Board of Directors
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Rain Perry
President
Award-winning singer-songwriter Rain Perry’s “Beautiful Tree” was the theme song for the CW Network’s "Life Unexpected," on which she also had the surreal pleasure of appearing as herself.
After serving in college as a Branch Manager of a small library, she became a full-time musician, releasing six albums on her own Precipitous Records, as well as writing and touring a solo play about her childhood called “Cinderblock Bookshelves: A Guide For Children of Fame-Obsessed Bohemian Nomads.” In 2016 she directed “The Shopkeeper,” a documentary about the impact of the streaming economy on the longest continuously operating recording studio in Austin.
Rain's newest theatrical memoir "This is Water" wades into the topic of the day: How do we work through our family histories and our fraught American past toward a just and equitable future?
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Kim Maxwell
Secretary
Co-Founder of the Ojai Playwrights Conference, serving as Board Member and Director of its Youth Program. Founder/Artistic Director/Creator of The Townies, Inc., Kim Maxwell Studio, and The Townies Podcast. Co-Founder and co-Artistic Director of Theater 150.
In 30 years of serving her community, Kim Maxwell has produced three successful theater companies, 32 stage productions, 28 fundraisers, 82 readings, 12 educational outreach programs, and more than 3,500 individual pieces of original material produced in over 150 workshop productions. Kim received a Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from the City of Ojai and was named Visionary of the Year by the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).
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Olivia Slaughter
Treasurer
Olivia Slaughter, Ph.D., is a retired Licensed Educational Psychologist and career counselor. Her experience includes teaching, secondary school counseling, administration, school psychology, and national and international educational consulting. She offers guidance in life planning, parenting, learning, and interpersonal relationships.
Dr. Slaughter has been active in providing workshop/in-service training events, including UNICEF in Alexandria, Egypt, where she was a school consultant under USAID sponsorship.
Advisors
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Dr. Yohuru Williams
In addition to being a regular contributor on the History channel, Dr. Williams has appeared on a variety of local and national radio and television programs including ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Almanac, BET, and NPR. He was featured in the Ken Burns PBS Documentary, "Jackie Robinson" and the Stanley Nelson PBS Documentary, "The Black Panthers."
Dr. Williams' scholarly articles have appeared in the American Bar Association’s Insights on Law and Society, The Organization of American Historians Magazine of History, The Black Scholar, The Journal of Black Studies, Pennsylvania History, Delaware History, the Journal of Civil and Human Rights and the Black History Bulletin.
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Caryn Bosson
Caryn Bosson is a nonprofit expert with an entrepreneurial flair who is sharing her wisdom with a growing number of organizations, currently serving as a Senior Faculty member at California Lutheran University’s Center for Nonprofit Leadership.
In 1996 she led a year-long, community-wide planning process that laid the groundwork for the innovative Ojai Valley Youth Foundation, which she led as Executive Director for a decade, impacting thousands of young people. In 2007, Caryn joined the staff of the Los Angeles organization TreePeople, which is responsible for planting more than 2 million trees and educating more than 2 million school children since 1973. There, over the course of 9 years, Caryn played senior leadership roles including Director of Strategy and Interim Executive Director.
Caryn is a graduate of the University of California's College of Creative Studies (Literature, 1981), and of the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including being named an Ojai Living Treasure.