Our Team

From inception, Vital Arts has worked collaboratively with others in the community, including the families of many of the Ghost Ship victims. We are grateful for the support of countless individuals, including those serving on our Board of Directors, our Advisory Committee, project partners, and donors.

Board of Directors

President and Co-Founder Edwin Bernbaum is a scholar of comparative religion and mythology and the father of Jonathan Bernbaum, who died in the Ghost Ship fire. Ed consults on leadership, culture and the environment and has presented widely at venues such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Geographic Society, the Wharton School, and the American Museum of Natural History. He is the author of The Way to Shambhala (Anchor Doubleday) and Sacred Mountains of the World (University of California Press), which won a gold medal from the Commonwealth Club of California and was the basis for a year-long exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution. Formerly a program director at The Mountain Institute working with National Parks, Ed co-chairs the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s group on Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas. He lives in Berkeley with his wife Diane. Ed holds an A.B. in Mathematics from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Asian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley.

Beth Jay, Vice President, served the California Supreme Court for most of her career, the last 27 years as Principal Attorney to three successive Chief Justices. She was repeatedly named one of California’s 100 Most Influential Lawyers. She presently is Of Counsel to the law firm of Horvitz and Levy, the largest law firm specializing in civil appeals, and continues to serve on a Supreme Court Committee reviewing the Code of Judicial Ethics and to mentor young lawyers. Beth has supported organizations providing legal services to underserved Californians during her career and since retiring. Her work in improving the administration of justice and advancing access to justice has been recognized with the Bernie Witkin Award, the California State Bar’s highest honor, as well as OneJustice’s Opening Doors to Justice Award. Beth holds a B.A. from Vassar College and J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Board Secretary Marcial Chao, AIA, is a principal with the firm Pyatok, has 25 years of experience in residential, commercial, retail architecture and urban planning. He has worked in New York, Massachusetts, Oregon, and California, on both new and renovated construction, with extensive experience in multifamily housing, with an emphasis in mixed-used developments within complex urban infill sites. His ability to build collaborative working relationships with stakeholders, public agencies and team members results in projects that embody the consensus-building, cohesiveness, and unified vision critical to their success. While at University of Washington, he was awarded the Pio Prize in Architecture to study Architecture in Rome, Italy. His international experience also includes work in Mexico City and Taipei, Taiwan. He is fluent in four languages: English, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese.

Board Treasurer Steve Berger has over 40 years’ experience as owner, President and Chairman of various private companies including New York Fabrics (acquired by JoAnn Stores), NYF Properties, TurnItIn (acquired by Insight Venture Partners) and 2lemetry (acquired by Amazon). Steve is an investor and advisor to various early-stage companies, often leading early-stage investment rounds and serving on the board of directors. He has had a long interest in education, serving as a math coach for competitions, mentor for an entrepreneurial class at UC Berkeley and competitions at various universities, and has served on the Board of College Preparatory School. Steve is also past Chairman of The Partners Program, a non-profit educational organization providing free academically challenging summer programs, year-round tutoring and more for underserved Oakland middle school youth. Steve is also co-founder of the California Institute for Technology and democracy (CITED) working to protect our democracy from the dangers of AI supercharged disinformation. Steve is a graduate of Stanford University, an avid cyclist, and a Berkeley resident.

Amir Massih, is Co-Founder and President, Northern California, of 4Terra, which develops and builds mixed-use and multi-family housing projects. He is a recognized leader in identifying and entitling multifamily development opportunities in the Bay Area. His most recent position was Group Vice President for Archstone, a national owner and developer of multifamily properties. Amir was responsible for all development in the City of San Francisco. Previously, Amir was Land Manager at Pulte Homes, responsible for acquiring and entitling property in the urban Bay Area, focusing on conversion of industrial property to high-density residential housing. Prior to transitioning to real estate, Amir was Director of Operating Strategies at Gap, Inc., leading an eleven-member team in analyzing operational efficiency and revenue growth opportunities across corporate, domestic and international brands. Amir holds an M.A. in Health Policy and Administration from UC Berkeley. His non-profit work has included board service at La Cocina, a food incubator cultivating immigrant entrepreneurs, and Halt Homelessness, which is working to eliminate street homelessness.

Diane Bernbaum is retired from a career in education. She began as a public-school social studies teacher and after moving to California in 1976 moved into Jewish education, serving for 33 years as Director of Midrasha, a community based supplementary high school program for Jewish teens. Diane has her BA from Brandeis University, with a double major in History and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from Harvard University. She and her husband Ed have an adult son, David, and lost their younger son Jonathan in the Ghost Ship fire.

Amanda Bornstein has over 20 years of experience working for and leading organizations whose missions are at the intersection of creative placemaking, community outreach and business planning. Amanda brings Vital Arts her expertise in commercial real estate development and in helping organizations, artists and local government with vision, strategic planning and capacity building. Amanda has a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning degree, with a design and development concentration.

Jason Vargas is currently Partner for Finance and Investment at Creative Development Partners, an innovative real estate investment, development, and consulting firm that delivers unique solutions for urban-based developments. Prior to co-founding CDP, Jason served for 11 years as Executive Vice President of Real Estate Development for East Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC). He has engineered transactions totaling over $1 Billion, which include office, housing, retail and mixed-use development and investment projects in Washington, DC, Maryland, and the Bay Area in over 15 years of real estate, acquisition, and investment management. He has additionally structured investments with New Market, Low Income and Historic Tax Credits. As a long-time resident of the East Bay, Jason has been deeply engaged in the local cultural landscape, contributing his skills and expertise to helping artists and cultural spaces thrive.

Emeritus Board Member Malcolm Margolin, founder and for more than forty years publisher and executive director of Heyday Books, arrived in Berkeley in the late 1960s in a VW bus. He’s written several books, the best known being The Ohlone Way, Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area. He has also founded or co-founded several other non-profit institutions, among them Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Bay Nature Magazine, and Inlandia Institute (a literary center in Riverside). He has long been involved with the California Indian world—as a publisher, writer, and “friend of the family.” He retired from Heyday at the end of 2015, and after a few months of shuffling around and pretending to be taking care off himself, he un-retired and has created a new organization called the California Institute for Community, Art, and Nature. Malcolm and CAiCAN ae currently engaged in several projects with a number of collaborators. His spiritual exercise is “deep hanging out.”

Advisory Committee

Anne Bown-Crawford is a new media artist and consultant whose sphere of influence spans from community-based work to helping to link the creative industry with economic development. She is currently an artist in residence for Google's Quantum AI Research Labs and a Fellow in the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. From 2018 to 2022 Anne served as Executive Director of the California Arts Council, the statewide agency for arts policy and funding. Prior to this appointment, she was for decades an educator in the public schools and a champion for arts education, creating and leading numerous exemplary arts programs, including Create CA, a collective impact organization whose mission was to rethink and create an educational environment for all California students centering arts education towards a solution to the crisis in our schools. Anne holds a Master of Arts in Education from UC Berkeley, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design from Northern Illinois University and was an MFA Design candidate at the California College of Arts.

As an architect, Vital Arts Co-Founder Thomas Dolan has specialized in mixed-use urban infill for 35 years, including designing and building the nation’s first purpose-built live-work space. Tom consults extensively with the City of Oakland on building codes and has a comprehensive knowledge of live-work spaces in Oakland. He is the author of Live-Work Planning and Design (John Wiley), and two guides on local live-work codes: Live-Work in Plain English for the City of Oakland, and Work/Live in Vancouver for Vancouver, BC. As a founding member of Safer DIY Spaces, Tom works directly with residents of creative spaces to preserve, legalize, and better regulate where they live and work. Tom lives in Oakland with his wife and two children. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and is a charter member of the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Seth Frey is a Professor of Communication at the University of California Davis, where he specializes in the science of community and self-governance. He is also a long-time member and organizer of intentional communities, particularly housing cooperatives. He has over a decade of experience in over a dozen communities, ranging in size from 4 to 400 residents, official and unofficial. He was a co-founder of Bloomington Cooperative Living, a system of housing cooperatives in Bloomington, Indiana, and represented housing cooperatives nationally on the board of the North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) Development Services, which helps fledgling cooperatives. In the arts, he is a student of the book arts, primarily letterpress, but also typography, lithography, binding, and preservation. Seth is a multi-ethnic Arab American, and a long-time Bay Area resident. He currently lives in community in SF, within the Haight Street Commons association of community houses. He holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science and Informatics from Indiana University. 

Rafael Jesús González, Prof. Emeritus of literature and creative writing, was born and raised in El Paso, Texas/Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and taught at various universities before joining Laney College, Oakland, California where he founded the Dept. of Mexican & Latin-American Studies. Also a visual artist, he has exhibited in the Oakland Museum of California and the Mexican Museum of San Francisco among others. He has been nominated thrice for a Pushcart Prize and was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English in 2003. He received the César E. Chávez Lifetime Award in 2013. The City of Berkeley honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015, and in 2017, he was named the first Poet Laureate of the City of Berkeley. He sat on the Board of the University of Creation Spirituality at Naropa from 1998 until it became Wisdom University in 2005, on the Advisory Council of the Oakland Museum of California from 1996 until its dissolution in 2015, and sits on the Advisory Board of Dancing Earth, Contemporary Indigenous dance company since its founding in 2004. 

Greg Harper is a photographer and attorney with decades of experience representing businesses, government entities, artists, and individuals in contract, land use, and litigation matters. He’s worked extensively with artists and is a national expert on contracts in the field of public art. Greg is active in civic affairs and has served as Mayor and city council member in the City of Emeryville as well as on the AC Transit Board, the Regional Planning Committee of the Association of Bay Area Governments; the Alameda County Housing Authority; the Bay Area Air Quality Management District; the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency; and the Blue Ribbon Task Force for Water Transit in the Bay Area. He is a current board member and long-time resident of the Emeryville Artists Coop with his wife, artist Archana Horsting. He received his JD from Hastings College of Law and a BS in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana

Staff

Executive Director Sharmi Basu brings to Vital Arts a deep understanding of the challenges artists face in sustaining their lives and practice. They are committed to creating inclusive environments and promoting social justice, diversity in arts, and mutual aid. They played a crucial role in organizing community responses to the Ghost Ship fire, including raising and distributing funding to the friends and family of Ghost Ship victims and survivors. As an artist, activist, and administrator, they have been actively engaged for over a decade in managing operations, events, fundraising and finances at a variety of local organizations including Southern Exposure, St. James Infirmary, SFMOMA, and Gray Area Foundation. Sharmi Basu serves on the board of several organizations, including Safer DIY Spaces, Bay Area Girls Rock Camp, and California FM. They hold an MFA from Mills College and a double BA from UC Davis in Political Science: Public Policy and Technocultural Studies.           

As an artist and activist, Sharmi Basu hosts workshops internationally centered on sound healing, decolonization, transformative justice, and technical skill shares. They have performed throughout the US, Canada, and Europe, including SFMOMA, YBCA, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Cluster Festival, Ableton Loop, the International Symposium of Improvised Music, Soundwave SF, Human Resources LA, and the Kitchen NY. They co-founded the groundbreaking Bay Area Black and Brown Punk Festival, the Multiverse is Illuminated. Sharmi Basu also serves as volunteer Executive Director of Ratskin Records, an archival imprint that supports decolonial artists in the Bay Area,

Operations and Engagement Manager Nica Estrella Chavarria joined Vital Arts with a mind and heart geared toward cultural and social responsibility. From a young age, Nica has been interested in the intersections of culture, politics, and art. She grew up along cities of the California coastline as well as in Central America. In Nicaragua she grew up near the revolution era art murals which sparked her interest in art as resistance. She is passionate about the arts and cultural advocacy, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nica lost her sibling, former bandmate, and best friend Nex Iuguolo (Chase Wittenauer) to the tragedy of the Ghost Ship fire. After the immense tragedy, she sought to serve her community by focusing on advocacy and social justice work in the arts. Outside of professional settings, she enjoys checking out an Oakland music show or art gallery, writing, traversing the beautiful SF Bay Area hiking trails, and skating the marinas. Nica is dedicated to Vital Arts’ mission and envisions a future dedicated to the inclusive collaboration between artists and their communities.