Who We Are
Meet the ArtsOC Board and Staff and learn about what we do
We acknowledge with respect our presence on the ancestral lands of the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians - Acjachemen Nation and the Tongva People.
ArtsOC Board of Directors
ArtsOC Board Members bring decades worth of expertise and leadership from the diverse artistic, business, civic, and educational sectors that make up Orange County
Our Board (Click to Expand)
Officers
Rick M. Smetanka, Partner-in-Charge, Audit and Business Advisory Services Group, Haskell & White LLP, Irvine
Chair
Susan K. Hori, Partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP, Costa Mesa
Secretary
Mary A. Lyons, Civic Leader, Newport Beach
Past Chair
Members
Suzanne Appel, Managing Director & Co-CEO, South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa
Marleena Barber, Director, Orange County Arts and Disability & Consultant, Orange County Department of Education, Costa Mesa
Dr. Stefan Bean, Orange County Superintendent of Schools, Costa Mesa
Ellen Breitman, Former Director of Education, Newport Harbor Art Museum
Logan Crow, Executive Director, The Frida Cinema, Santa Ana
Thúy Võ Đặng, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Dan Faltz, Senior Cultural Arts Supervisor, Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach
John Forsyte, President, Pacific Symphony, Irvine
Sara Guerrero, Founder & Artistic Director, Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble, Santa Ana
Monica V. Guillena, Marketing and Business Development Consultant for SVA Architects & former Administrative Director of the Hispanic Education Endowment Fund
Arnold Holland, Ed.D., Dean, College of the Arts, California State University, Fullerton
Kim Le, Owner, Pacific Conservatory & Executive Director, Pacific Foundation for the Arts, Orange
Tiffany Ana Lopez, Ph.D., Dean, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine
Harish K. Murthy, Executive Director, Ektaa Center, Irvine
Cheer Pan, Executive Director, Pan America Chinese Dance Alliance
Marlene Peña-Marin, Artistic Director, Relámpago del Cielo Grupo Folklórico & Director, Ballet Folklórico Dance Conservatory, Orange County School of the Arts, Santa Ana
Sam Robertson, Owner, Avida Book Company, Tustin
P. Alberto Sandoval, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Community & Government Relations, University of California, Irvine
Tim Shaw, President, Tim Shaw & Associates, Irvine
Craig M. Springer, Ph.D., President, Irvine Barclay Theatre
Limor Tomer, Vice President of Programming and Production at Segerstrom Center for the Arts
Tina Van Dam, Managing Attorney, Manning Gross + Massenburg, Irvine
Edmund Velasco, President, Orange County Musicians Union, Local 7, American Federation of Musicians
Debora Wondercheck, Founder and CEO, Arts & Learning Conservatory, Costa Mesa
Emeritus
Dr. David Emmes, Founding Artistic Director, South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa
ArtsOC Staff
Patrick Brien
Patrick Brien, President and CEO
Patrick stepped into the role of President & CEO of Arts Orange County on July 1, 2025 after serving as its Vice President & Chief Operating Officer for three years. Prior to his arrival at ArtsOC, Patrick was Executive Director of the Riverside Arts Council in Riverside, California, for nearly 18 years. There he helped to connect the regional arts and cultural infrastructure of the inland region. As a mixed-race child of an American father and a mother born and raised in Japan, cultural and social equity has always been at the forefront of Brien’s intent. He has spearheaded multiple programs directed toward BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) and other underserved communities, including art as therapy for dementia patients and adults with developmental disabilities, and arts in corrections within the state prison system. Much of his work has focused on building the capacity of individual artists and small arts organizations. His work as an advocate on behalf of public funding for the arts has put him in offices of elected officials at the local, state and federal levels. Patrick serves on the Board of Directors of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund and Orange County Music and Dance. He is also on the Dean’s Arts Board of UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts, and Chair of the Advisory Board of Culture OC. He is a former Board member of Californians for the Arts and California Arts Advocates, on which he continues to serve on the Advisory Committee. Grant panels on which he has served include: National Endowment for the Arts, Wyoming Arts Council, Long Beach Arts Council, City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and California Arts Council (multiple times).
Prior to entering the arts administration field, Brien’s background was professional theatre. He has produced, acted and directed for companies from Hawaii to Europe and throughout the United States. He ran theatres in Germany and Wyoming, and more recently founded and served as Producing Artistic Director of The Gestalt Theatre Project in Riverside, for which he staged several regional and west coast premiers. Brien is a first-generation college graduate of Chapman University with a BA in Theatre and Film and Television.
Karen Ahola
Karen Ahola, Advancement Officer
Karen was educated in England where she earned her degrees in French and International Relations from the University of Reading. She pursued a long-time career in corporate marketing and communications (The Economist, Accord Publications, NTA, Inc.,) before crossing over to the non-profit sector. Prior to joining Arts Orange County, Karen served for seven years as the marketing and associate director of Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens in San Clemente, CA. Karen currently advises non-profit and civic institutions and her recent appointments include arts and culture representative, City of San Clemente Centennial General Plan Advisory Committee. Her expertise includes marketing, communications, donor relations and development, and event management.
Nicholas Thurkettle
Nicholas Thurkettle, Program Coordinator
Nicholas Thurkettle plays facilitating and coordinating roles for Emerging Arts Leaders - Orange County, Calls for Artists such as the ongoing Newport Beach Civic Center Sculpture Exhibition, and other Arts Orange County programs. He studied Theatre Performance and Music at Bradley University and, outside of his ArtsOC work, is a writer, actor, and filmmaker. Short films he has written/directed have played more than 50 film festivals and he additionally directed the music video "Sitting on the Launchpad" for the rock band Freefall Rescue.
A member of the Writers Guild of America, he has sold and optioned feature screenplays, and is the writer of the animated show Children of Ether. His one-act play The Rothko premiered at the OC-Centric New Play Festival and is represented by Heartland Publishing, and other short plays have enjoyed stagings in Illinois, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Minnesota, Maryland, and throughout California including at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. He is a longtime board member of the Orange County Playwrights Alliance, promoting the development and staging of new theatre works by O.C. writers. He authored the short story collection Stages of Sleep, co-authored the sci-fi novels Seeing by Moonlight and A Sickness in Time, and wrote for the audio drama podcast Earbud Theater and the weird history podcast My Dark Path.
As an actor, he appears in independent films such as Moon Students, Cloudy With a Chance of Sunshine, To a Dead Friend, Afterthought, and Revelator, and made his TV debut on the series "Wild West Chronicles". He co-produced the award-winning independent horror/romance film A Ghost Waits, and produced the upcoming cosmic horror feature The Buildout. He is an experienced voice performer in videogames, animation, and audiobooks, and spent five seasons on stage with Shakespeare Orange County, serving as their Casting Director for two seasons. He now manages the Modjeska Shakespeare Players.
Elizabeth Miller
Elizabeth Miller, Program Manager
Elizabeth got her BFA in Production and Technology Management from Carnegie Mellon University. She spent years in educational theatre at USC and UCI before moving into Event Management at UCLA. There she helped launch UCLA Bruin Day for perspective families, coordinating crowds of over 15,000 prospective students. She worked on Alumni Day and the Chancellors Bruin Game Day Event while with Special Events and Protocol, before moving into Government Relations. Elizabeth started her work at ArtsOC over a decade ago by managing the Arts Awards.
Since moving back to Orange County she has supported Cal State Fullerton as they created "Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser," which was awarded the 2015 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Award. Her main roles at ArtsOC are educational in nature; working on projects in coordination with OCDE including Poetry Out Loud, Imagination Celebration and Dia del Niño. She is excited to be coordinating the first Orange County Youth Film Festival, focused on educational film opportunities for students across the county. Elizabeth is especially grateful to be working with the next generation of artists throughout Orange County in all their passionate art forms.
Dolores Colin
Dolores Colin, Program Assistant
A native of Orange County, California, Dolores Castro Colin has a passion for promoting and supporting the arts, connecting people and organizations to develop their visions in the arts, community programs, and small business. Her fascination for diverse cultures and service led her to earn a Sociology degree from Cal State Fullerton. Through an artist connection, Dolores joined the Sawdust Art Festival’s marketing team where she developed relationships with artists and community organizations. She has served on the Board of Casa Cultural Saybrook Park in East Los Angeles and was secretary for the Association for Creative Industries SoCal Chapter. Dolores feels fortunate to continue collaborating with a variety of talented creatives as a Certified Tourism Ambassador for Visit Anaheim through Laguna Beach Art Tours and with Arts Orange County.
Rick Stein
Richard Stein - Senior Adviser
From 2008-25, under Rick Stein’s leadership as its president and CEO, Arts Orange County became a trailblazer among nonprofit arts councils worldwide–augmenting traditional arts agency programs and services with its unique role as the community’s go-to arts consultant to government, education, and nonprofit organizations. He retired from that position in June 2025, and now serves as a Senior Advisor.
In May 2025, Rick was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to serve as a Council Member of the California Arts Council, the state’s arts agency’s volunteer governing body, for a term ending January 2027.
Prior to his appointment at Arts Orange County in August 2008, Stein transformed the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach into a major resident professional theatre over the course of more than 17 years as its executive director.
Stein’s work has been recognized by California Arts Advocates in 2025 with its Statewide Arts Advocacy Champion Award, by Pacific Chorale in 2023 with its Entrepreneur in the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, by Laguna Playhouse in 2021 as a Laguna Legend, and by the Orange County Register as one of OC’s 100 Most Influential of 2020.
Stein holds degrees in English from Columbia and Syracuse Universities and returned to Columbia for post-graduate study in drama on a National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellowship. He was sent to Korea on a cultural exchange by the International Theatre Institute-US, served on the executive committee of the League of Resident Theatres, and was a contributing writer to AMERICAN THEATRE magazine.
Rick is a past Chair of the John Wayne Airport Arts Commission (appointed by Orange County Supervisor Harriet Weider), past President of the Association of Fund Raising Professionals-Orange County Chapter, and past co-Chair of National Philanthropy Day-Orange County. From 2009 to 2022, he served on the board of Californians for the Arts and California Arts Advocates, statewide sister organizations promoting the interests of the arts community, including three years as their President.
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