Ana Mari Cauce is the 33rd President of the University of Washington where she has been a member of the faculty since 1986. A graduate of the University of Miami and Yale University, she is a noted scholar on risk and resilience among adolescents and has received numerous awards for her research as well as the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Before becoming President in 2015, she served as chair of the Departments of American Ethnic Studies and Psychology, as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and as Provost, the University’s chief academic officer. In 2008, she played a key role in establishing the Husky Promise, a program that has helped more than 40,000 low-income students attend the UW. Since becoming president, Cauce has put a spotlight on the UW’s work in population health across the University, launched the University’s Race & Equity Initiative and been a champion for ensuring the UW and public higher education across the country remain accessible and affordable for all students. As President, and throughout her tenure, she has worked to advance the University’s mission of serving the public good by focusing on the UW’s impact on the lives of the people in Washington and throughout the world.
Thanks to Michael Bronsdon for arranging this program.
Join the University Sunrise Rotary Club for our weekly meeting this Thursday morning featuring Andrea Suarez and the efforts of her organization, We Heart Seattle, to clean up the city.
The meeting runs from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. The Zoom line will open at 7:00 a.m. for informal networking.
Andrea Suarez, Founder of We Heart Seattle, has lived in King County for twenty-four years and in the downtown area since 2009. In September of 2020, she started ‘We Heart Seattle’ out of love for the city–wanting it clean and safe for all to enjoy.
To date, volunteers have cleared 500,000 pounds of trash, 20,000 needles and have housed 100 people. They started a movement to activate civic engagement and restored hope in our communities.
We Heart Seattle is an action-based, boots-on-the-ground movement that organizes trash cleanups in our public spaces and offers a helping hand to those in need. Through direct civic engagement, We Heart Seattle leads the way to a more compassionate and healthy community.
Join the University Sunrise Rotary Club for our weekly meeting this Thursday morning to hear Carolyn Maezes talk about a green alternative to traditional burial and cremation.
The meeting runs from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. The Zoom line will open at 7:00 a.m. for informal networking.
Carolyn Maezes is a co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Earth Funeral, a green death care brand. Prior to joining Earth Funeral, Carolyn worked in healthcare, most recently as the Vice President of Patient Experience and Social Work Services at DaVita, a Fortune 200 healthcare company and the leading provider of kidney care services in the United States. Carolyn is also a hospice volunteer and trained End of Life Doula.
Carolyn will provide an overview of soil transformation, which is an environmentally-friendly alternative to cremation. Over the course of 30-45 days, the body is gently and naturally transformed into nutrient-rich soil. Families can use the soil to plant a tree, garden, etc., and/or can scatter it in meaningful places. The majority of the soil is donated to a restoration project on the Olympic Peninsula. An Earth Soil Transformation is carbon-neutral and enables one’s last act to be a gift to the planet and future generations.
Join the University Sunrise Rotary Club for our weekly meeting this Thursday morning to hear Rod Leeman from Cactus Family Farms talk about food myths!
The meeting runs from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. The Zoom line will open at 7:00 a.m. for informal networking.
With over 30,000 products in the average grocery store, addressing myths around food products is a growing area of interest for grocery shoppers. Your members will have the opportunity to hear from an active farmer, animal nutritionist, or livestock veterinarian who will provide a look into farms across America, address animal care on those farms, and provide pork cooking tips. They will enjoy 2 videos. One features a look into 3 commercial pork barns giving viewers a chance to see what goes on inside a modern barn. The other features award-winning actor and former pig farmer, Eric Stonestreet, examining 21st-century pork production.
Rod Leeman is the Director of Business Development at Cactus Family Farms (CFF), the pork division of Cactus Feeders Inc., based out of Amarillo, TX. CFF owns pigs in Iowa, South Carolina, and Georgia and markets more than 850,000 pigs each year. Rod is also a member of the Iowa Pork Producers Association Board of Directors and serves on the committee level at the National Pork Producers Council. Mr. Leman serves as an industry volunteer and speaks nationwide. He graduated from the University of Minnesota – Morris in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Computer Science.
Rod and his wife, Susan, have five children and live in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He is a farmer, an industry leader, and he has been a volunteer speaker for the National Pork Board since 2008.
An online google doc audience evaluation form has been created. There is a slide at the end of the presentation with a QR code that will take the attendees to the audience evaluation. The online form only takes a few moments to complete. Please fill out the evaluation. Your feedback helps keep presentations up to date, informative and engaging. You can also find the link here
Join the University Sunrise Rotary Club for our weekly meeting this Thursday morning to hear Marc McCord of Treehouse give us a primer on Foster Care. Treehouse has received funding from our Club in the past.
The meeting runs from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. The Zoom line will open at 7:00 a.m. for informal networking.
Marc McCord is Treehouse’s Community Engagement Manager. In this position he works with community groups and corporate partners to help them find ways to impact the lives of youth experiencing foster care. This includes helping these groups with fundraising drives to advance our programs, material drives to stock the shelves of our free store, or even get involved with volunteering.
Program: This presentation goes over statistics on what youth experiencing foster care face, what Treehouse does to impact this, and how you can help.
Here is a YouTube video showing the artwork of our member, Claudia Gutierrez-Thomas.
Although this is in Spanish, check the attitude change of the kids as they get into the exhibition!
Claudia had her first art exposition at the age of 7 years, taught by assistants of the famed Mexican master Diego Rivera. From there she just got better, and her way of giving back has been to teach children to use art for values like anti-bullying, to deal with family violence and to avoid the use of toxic substances.
This video is of her teaching Mexican students in a high crime, low-income area. It is an example of more than 100 exhibitions between 2014 and 2018 that reached more than 10,000 youths, their teachers and sometimes their parents.
Her style, here called Arte Inocente 2, brings out the best in the viewers, the participants and the artist. Check the other Arte Inocente exhibits on Youtube.com — Joseph Thomas, an Innocent bystander.
The City of Seattle is growing at one of the fastest paces in the entire nation and it’s not slowing down. Our member, Tim Lenihan, one of the great experts on Seattle Real Estate will reprise his talk of last year on the prospects for the future of Seattle.
Tim has been in the Seattle real estate market for over 18 years as a top performing real estate broker… AND a University Sunrise Rotarian for 18 years as well. He was Windermere Real Estate’s top producing broker for many years and recently left Windermere after 15 years to start up his own Brokerage, Modern Den Real Estate + Development in March of 2020 (terrible timing). He manages this growing boutique brokerage of 11 brokers while still running his own top real estate practice. In addition, he co-owns a development company focused on building high end traditional style homes within the City of Seattle. When he isn’t working, he loves spending time with his family, wife Celeste, and two boys Rocco and Mercer (who now are 9 and 11 for all of you who have been here for a while).
Program Notes by Scott Jamieson:
Tim reviewed various demographics that showed that our real estate market is still “hot” despite increasing interest rates and a significant decline in the stock market. He reported that in the greater Seattle market, home prices have increased by a staggering 25% in the past 12 months. He indicated that this is not a sustainable situation and will be influenced, as before, by interest rates, the stock market, inflation and (normal) seasonal trends. This phenomenon was caused by supply and demand forces, with low inventory and high demand, low interest rates and an abundance of available capitol, especially in “tech industry” real estate shoppers. While he sees signs of a softening market, a real estate “bubble” is unlikely. He sees the upcoming “adjustments” as not only normal but healthy for the market overall. Tim briefly explained other issues (and problems) regarding zoning, especially in traditionally single family neighborhoods. He also briefly reviewed the likelihood of a softening of the rental market. He remains “bullish” on the Seattle market in general but expressed that the 10 year meteoric rise in home prices (and rental rates) will not continue.
At the time of the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. St. Helens, Joseph was the public information specialist for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest based in Seattle. He had previous volcanic experience from planning the Forest Service response for the potential eruption of Mt. Baker at the head of the Skagit River. That would have impacted the Puget Sound area, Bellingham, Vancouver and the British Columbia growing area as well as Vancouver Island. It gave him the experience before the Mt. St. Helens eruption of working with the seismology and volcanology scientists at the University of Washington.
Joe Thomas
As well, during his previous years as a paratrooper and Public Information Officer of the 82d Airborne Division, he had parallel experience in events with wide national and international attention. He as well, graduated from the Defense Department´s specialty course for such officers, called DINFOS.
He applied those skills as the information manager for the Forest Service’s Regional wildfire fighting team and as an instructor for training information specialists at the national wildfire center in Boise, Idaho.
Together with his wife, club member and homeopathy therapist Claudia Thomas, they have lived for 28 years near the Continental Divide east of Mexico City. Their home is close to two volcanos, one of those typically has multiple eruptions or emissions daily.
Program Notes by Mike Madden:
A little over forty years ago University Sunrise Rotary club member Joseph Thomas was monitoring Mt. Baker, northeast of Bellingham, Washington for volcanic activity. Then he received an urgent call to join the response team at Mount St. Helens, which had just erupted.
For about 30 minutes at our Thursday, May 12 meeting, Joseph recounted for us the most significant elements of this historic natural disaster and his own experiences as a key member of the USFS communications team, having erected a makeshift communications center and taking inquiries from news organizations all over the USA and the world.
Joseph noted that as tragic as the loss of the fifty-seven lives was, a worse disaster was serendipitously prevented by the delayed reopening of the park around the mountain. The reopening had been scheduled for the morning that the eruption occurred and possibly hundreds more lives would have been lost had the park been reopened on time.
This and many other specific memories enlivened Joseph’s talk, along with videoclips of new reports from the days surrounding the event.
Join us from 7:00-7:30 a.m. on Thursday for informal discussion. The weekly meeting then runs from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. There is no need to register. Join our Zoom Meeting by clicking on this link: https://zoom.us/j/9863950724
Valeriy Goloborodko, Honorary Consul of Ukraine and fellow Rotarian, gave a fascinating presentation of the shared history of Russia and Ukraine. His role as consul is to champion local Ukrainian cultural events, support local Ukrainians, and advocate politically for Ukrainian ideals.
During the presentation Valeriy discussed Russia’s long history of imperialistic aspirations. It’s easy to start wars, but difficult to end them. A whole generation of Russians have been brought up under the propaganda that Russian ideals are constantly under threat from Western powers. Breaking these beliefs will take heroic efforts and sacrifice by Western nations who share the democratic ideals of the Ukrainian people.
Supporting Ukraine through this difficult time can be done through several charities. Rotary International has created an official channel for donors to support the humanitarian crisis throughout the region. To find more information please use the following link: Rotary.org
Valeriy Goloborodko was born and raised in Ukraine. When he was 24 years old, he married and moved to the United States to start his family. Since his first day on American soil, Valeriy has shown great interest in serving his community and being an active member of both the Ukrainian and American communities.
Valeriy is a board member of the American European Bethel Mission. He served as chairman and then as a board member of the Friends of Ukraine organization. Valeriy founded Goel Payment Solutions, a company that provides a full spectrum of electronic payment transferring services, and has functioned as its president and CEO since 2009.
He also started the Ukrainian Business Association, to facilitate starting up relationships between American and Ukrainian businesses, which has merged with Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce, for which Valeriy served on the board.
In 2014 Valeriy was appointed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine as Honorary Consul of Ukraine. Consular post headed by Honorary Consul Valeriy Goloborodko has in its jurisdiction Washington and Oregon states.
Since 2016 Valeriy serves as a board member of Slavic Department at University of Washington advisory board.
In 2016 Valeriy co-founded and started NW Ukrainian International Festival, the biggest Ukrainian cultural event on the West coast of USA and Canada. Event is done by the Pacific Ukrainian Society, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Valeriy Goloborodko along with pillars of Ukrainian community of Washington State, that is focused on development and maintenance of strong and friendly relationships between Ukraine and USA, including through promoting culture, education, economic relationships and freedom.
Valeriy holds a Master’s degree from Shevchenko University in Law and a Management Information Systems Bachelor’s degree from International Christian University. Valeriy lives in Bellevue with his wife and four children.
