Alisa Bales Baur joined the Women’s Fund group Helping Hands in 2019. She became a Grantee Liaison this year. Currently retired, she was the Art Director at Santa Barbara Magazine from 2000-2015. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, she worked at the design firm Gottschalk + Ash in New York City and later formed her own practice in Houston, Texas, before moving to Santa Barbara with her husband Bob and two young children in 1993. Alisa and Bob have been making contributions to non-profits through their family foundation since 2008, primarily in the fields of education, the underserved, and the arts.

Cece Harris is a retired Corporate Executive from Abbott in Chicago, Illinois. Prior to that, she taught at the U Kentucky Med School, was a Clinical Lab Director, and chaired a Microbiology Dept. in an Iranian Med School. She has a PhD in Microbiology (U Oklahoma) and did post-doc studies at the Harvard School of Public Health. Cece is a past Board Chair for the American Society for Quality and the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society. In 2018, she published a memoir of her experiences in Iran entitled “Khanoum Doctor”. She and her husband bought a home in Santa Barbara in 2009. Recently widowed in 2019, she decided to make Santa Barbara her home and enjoys all it offers. She is Recording Secretary of the local DAR Chapter and serves on the Library Board of Santa Barbara. She joined the Women’s Fund in 2021 because it is a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with other women and serve our community.

Chris is a licensed psychologist (now retired) with over 30 years of experience working in a university setting as an administrator, adjunct faculty member, and senior staff psychologist at a university counseling center. She is passionate about women’s issues, having been Assistant Dean/Director of the Center for Women and Men @ UC Irvine. She is a proud member of the 4 Empowerment group in the Women’s Fund.

Cynthia Brown, who joined the Women’s Fund in 2013, is a Research Professor of French (Emerita) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she taught for 40 years, after receiving her PhD degree from UC Berkeley. She retired from teaching in 2019, but continues to carry out research and has published numerous books and articles on late medieval female patronage and the influence of the transition from manuscript to print on 15th - and 16th -century literary culture.
She held several administrative positions at UCSB, including Chair of the French and Italian Department and Associate Vice Chancellor of Academic Personnel. In 2013 she was named Chevalier des Palmes Académiques by the French Government. Cynthia has been married for almost 30 years to Art Ludwig, a retired electrical engineer, with whom she has supported and shared a love of music, art and theater in Santa Barbara. They enjoy his two children, six grand-children and four great-grandchildren.

Diane is a retired Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has provided psychotherapy in private practice and community health centers. Among her community projects as an LCSW, she led a community task force on alcohol abuse among expat teens in Singapore, and founded a bereavement support group for young widows/widowers in Florida. She is a founding member of Maverick Collective, a women’s philanthropy group organized to benefit women and girls in developing countries. Through MC, she sponsored a pilot project in Senegal to reduce maternal mortality, and helped launch a women’s health center in Honduras. In conjunction with Vital Voices in New York, MC members funded the airlift of women activists out of Afghanistan after the collapse of the government in August 2021. Diane’s daughter was diagnosed In 2014 with idiopathic hypersomnia (IH), a chronic neurological sleep disorder. People with IH suffer from persistent, overwhelming daytime sleepiness, which is not alleviated by a full night’s sleep or napping. Soon after, Diane joined the Board of a nonprofit, The Hypersomnia Foundation. She served as Board Chair and CEO for several years before retiring in January 2022. Diane and her husband live in Santa Barbara and San Francisco. In addition to their daughter in LA, they have a son in Boston. Diane is delighted to be a member of The Women’s Fund and is excited to co-chair the COG.

Eleanor Gartner joined the Women’s Fund in 2022 and serves as a Grantee Liaison. She oversees Public and Government Affairs for Cox Communications in Santa Barbara, where she enjoys working directly with many non-profit organizations serving the community. Prior to working at Cox, she was a fundraiser for various child-focused non-profits in New York City and Washington, DC. Eleanor is passionate about community investment and is a proud board member of United Boys & Girls Club of Santa Barbara County, a Fund Development Committee member for Girls Inc. of Carpinteria, and a member of Santa Barbara Young Professionals. She is also a 2022-23 Katherine Harvey Fellows cohort member. Eleanor is a graduate of Hamilton College where she received a BA in Art History.

Roberta has been a member of the Women's Fund since 2018. As the incoming chair of the Educational Events Committee, she is a member of the Operations Management Team. Her educational background includes receiving a BA and licensing credentials for teaching and education administration from Sacramento State University, and a MA in History from UC Davis. She utilized them during a long career in public education, serving as an elementary school teacher, staff development specialist, program manager and school principal. She also was an adjunct faculty member working training teachers through San Francisco State University. Since moving to Santa Barbara in 2015, she has volunteered with various not-for-profit agencies, including most recently as a member of the CALM Board of Trustees