People: Board of Directors

Destiny Arts Center has a very active and engaged Board of Directors who meet bi-monthly as a group and in committees as necessary to advance the work of the center. The directors were nominated and chosen based on their unique experience, skill base and community affiliations. Collectively, the board members represent a culturally diverse cross-section of the community’s business leaders, educators, parents, artists and youth development experts.

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.

David Riemer, Vice President
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).

Dennis Smith, Treasurer
Biography forthcoming.

Felicia Gustin, Secretary
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
Karen Hesten is self-employed as an events organizer, mainly organizing street fairs such as Berkeley Earth Day and the Temescal Street fair. Karen is a community activist and started a cohousing community in North Oakland in 1999 where she still resides. She has served on the board of La Peña Cultural Center and was a member of Friends of Studio One where she was involved in a 12 million dollar renovation of a City of Oakland owned art center. Karen has traveled extensively in Africa and Latin America and is an avid birdwatcher, outdoor enthusiast and bicyclist. She counts never owning a car as one of her proudest accomplishments.

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.

JoAn McClendon
Biography forthcoming.

Rick Butler
Biography forthcoming.

Rogéair Purnell
Rogéair D. Purnell founded RDP Consulting in 2009 to provide program and evaluation-related assistance to non-profit organizations and foundations to ensure increased life success for low-income individuals, families and communities. From 2005 to 2009, she served as both a program officer and senior program officer at the James Irvine Foundation. As part of the Foundation’s Youth team, she was responsible for identifying and arranging financial, technical, and evaluation support for programs working to improve high school completion rates and postsecondary opportunities for low-income youth between the ages of 14 and 24 years old. 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. She also served as a Senior Evaluator at Philliber Research Associates in New York and Oakland where she helped direct service programs (e.g., family resource centers, teen pregnancy prevention programs) design tools and instruments to evaluate their work in order to develop more effective services and activities. 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.