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PEOPLE
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STAFF
Marnita Schroedl, Co-Founder & Catalyst
Marnita Schroedl, co-founder and Catalyst of Marnita’s Table, is a senior communications industry veteran with more than 20 years experience facilitating and training corporate groups and senior executives. Marnita employs an innovative and goals-oriented approach to achieving clients’ professional and personal objectives. A skilled and energetic presenter, she excels at demonstrating the positive rewards to be reaped from pro-actively harnessing the energy, productivity and esprit décor of a multi-cultural team. She is a frequently sought after public speaker on issues ranging from how to engage families of children of color in their children’s education, to exploring peaceful alternatives to violence in conflict resolution.
Marnita is herself a walking, breathing exemplar of strength through multi-culturalism and diversity. She is a black woman born of a Dominican father and Jewish Danish-American mother, raised by Irish-German immigrant adoptive parents, with American Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese foster siblings. She is now the essential anchor for a family including her Jewish husband, his two Jewish-Norwegian children, and her own son, whose father is black.
Marnita’s professional and community volunteer activities focus on energizing groups and individuals and helping them forge connections across age, race, and gender. Her clients make for a diverse list of socially engaged, non-profit and for-profit organizations.
After many years of working in-house as a senior executive at leading entertainment, marketing and communications firms, Marnita established her own strategic communications and marketing consultancy -- Words on Fire Communications -- in 1995.
Marnita served on the board of DIFFA Minnesota (the Design Industry Foundation Fighting AIDS) -- now DIVA MN -- from 1997-2007. In addition to facilitating all board strategy sessions, she is regularly called on as a spokesperson to discuss the effect of AIDS/HIV on people of color, immigrants, and the GLBT community.
She also served as a special advisor on diversity for the admission committee of Blake School, one of the most prestigious private K-12 schools in Minneapolis-St. Paul. As Community Involvement Coordinator for Kenwood Elementary School in the Minneapolis public school district, she launched successful and innovative programs for increasing the participation of students of color and their families in the school’s academic activities.
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Carl Goldstein, Co-Founder & Executive Director
Carl oversees the operations of Marnita's Table, including legal affairs and finance, and is also responsible for issue identification and research. Carl formerly worked in Asia for more than 15 years, including a decade as a correspondent with the authoritative Far Eastern Economic Review. In his time in Asia, spent mostly in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, Carl learned to speak fluent Mandarin Chinese and, perhaps as important, experienced life as a minority.
After moving to the Twin Cities, Carl served as senior editor for business and economics at Minnesota Public Radio. While at MPR, he won the 2000 Gerald Loeb Award in the radio category for "illuminating the world of business and finance." He has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor's degree in anthropology and Asian Studies from Cornell University. |
BOARD MEMBERS & OFFICERS
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Margaret Soran, Board Chair
Margie brings to Marnita's Table her organizational experience and passion for helping others. She is an actxive member of Social Venture partners, a partnership of individuals who invest their time, expertise, and capital in innovative non-profits serving at-risk youth. Margie participates in the SVP Grant Team and helped develop a program for youth to learn about grant-making. She is also an advocate for children and the homeless through her volunteer activites at MICAH (Metropolitan Interfaith Council for Affordable Housing), Congregations Concerned for Children, and the Learning Center for the Homeless.
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Art Berman, Treasurer
Art recently left Ameriprise Financial, where his most recent position was Senior Vice President and Treasurer. Art worked at American Express Company and its spin-off, Ameriprise, for 22 years. During that time he had various Finance positions of increasing responsibility, including Chief Financial Officer of American Express' international banking and insurance subsidiaries.
Prior to working at American Express Art was a management consultant at Booz, Allen and Hamilton and an economic analyst with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Art holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a BS in Economics from Bowdoin College.
Currently Art is a partner with Social Venture Partners and on the Advisory Board for the Page Education Foundation. For fun he loves to travel, hang out with his family, listen to jazz music and live a physically active lifestyle. He is very much looking forward to his association with Marnita's Table and to his unfolding post-corporate life.
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Michael Brenner
Mike has worked in Business to Business publishing
for over 25 years. He spent 22 of those years with Cleveland, Ohio
based Penton Media, a 130 year old publishing company, in several sales and
management capacities. Between 1998 and 2004, Mike served as
Penton's Midwest Regional Vice President, responsible for their Chicago based sales and editorial office. During this same peroid, he served on various committees for the
Minnesota chapters of the Business & Professional Advertising
Association and the Business Marketing Association.
Currently Mike is employed by Putman Media in Chicago, Illinois, as Group Publisher, responsible for four Putman manufacturing focused magazines as well as their related websites, electronic newsletters and ancillary products. He is also in charge of Putman's Custom Publishing Group. Mike is also a longtime supporter of philanthropic enterprises in the Twin Cities.
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Desiree Heller
Desiree
is the founder and principal Foundation Consultants, which advises family foundations and other philanathopic organizations. She was Vice President for Philanthropic Consulting Services at The Minneapolis Foundation from 2002-2007, providing services to individuals, family foundations, corporate foundations and giving programs, and nonprofit organizations.
Desiree has nearly twenty years of professional experience in financial services and investment analysis and has been involved in entrepreneurial business development. She has a wealth of expertise and knowledge about providing high quality services to clients. Her professional experience is a unique combination of strategic planning, fund raising and business development. Her personal interests in community affairs and volunteer efforts led her to the nonprofit sector. Prior to joining The Minneapolis Foundation she was the Director of Planned Giving at the American Heart Association serving the upper Midwest region.
She is active in the Native American community and is a graduate of the University of Southern California. |
James P. Palmquist
Jim has recently retired after more than 30 years in the Office of General Counsel at 3M but continues to be involved with the corporation on a contract basis. His most recent position was Associate Counsel for the Consumer Markets Group, International Operations, and other major divisions. Jim is a member of the Federal Trade Commission’s “Made in USA Taskforce and also served in a variety of positions with the Minnesota State Bar Association.
Jim is also on the board of directors of the University of Minnesota’s Veterinary Hospital Oncology Funding and an active volunteer with the Children’s Theater Charitable Fund-raising campaign.
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Camille Thomas
Camille is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin -- La Crosse. She majored in Community Health Education and minored in Spanish. Throughout her college career she had the opportunity to travel to many countries, which has added a global perspective to her view of community health issues.
Camille works for Southside Community Health Services, where she is coordinator of the Plain Talk program, which aims to help parents and other adults communicate more effectively with young people in their lives about sex and reproductive health.
Camille has a passion for promoting the holistic health of the whole community and especially that of her community of origin, the Black community.
Rico Vallejos, Vice Chair
Rico is the founder and president of International & Ethnic Communications, Inc., an award-winning Hispanic and multicultural communications agency established in 1994. Prior to the founding of this firm, Mr. Vallejos was employed at Lee & Riley Micromarketing serving in several positions, including account executive, researcher and focus group moderator, and copywriter for clients such as General Mills, 3M, Target Stores, Wilson Leather, Hormel, State of Minnesota, and Hazelden Publishing. A native of Argentina, Mr. Vallejos studied marketing at Metropolitan State University, and completed studies in cross-cultural communications, management and linguistics in Spain and England. Mr. Vallejos teaches multicultural communications in the master’s of international management program at the University of St. Thomas, and has also lectured at the Metropolitan State University, Bethel College & Seminary, and at many national marketing conferences. He received the Governor’s Certificate of Commendation for his work in the 2000 Minnesota Census campaign, and the Outstanding Achievement Award in marketing for the “Hagase contra como hispano” campaign. Mr. Vallejos serves on the board of directors of the Minnesota Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Society of Hispanic MBA’s, and the American Marketing Association. Mr. Vallejos was elected to the board of trustees at Hamline University in 2003.
Sharon Kennedy Vickers
Sharon is a software developer with the University of Minnesota's Java and Web Services (JaWs) a division of Academic Distributed Computer Services(ADCS). She also sits on the Advisory Board of the Multicultural Endowment of the SpectrumTrust of the Saint Paul Foundation and has been a leader in forming philanthropic giving circles in both the Twin Cities and her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia.
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Catalina Yang
Catalina has been a teacher in the business department at Normandale Community College
for over 20 years, teaching courses in International Business, Marketing, Management, Human Relations and Team Building. She has also been actively involved with the Chinese Dance Theater of Minnesota for more than five years and has served on its board for three years. She has two teen-aged daughters.
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