Rotary International website

Rotary Club of
San Francisco West

Home  About Us  Calendar  Newsletter  Participate		 Rotary: SERVICE Above Self: Rotary International theme 2005–06

Rotary International   Club History   Past Speakers   Community Service   International Service

1999–2000   2000–01   2001–02   2002–03   2003–04   2004–05   2005–06   2006–07   2007–08   2008–09   2009–10

Speakers 2005–06

Date Speaker, Organization, Topic
July 6, 2005 Ken Lai, President, Rotary Club of San Francisco West
July 13, 2005 Kelli-Ann M. Nakayama, development director, Legal Services for Children (LSC), which provides free legal and social work services to children and youth in order to stabilize their lives and help them realize their full potential. (LSC) was founded in 1975 as one of the first nonprofit law firms in the country dedicated to advancing the rights of youth by providing direct legal representation and social work services. LSC’s goal is to ensure that every child in the San Francisco Bay Area has an opportunity to be raised in a safe environment with equal access to a meaningful education and the services they need to become healthy and productive young adults.
  As development director, Kelli oversees individual, corporate and foundation fundraising at LSC and manages its communications and marketing efforts. Prior to joining LSC in April 2004, Kelli worked at a nonprofit civil rights law firm in Los Angeles with a focus on developing unrestricted funds from individuals, corporations and law firms through special events and targeted campaigns.
July 20, 2005 Roberta Coni, Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar from Rome, studying painting and scuplture at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Ms. Coni has a degree in fine arts, section of Painting from the Fine Arts Accademy in Rome. Her art includes photography, sculpture, and painting, and has been exhibited in Italy, Germany, and France.
July 27, 2005 Peter N Bretan, Jr, MD, member of the Rotary Club of Novato and founder of RotaPlant (Rotary transplants), which does kidney transplants in the Philippines. Dr. Bretan is a urologist with Marin Sonoma Urology Associates. He is a clinical associate professor of urology at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). He received his medical degree from the UCSF School of Medicine in 1980, and then completed his urology residency there, and then completed a research fellowship at UCSF studying The Diagnosis and Imaging of Prostate Cancer. Dr. Bretan has published over 100 scientific articles covering both clinical and original research subjects, which have been the basis of multiple academic awards. He is a full participation member of over 25 medical societies and continues to be an active transplant surgeon (with over 800 renal transplants performed) and has a busy general urology practice with emphasis in urologic (especially renal) oncology, female urology, and reconstructive surgery.
  In February 2005, the Philippine Information Agency wrote about Dr. Bretan’s work in a story titled Fil-Am doc returns on mission of hope.
August 10, 2005 District Governor Holly Axtell.
August 17, 2005 Jenny McNulty and Brian Co, members of the GSE team that went to Mexico in 2005. Ms. McNulty is deputy director of Urban Solutions, a nonprofit economic development corporation that helps neighborhoods attract, retain and grow community-serving and job-creating businesses. Brian Co is an entrepreneur who runs a business he started while on the trip to Mexico, designing and selling souvenirs in Mexico. Also, GSE Team Leader Timoteo Long attended and spoke.
August 24, 2005 Dave McClure, chief executive officer, Hearing Society for the Bay Area, an organization whose goals are to enable deaf and hard-of-hearing people to participate fully within their families, schools, workplaces, and communities; to promote community awareness of the capabilities of people who are hard-of-hearing or deaf; and to create accessible communication environments for all people. The Hearing Society is merging with the San Francisco Hearing and Speech Center to form the Hearing and Speech Center of Northern California.
August 31, 2005 Ken Nim, member, San Francisco Bayview Rotary; program manager, Visitacion Valley Jobs, Education, & Training (VVJET); and resource recovery manager, Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo, & Marin Counties, a nonprofit social enterprise providing job training, vocational counseling, and employment services to individuals with disabilities and other barriers to employment. The talk is about the work of Goodwill Industries; we hope to invite him back at a later date to share with us about VVJET. Ken received a Rotary Club of Fisherman’s Wharf Galileo Student College Scholarship in 1998. With the help of that scholarship, he attended the University of California at Berkeley, and came back to serve the people of San Francisco. Also speaking: Michael Bongiorni, donations marketing associate, Goodwill.
September 14, 2005 Kyoko Watanabe, Rotary ambassadorial scholar from Japan. Born in Kawasaki, she spent parts of her childhood in Korea and China, attending kindergarten in Po-Han, Korea, and middle school in Guangzhou, China. She completed her undergratuate work at Waseda University in Japan, where she also received her MA in English literature in 2002. Then she worked for a year as a part-time English teacher at a private English institute in Japan. In the summer of 2003, she came to San Francisco and enrolled at TESOL (Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages) program at San Francisco State University.
September 21, 2005 Joel Rubinstein, member, Rotary Club of San Francisco West, presenting a slideshow of El Salvador from a May 1997 trip.
September 28, 2005 Damien Raffa, natural resource specialist, Presidio Trust. Topic: Nature in the City: The Presidio’s Role in Conserving San Francisco’s Natural History. How many native species have you seen recently in the city? Though not always obvious, San Francisco is home to remarkable biodiversity. From the California Quail to endangered wildflowers, local conservation efforts are underway to protect this legacy for future generations. Mr. Raffa has been a natural resources specialist for six years with the Presidio Trust. His work focuses on conservation of and education about the living natural heritage within the park. He creates the Presidio Naturalist Almanac and manages the Presidio Trust’s habitat restoration projects, and is in charge of volunteer opportunities.
October 12, 2005 Mike York, past president, Rotary Club of San Francisco West, about his long-time family business, Ocean Sash and Door, located in the North Mission. Ocean Sash and Door manufactures, and sells pre-manufactured, windows and doors. Mike has been a member of the Rotary Club of San Francisco West almost from the beginning, He has served as president three times and is in his third consecutive year as newsletter editor and his second consective year as membership chair.
October 19, 2005 Eric Shapira, past district governor, Rotary District 5150, with a slideshow of his trip to Sri Lanka to deliver water purification equipment in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami.
October 26, 2005 Ken Lai, president, Rotary Club of San Francisco West, and owner, Mr. Hardware, providing quality hardware to the door and window industries over 10 years.
November 2, 2005 Emily Avera, Rotary ambassadorial scholar to South Africa in 2007, sponsored by the Rotary Club of San Francisco West, speaking on bone marrow donation, especially the task of recruiting donors among Asians and other non-European minorities, and those of mixed race.
November 9, 2005 Dr. May Tung, clinical psychologist and founder, Aid for Traumatized Iraqi Children (AFTIC). AFTIC has sent toys and art supplies to traumatized Iraqi children to help them cope with their difficult life and often loss of family due to the war. AFTIC is a joint project of two World Dreams Peace Bridge programs: Aid for Traumatized Children and Post Traumatic Disorder Project (PTSD). World Dreams Peace Bridge is an international grassroots peace group. The idea of helping Iraqi children was set in motion when the invasion of Iraq began. The idea was to send psychologically healing objects to the Iraqi children, items basic in child psychotherapy around the world. Peace Bridge made three shipments to Childhood Voices in Baghdad through volunteers of Voices in the Wilderness before the situation in Iraq became too dangerous.
  Dr. Tung has been a clinical psychologist for forty years. She has practiced in settings including psychiatric hospitals, day treatment centers and clinics; and has worked with persons of all ages and ethnicities. Her specialty is cross-cultural psychology. Most of the time she works with persons whose goal is personal growth, not just a matter of removing symptoms, important as thay may be. Dr. Tung says “The project with Iraqi children is definitely related to my valuing life, that correction to life’s burdens should begin at a young age.” Her presentation includes reading varied Iraqi children’s stories and showing their artwork, some of which can be seen on the PTSD website.
November 30, 2005 Joanna Fritz, Mary Kay Cosmetics, and member, Rotary Club of San Francisco West, speaking on the Mary Kay Cosmetics business.
December 7, 2005 Karen Lam, director, Kai Ming Head Start program. Head Start was developed in 1965 to help break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool children of low income families a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional, and educational needs. Head Start now serves over 800,000 children and families in all 50 states. Kai Ming was established in 1975 to serve the Chinatown, North Beach, Richmond and Sunset communities. Kai Ming contracts with the Grantee Program of San Francisco to provide service to the children and families in 6 centers, including one on Taraval St.
January 11, 2006 Richard Tuck, curator of Playland-Not-at-the-Beach, a unique nonprofit museum commemorating San Francisco’s venerable oceanfront amusement park. From 1928 until 1972, the most popular amusement park in Northern California was on a strip of land along the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco just below the Cliff House. It was affectionately known as Playland-at-the-Beach and was a marvelous place for children and families to spend an inexpensive afternoon or evening enjoying the rides and shows and playing the games of chance. Sadly, in the name of progress the park closed in 1972. East Bay businessman Richard Tuck is developing a family fun museum in El Cerrito called Playland-Not-at-the-Beach as a tribute to the wonderful days of his childhood that he spent at the park. The family fun museum known as Playland will feature many of the antique ride and game mechanisms that were featured at the old Playland. Playland-Not-at-the-Beach will be much more than just a static museum. Visitors will find themselves conducting treasure hunts and solving mysteries as they explore the various regions of the center. Educational sessions will help children develop an appreciation of the past. Arts and crafts classes will help guests explore their creativity.
January 18, 2006 Paul Schwarzbart, past director of La Maison Française at the UC Berkeley Extension and author, Breaking The Silence: Reminiscences of a Hidden Child. Husband, father, respected teacher, survivor of the Holocaust, Paul Schwarzbart was born in Vienna. He fled with his parents to Belgium when Austria was annexed. He and his mother eventually came to the United States, where he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at UC Berkeley. His teaching career spanned 45 years. He has spoken over 200 times in various venues, recounting his life experiences as a hidden child. In 1988 Schwarzbart’s life became the central theme of an award-winning Ken Swartz documentary, SHATTERED DREAMS, A Child of the Holocaust. Of his book, U.C. Davis professor of History David Biale wrote, “In the many, many stories out of the Holocaust, this is surely one of the most uplifting. Paul Schwarzbart’s stirring memoir of how he and many other Jewish boys were saved in a Belgian Catholic school is a testimony to how good can triumph over evil even in the darkest moments of modern history.”
January 25, 2006 Carrie Lee, O.D., member, Rotary Club of San Francisco West and optometrist with Bruce Mebine and Associates, speaking on “Why everyone should visit the eye doctor.”
February 1, 2006 Mark Flegel, District Governor-Elect, Rotary District 5150. Topic: “Why I am a Rotarian — What Rotary does in the world”; featuring a brief video on current Roatary International projects. Mark Flegel is president and CEO of Flegel’s Fine Furniture and Interior Design, a fifty-two–year company with locations in Menlo Park, San Rafael, and soon to be San Ramon. He received a master’s degree in philosophy from USC.
February 8, 2006 Andrew Dimitriou, attorney in private practice, speaking on the U.S. Supreme Court. A San Francisco native, Andrew Dimitriou received his undergraduate degree in rhetoric from U.C. Berkeley, and, like his father, attended law school, receiving his Juris Doctorate and L.L.M. in taxation from the Golden Gate University School of Law. He is admitted before the California Supreme Court, 9th Circuit, and the U.S. Tax Court. He has a strong interest in the law, its development, and how the it and the legal profession impacts and can and cannot effectively resolve societal issues. Mr. Dimitriou has had his own firm since 1997. His firm handles legal matters in the areas of business, business formation, business planning, real estate, buying and selling, probate, asset protection, estate planning, guardianship, taxation, IRS audits, property tax appeals, tax planning, contracts, landlord-tenant, construction defects, and related litigation. He lectures on issues of ethics, tax, estate planning, litigation, and related matters.
February 22, 2006 Dr. D. H. Short, president of the Rotary Club of Pass Christian, Mississippi. Topic: the devastation to the Gulf Coast cities brought about by hurricane Katrina last August. “This is the greatest natural disaster this country has ever experienced,” declared Short. American people are seen with no clothes, no personal belongings, no homes, and living in tents. Pass Christian, in particular, where Short’s home was totally destroyed, looks as though the city had been hit by a bomb. “People are aging in front of my eyes,” added Short, with what he describes as despair, frustration and depression, trying to cope with a calamity akin to what third world countries experience. He has taken it upon himself to travel the United States spearheading a campaign to raise funds to rebuild his city and has created the Rotary Charity Trust Fund with a broad spectrum of construction goals.
  Dr. Short is a 30-year cardiovascular surgeon currently practicing at the Gulf Port Memorial Hospital, Gulf Port Garden Park Medical Center, and the Bay St. Louis Hancock Medical Center. In addition to overseeing the aforementioned Vascular Laboratories, he also is in the prestigious position of Physicians’ Advisor. He graduated from Yale University and received his medical degree from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. One of Dr. Short’s successful entrepreneurial endeavors was the founding, in 1965, (in the midst of great social unrest) of the Augusta (Georgia) County Day School, which enrollment decreed that there be no discrimination of race nor of church/non-church affiliation. The first of its kind created in the south, the Day School is alive and flourishing today.
March 8, 2006 Kenneth Frank, vice president and Astronomy Day coordinator, Astronomical Association of Northern California, the Northern California umbrella agency “club of clubs” for the amateur astronomer community. He is an astronomer, a builder of telescopes, and a leading member of San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers. The presentation will include one or more homemade telescopes, and, weather permitting, the opportunity to use them for viewing the stars and solar system objects. Kenneth Frank became absorbed in astronomy when his son Aeddan was first interested in Star Wars. Ken wanted Aeddan to be involved with something more practical than a sci-fi movie series. What evolved was Kenneth’s growing passion for understanding the night sky and bringing that interest to the public in the form of outreach. Kenneth is a member of the NASA/JPL Saturn Observation Campaign, giving children the opportunity to explore the wonders of our neighboring planets. He is an active San Francisco Amateur Astronomers board member, and he works with the State Park Service on Mt. Tam to provide and preserve the public access to the night sky. He also assists John Dobson with telescope-making classes at the Randall Museum in San Francisco and with Sidewalk Astronomy frequently in the Bay Area. He is a consultant for Scope City in San Francisco, a retailer of telescopes, binoculars, microscopes, and other optical magnification equipment.
March 22, 2006 Ashley Erdman, public relations and fundraising coordinator, Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for child and adult burn survivors and promoting burn prevention education. In 1971 the Ruch Family along with Southern California Firefighters created the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation, named for the Ruch’s daughter, Alisa Ann, who died from her injuries during a backyard barbeque accident. The foundation continues to work in partnership with firefighters, educators, and burn care professionals to develop innovative programs for burn survivors. Champ Camp — summer camp program for burn-injured children ages 5–16 — is the largest burn camp in the country. AARBF is known nationwide for its prevention messages: Stop Drop & Roll and Cool-A-Burn. AARBF also provides general fire safety material for children and adults along with three individual prevention programs aimed at reducing burn injuries.
March 29, 2006 Pedro Rodrigues, Rotary ambassadorial scholar at University of San Francisco sport management master’s program. Pedro comes from Lisbon, Portugal, and is sponsored by Rotary Club of Portela. (Portela is a neighborhood in Lisbon.) Topics: Portugal and Rotary Club of Portela.
April 5, 2006 Steven Lack Ph.D., president-elect, Rotary Club of Pleasant Hill, and special agent, Office of Inspector General (OIG), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), where he has investigated allegations of Medicare fraud since 1985. He has been the case agent on the largest criminal and civil Medicare fraud cases prosecuted in the Northern and Eastern Districts of California, with monies recovered in the past 5 years exceeding $350 million. Lack has been on the faculty of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and instructs new OIG agents on how to conduct Medicare fraud investigations. He was named Special Agent of the Year by the Western Regional Inspector General’s Council, and received the OIG Bronze award as Agent of the Year. His publications include When the Candles Cost More than the Cake: Recommendations for Nursing Home Financing in the 21st Century. He holds a Ph.D. in public administration from Golden Gate University and a M.P.A./B.S. in public administration from USC, has a certificate in health care administration from USC and is a certified fraud examiner.
April 12, 2006 Kristie Fairchild, executive director, North Beach Citizens, and Lucy Quacinella, anti-poverty lawyer working with the Sunset District Neighborhood Coalition. Fairchild and Quacinella are founding members of Outer Richmond and Outer Sunset Neighbors to End Homelessness, newly formed and now collecting names of individuals and organizations interested in addressing homelessness in our neighborhood. Lucy Quacinella is a lawyer specializing in health and social services issues. Her business, Multiforum Advocacy Solutions, works with community-based organizations to develop and implement consumer-driven strategic advocacy plans. She has lived in the Outer Sunset for 6 years and recently started Westside Neighbors to End Homelessness along with others as a volunteer effort.
April 19, 2006 Joanna Fritz, president-elect, leading a club assembly to discuss her year as club president.
April 26, 2006 Yasuko Shinohara, Rotary Ambassadorial scholar from the Takarazuka-Mukogawa Rotary Club in Japan. Ms. Shinohara is studying English literature at San Francisco State University, and plans to return to Japan to teach English. She is currently taking part in the Stitch for Comfort, a project led by the San Francisco Rotaract Club.
May 3, 2006 Ken Solin, speaker, author, facilitator. Ken’s work with men over the past fifteen years has guided them onto a clearly-marked path for resolving their troubling issues to become the men they have always hoped they could be. Ken serves up man-sized portions of the rich stew that he terms collective male wisdom, addressing the lack of a century and a half of traditional father/son lessons. Women immediately grasp the significance of Ken’s message because they struggle to understand the practical nature of appropriate male behavior. Ken knows that men who become better men also become better husbands, fathers, and sons. He doesn’t focus on teaching men lessons, but instead points out the road that leads to their self-discovery. Ken’s technique affords men the independence to work together in sustainable, non-facilitated groups, and to simultaneously to build the kind of lifelong, trust-based friendships that so few men experience.
May 10, 2006 Sarah Groskopf, massage therapist and member, Rotary Club of San Francisco West, speaking on the importance of good nutrition and exercise, and the benefits of massage therapy.
May 17, 2006 Sophal Ear caught our attention with his article One Way Out in the New York Times Magazine in April 2005, which tells the story of Sophal’s mother taking her children out of Cambodia in 1976 under the pretext of repatriation to Vietnam. Sophal Ear, Ph.D., completed his dissertation entitled The Political Economy of Aid, Governance, and Policy-Making: Cambodia in Global, National, and Sectoral Perspectives at the University of California, Berkeley, in April 2006. He is a recognized authority on Cambodia, having published or been cited in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and the San Francisco Examiner. He has been a consultant to the World Bank (1997–2000) and the Asian Development Bank (2001) on issues of social protection and transparency, respectively, and served as an assistant resident pepresentative to the United Nations Development Programme in Timor-Leste (East Timor) in 2002–03. He also holds a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University. His talk will touch on a variety of topics, including the findings of his dissertation and the three years he recently spent in Cambodia doing field research.
May 24, 2006 No Speaker. Club assembly and board meeting.
May 31, 2006 Larry Walters, Rotarian, of the Tropical Hardwood Foundation and Project Palau. Palau is a small island republic north of Indonesia and east of the Philippines. Tropical Hardwood Foundation has currently launching a program for the reforestation of Palau through the development of privately owned teak plantations that will help stabilizing the overall economy of the republic. The program includes a video showing the beauty of the small island of Palau.
June 7, 2006 No Speaker. Club assembly.
June 14, 2006 No Speaker. Club assembly.
June 21, 2006 David Schooley, founder and president, San Bruno Mountain Watch. The members of San Bruno Mountain Watch have been working diligently for over thirty years to help protect and preserve San Bruno Mountain as the largest and richest remaining example of the native Franciscan bioregion. SBMW has given high priority to fighting the San Bruno Mountain "Habitat Conservation Plan" (HCP), which authorizes destruction of endangered species habitat to enable development. Passed in 1982 to address non-federal lands hosting endangered species, this amendment to the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) was first used on San Bruno Mountain and allowed developers to proceed with construction that had been stopped due the presence of such species. In exchange, developers were to dedicate portions of their properties for parks and to restore degraded habitat. This HCP has served as a model for the roughly 500 other HCPs either implemented or in the works in the U.S. Two decades later, clear signs indicate that the HCP amendment to the ESA is not safeguarding endangered species, neither on San Bruno Mountain nor nationwide. David Schooley's presentation includes a slideshow illustrating the natural beauty that has been preserved, and also what has been lost forever.
June 28, 2006 Megan Teixeira, field support provider, Employment Plus, a nonprofit organization that serves the developmentally disabled adults of San Francisco. Established in 1968 to help disabled adults find work and provide assistance while they are employed, Employment Plus provides a job coach to assist clients while on the job to ensure that they are working to the best of their abilities. Megan Teixeira started at Employment Plus as a job coach in 2003 and was promoted to her current position of field support provider later in the year. She has a B.A. in social ecology from University of California, Irvine.

For more information, please contact programs@rotarysfwest.org.