of the Year" by Women Together, a coalition of Catholic Charities, Episcopal Community Services, and the YWCA. She received her BA in Music and is finishing her Master's Degree in Literature with a focus on Cultural Theory, from UCSD. She served as a Board Member for Sushi (1987-1993), UCSD Friends of the Library, Teknica Radica, UCSD Friends of Music, and Theatre Artaud, San Francisco. henceforthrecords.com
Sushi Staff Members
Lynn Schuette, Executive Director, is an artist and arts administrator. Ms. Schuette, who has returned to Sushi as its interim executive director, is the founder and former executive director of Sushi Performance and Visual Art, (1980-1995); the former associate director of Veve, a critical hours art program for youth, which she co-founded with Margaret Porter Troupe, (1998-2001); and served as the assistant director of Community Arts of San Diego (1978-1980). Ms. Schuette is best known for introducing nationally acclaimed performance and dance artists to the San Diego community including Karen Finley, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Tim Miller, Rachel Rosenthal, Holly Hughes, Joe Goode Performance Group and the Black Choreographers Moving project. Ms. Schuette served as a grant panelist and site evaluator for the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council from 1984 to 2001 and served on the boards of the National Association of Artists Organizations (NAAO) and the National Performance Network (NPN). She was named “Woman of the Year” (in the Arts) by the Women’s Times Newspaper in 1992. lynnschuette.com
Frances V. Carrillo, Business Manager has been an arts administrator for the last 14 years working with arts organizations and school districts in Southern California. She has a BA from University of California, Irvine in Art History where she worked with Guillermo Gomez-Pena on Year of the White Tiger. Ms. Carrillo received her MBA from Pepperdine University with a focus on nonprofit management. Her consulting work includes Performing Tree, San Diego Arts Education Partnership, San Diego Performing Arts League, and the SD County Office of Education's Visual and Performing Arts Department. She has served on panels for the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, and the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. Ms. Carrillo is currently an arts commissioner for the City of Carlsbad and an Executive Committee Board member and Treasurer of the California Alliance for Arts Education, a statewide advocacy organization.
Geronimo Omabtang, Technical Director, has worked for Sushi since 2002.
Allyson Green, New Wave Showcase Coordinator, is a choreographer and visual artist who grew up on the border of Mexico, in El Paso, Texas. She received a BFA cum laude in Visual Art (with Dance minor) from Washington University, St. Louis and she received her MFA in Choreography from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 2001. Based in New York from 1986-2001, she performed with the companies of Yoshiko Chuma SOHK, Charles Moulton, and Doug Varone. Her company, Allyson Green Dance, has been presented to critical acclaim in Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, France, Hungary, Macedonia, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Venezuela, and throughout the United States. In July 2003, she joined the faculty of UCSD’s Theatre and Dance Program where she is currently the head of Dance. Ms. Green was the interim Artistic Director of Sushi Performance and Visual Art from 2003-2005 and was named one of the top four arts leaders in San Diego in 2004 by the San Diego Union Tribune. allysongreendance.com
Liam Clancy, 4x4 Coordinator is an Assistant Professor in the UCSD Theatre & Dance Department and holds an MFA in choreography from the University of California, Los Angeles. He began his career in New York City dancing in Elizabeth Streb’s Ringside Company. While with Streb he participated in the PopAction National Tour performing in venues that included the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The Wexner Arts Center in Columbus Ohio, and the Joyce Theater in New York City. In 1998 he began creating his own hybrid style that blends contemporary American dance and theater with elements of vaudeville and circus to explore issues of identity, culture, humor and survival. His work has been presented at the New York International Fringe Festival, HERE Arts Center, Dance Theater Workshop, REDCAT Theater at Walt Disney Hall, Highways Performance Space, The Hammer Museum and Sushi Performance & Visual Art. liamclancy.net
Michelle Jimmink, PWYC Coordinator, holds an MBA in Business from California State University, San Marcos (2006) and received a BA in Linguistics from UCSD. In the healthcare technology field, she was an Advanced Research Linguist/Technical Lead for A-Life Medical, Inc. She currently teaches Pilates and was the Program Director for Gymnastics & Dance at UCSD Recreation from 2004-2006. Her language skills include Domain Language Specialization in Emergency Medicine and Radiology and she is fluent in Spanish, Vietnamese, Modern Standard Arabic, and American Sign Language.
Holly Jones, Cinema Lounge Coordinator, is the owner of Citizen Video located in the hub of South Park, which rents and sells the best in foreign and independent film including the auteurs of cinema to classic lowbrows such as Plan 9. The selection of films at Citizen Video is primarily DVD-based and contains many Criterion Collection releases. In addition to film rental, Citizen Video is San Diego's premiere source for information on original voices in film. At www.citizen-video.com, cinephiles can search the Citizen Video catalog for films and reviews, view trailers for the best upcoming titles, read interviews from new and emerging directors, and purchase locally-made and independent film-related goods. Ms. Jones is also a free-lance graphic designer. citizen-video.com