Speakers

Our speaker will be Woodruff/Woody Minor, a prominent local historian, architecture historian, and author based in Alameda, California. He is widely recognized for his extensive research and publications documenting local Bay Area and Alameda history, architecture, and public spaces.  He will be speaking about Alameda's Bungalow Courts.

 

Michael Socrates Moran will talk about Shakespeare's Vision for King Lear in Today's World.  Michael is the co-founder and co-artistic director of the Oakland Theater Project.  He is also an award-winning actor and a Continuing Lecturer in the theater department at the University of California, Berkeley.  He is known for his excellent track record  in teaching, which includes a focus on Shakespeare!

Patrick Ohslund is the Co-Founder and Deputy Director of Bay Area Creative. Patrick has been supporting school-based residencies for 12 years and once was himself a teaching artist and touring spoken word poet. He currently supports poetry residencies at 28 schools served by 11 teaching artists. He has worked directly with school district liaisons in order to create contracts of services, manage the budget and support the delivery of services.

 

Adrien Abuyen joined FAAS as CEO in June 2025, bringing a strong track record of leadership in nonprofit strategy, public affairs, and community engagement. Adrien grew up in Alameda and intimately knows our beautiful island city. He holds a B.A. in Legal Studies from UC Berkeley, along with associate degrees from the College of Alameda.

Before FAAS, Adrien served as Director of Public Affairs at Kos Read Group, where he advocated for mission-driven organizations across the Bay Area. He has also held key leadership roles at SOS Meals on Wheels and the Jobs and Housing Coalition, helping to shape programs that uplift both people and communities.

Twenty five years ago, the Lennettes partnered with two Costa Ricans to purchase and preserve/protect what has become approximately 500 acres of primary and secondary cloud forest. Tropical cloud forests are the most biodiverse places on earth. They are also rapidly disappearing, being converted to agriculture. This talk will describe the project and the reasons for it.

Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft will share a retrospective view of her time serving two terms as the Mayor of Alameda!

Speaker Information: Nina Fendel and Patty Gates are retired attorneys and legal educators working on a volunteer basis with Friends of La Pena for this educational project.  Each speaker has over 40 years of experience teaching non-lawyers about a wide variety of topics involving labor, employment, and government enforcement. Speakers have conducted both in-person trainings and webinars. 

Session Description: This session provides an overview of employer responsibilities under California law in the event of federal immigration enforcement actions. This presentation will be useful whether audience members own, manage or work in businesses, advise businesses, or simply want to have more information as engaged community members. It will focus on (1) preparatory steps employers may take to be ready in case of an enforcement action; (2) relevant provisions under California law; (3) best strategies to avoid citations, fines or other negative outcomes; and (4) suggestions for designating and training staff to assume useful roles in the event of immigration actions. 

Scott Hildreth retired in 2024 after working at Chabot for 35 years.  He is still involved giving planetarium shows and serving on the retiree board. He studied Math & Astrophysics at UC Davis and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and Astrophysics at UC Berkeley in grad school. He worked with NASA writing about results from the Hubble Space Telescope, reviewing proposals for space missions & developing labs using data from satellites observing the Sun and planets around other stars. In 2022, he was one of the first community college faculty to work on NASA's SOFIA Airborne IR Observatory. He is a recipient of the Reed L. Buffington award for teaching, and loves sharing Astronomy & Physics and how much they are actually a part of our lives.

John Lipp, a fellow Rotarian and the former executive director of the Alameda Animal Shelter, aka FAAS, will share stories about his life journey battling Parkinson's disease.