People: Board of Directors

The following people comprise the Destiny Arts Board of Directors. The wide variety of backgrounds and skills they bring are critical to our program’s successes.

Erica Webber, President
Ms. Erica Webber is a Senior Managing Consultant in the IBM Public Sector Financial Management practice area. She has more than 8 years of financial management and leadership experience in the higher education industry and 3 years of prior consulting experience at Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Prior to joining IBM, Ms. Webber served as Assistant Controller for the University of California San Francisco, where she was responsible for $800M in sponsored project funding. Erica is the founding director of the IBM Kuali Center of Excellence, where she is building a development environment, knowledge repository, and training facility for IBM clients.
Erica’s daughter is a Destiny student and Erica herself continues to perform as a classical singer. Erica has an MBA from Georgetown University and her undergraduate degree from Stanford University.

Annemarie Brown, Treasurer
Biography forthcoming.

David Riemer
David Riemer is one of the leading marketers in the Internet industry. He spent the last decade developing and bringing great products to web users worldwide. Following his career as an ad agency President with J. Walter Thompson, David brought his strategic and marketing leadership to two start-ups and an internet titan, Yahoo!. In various roles at Yahoo!, David managed marketing for virtually all of Yahoo!’s products across their customer base of 500M users. David is now advising emerging Internet and consumer technology companies and serving as an executive in residence at the Haas Business School. He earned his undergraduate degree from Brown University, and an MBA from Columbia University.
David was introduced to Destiny through his children Taryn (a dancer) and Jesse (a martial artist). David leads the External Committee for the Destiny Board (Marketing, PR and Fundraising).

Felicia Gustin
Felicia Gustin is the Executive Director of Speak Out/The Institute for Democratic Education and Culture, a national non-profit organization that educates, inspires and empowers young people to become social justice activists.
She is the co-author (with Anuradha Mittal; Foreward by Howard Zinn) of Turning the Tide: Challenging the Right on Campus, an analysis of right wing and corporate influences in higher education and co-editor (with Michael Benitez Jr.) of the anthology Crash Course: Reflections on the Film “Crash” for Critical Dialogues about Race, Power and Privilege. She also worked for 10 years as an award-winning journalist in Havana, Cuba, and is working on several books including one about her 10 years in Cuba and another that explores the history of the Americas through 300 years of family journeys from three islands - Cuba, Sicily and the Channel Isle of Jersey.
Felicia first became involved with Destiny Arts Center as a parent in 1997 and her daughter Amalia has grown up in the Destiny community, both as a dancer and martial artist.

Felix Payomo
Felix has worked in media production for nearly a decade where he partnered with fourteen-time Emmy Award winning director and producer Dewey Hughes. While working at Hughes Concepts, TV One, and Radio One Felix worked nearly every aspect of the production world, including: producing, directing, film editing, acoustic engineering, live sound, and sound design.
Recently, Felix began a new chapter in his journey. Compelled towards becoming more involved in his community, holistic health, complimentary and alternative therapies, and yoga, Felix began studies at the McKinnon Body Therapy Institute where he currently is on staff as an instructor.
Felix was introduced to Destiny through his four children who participate in Destiny Programs ranging from the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company to the Teddy bears, Martial Arts, and Dance classes.

Karen Hesten
Biography forthcoming.

Melanie DeMore
Singer-songwriter Melanie DeMore has a remarkable voice, weaving the fibers of African American folk music with soulful ballads, spirituals and her own original music. Her recordings 'Share My Song' and 'Come Follow Me' are both heartfelt collections of her music.
In addition to her solo work, DeMore facilitates vocal workshops for professional and community-based choral groups and has taught her program called “Sound Awareness” in schools, prisons, and youth organizations in the US, Canada, Cuba and New Zealand.
DeMore was a California Artist in Residence with the Oakland Youth Chorus for 10 years and has received an award from the Music Educators National Conference for her work with young singers and artists. She is on the music faculty at St. Paul's School in Oakland, CA where she teaches a cappella singing. DeMore is also a founding member of the Grammy nominated, critically-acclaimed vocal ensemble 'Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir', a group that tours extensively in the US and abroad.
DeMore majored in music at Incarnate Word University in San Antonio, Texas. She has shared the stage with numerous artists including Buffy Saint Marie, John Prine, Josh White, Jr., Laura Nyro, Sweet Honey in the Rock and Pete Seeger.

Mike Mowery
Board Member, Secretary
After a long career in senior legal roles for Bay Area telecommunications and technology companies, Mike transitioned to the nonprofit sector as Executive Director of Super Stars Literacy in October 2007. Mike’s background with both large corporations and small startups going through a rapid growth process is serving SSL well as it moves into its expansion phase. Mike brings over seven years of community non-profit experience to this role.
Mike joined the Destiny Board in 2007 and chaired the Search Committee that hired a new Executive Director and restructured the management team. Mike is also a member of an engaged philanthropy group, Full Circle Fund (FCF). He is currently leading an FCF project team that is partnering with Revolution Foods to address the impacts of nutrition and fitness on educational outcomes. Mike received his law degree from University of Toledo and earned his B.A. in Political Science from The Ohio State University.

Phillip Cryan
Phillip Cryan is a Masters candidate in Public Policy at UC-Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. He has worked for several years as a community organizer, popular educator, and policy analyst, in the Midwest, Colombia, and the Bay Area. Most recently he served as Program Director at the Iowa Citizen Action Network, where he developed a groundbreaking program bringing diverse progressive organizations and communities across the state together around shared values and political vision in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential primaries. His articles and essays have appeared in numerous journals, two books, and The Los Angeles Times. He is currently working on a report sizing up the next generation of community economic development strategies in U.S. cities, for OnTheCommons.org and the Grassroots Policy Project. He holds a BA in English, Summa Cum Laude, from UC-Berkeley.

Renée Heider, Executive Director
Hired as Destiny’s first Development Director in 2001, Renée took over leadership of the organization in August of 2007. She was previously the Executive Director of Oakland Ballet and draws on over fifteen years of experience in local and international arts organizations. After a successful career as an international event planner, she first became an arts administrator in 1992, when she joined the staff of the Bay Area Dance Series as Business Manager. Since then she has been the Director of Special Projects at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley and Production/Grants Manager at the Reichhold Center for the Arts at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, prior to her hire at the Oakland Ballet in 1999. She holds an AA in Language Arts from Laney College, a BA in Bilingual Arts Administration from Mills College and an MA in Humanities from CSU, Dominguez Hills.

Rick Butler
Biography forthcoming.

Rogéair Purnell
Rogéair D. Purnell was appointed Senior Program Officer for Youth at the Irvine Foundation in July 2006, having served the Foundation as Program Officer for Youth since April 2005. Prior to joining the Foundation, Rogéair was a Research Associate with MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan social policy research organization with offices in New York and California. At MDRC, she helped design and implement the evaluation of a major initiative to improve employment and health in low-income communities, and acted as site leader for one of six colleges participating in a national demonstration project examining ways to increase access to postsecondary education among low-income populations. Rogéair holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Stanford University, as well as a master’s degree in social work and a doctoral degree in social work and social psychology from the University of Michigan.