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
Dennis Smith, Esq., has worked with public and nonprofit agencies for nearly twenty years as a director, general counsel, and financial analyst. His experience across the sectors includes business planning and financial analysis, budget projections, financial monitoring and auditing; legislative and regulatory analysis and policy development; fraud and employment discrimination investigations; legal and risk analysis; program design and implementation; and personnel and contract management. Dennis has consulted with nonprofit organizations on topics such as federal and state nonprofit incorporation, mergers, asset/liability acquisitions, and corporate dissolutions.

Dennis served previously as Procurement Manager at the Oakland Private Industry Council where he had responsibility for administrative and financial oversight of over $8 million in annual contracts from the U.S. Department of Labor, State of California Employment Development Department, and the City of Oakland. He was also responsible for programmatic planning, compliance monitoring, and the provision of technical assistance to over 50 community-based non-profit agencies. Most recently, Dennis was Director of Operations at the Youth Employment Partnership, Inc. (YEP), an award winning, youth employment program in Oakland. In twelve years, Dennis helped grow YEP from a single service program with an annual budget of $200,000 to a multi-service organization with an annual budget of over $4 million. The program currently serves 1,000 youth each year.

Dennis has served as a trustee for various arts and human service organizations, and as a member of several commissions and community collaboratives. He received his BA in Legal Studies/Jurisprudence from the University of California, Berkeley, and his JD from the University of San Francisco. Dennis is also a professional recording and touring bassist specializing in jazz and world music.

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.

Bob Cheatham
Bob Cheatham, an East Bay resident with his wife Kay since 1969, joined the board in 2010, after 14 years of connection with Destiny Arts as a friend and avid supporter.  Bob recently retired after over 35 years of business law practice in San Francisco.  Bob has served on the board of directors of several youth oriented organizations, including most recently as a board member and for several years board chair with Vision Youthz in San Francisco, where he also volunteered as a counselor, coach and mentor to inner city youth.  Currently Bob serves as a mentor with the Oremi mentoring program run by the Oakland based Family Support Services of the Bay Area.  Bob and his wife Kay have three grown children and 5 grandchildren all residing in the Bay area.

Karen Hester
Karen Hester 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 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.