Sheila Baumgarten | Director

For over 30 years, Sheila has been engaged in not-for-profit and arts management, focusing on fund development and expanding community constituencies for mid-sized organizations. For five years she served as a Program Officer for the Koret Foundation, San Francisco, where her portfolio included the arts, the Jewish community, and capital building projects. In San Francisco, she worked with the Museo ItaloAmericano, A Traveling Jewish Theatre, The New Pickle Circus, the Oakland Symphony Orchestra, and Dance Through Time; in Santa Cruz, with Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Tandy Beal & Company, Temple Beth El, and Santa Cruz Hillel.  She came to non-profit management after a decade of professional service in urban and regional planning including five years with the Santa Cruz County Planning Department.

Sheila’s volunteer participation includes numerous roles in the Jewish community. In Santa Cruz, she was a founding advisor to the Commission on the Status of Women, the Japanese Cultural Fair, and, over the years, served on various committees of the Cultural Council and on the Board of Advisors of the Louden Nelson Community Center. In San Francisco she was on the founding committee for the Bay Area Celebrates National Dance Week and for four years chaired the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee, producing the Committee’s annual awards ceremony, “The Izzies,” for three years. She represented Koret Foundation on the Arts Loan Fund of Northern California Grantmakers, on the steering committee of the Arts Education Funders Collaborative, and on various grants panels.