Board Members

LACA’s Board of Directors is made up of community volunteers who subscribe to the Foundation’s mission statement. Board members are expected to attend a majority of the six annual meetings, take part in the review and funding of programs, actively engage in fundraising as appropriate, and contribute financially to the Foundation as personal means permit.

The current Board membership includes the following:

Julie Ackerman - Julie and her husband have been married for 24 years and are the proud parents of son, Aaron (21 years old), and daughter, Elise (ll years old). Julie has held various positions in the Alameda County Public Works Agency during the past 26 years. She is currently an Engineering Staff Assistant III in the Engineering and Construction Department. In her spare time, she volunteers at Elise’s school and works with her basketball team. Julie is an avid sports fan, attending all the University of California, Berkeley foolball and basketball games with her family. Julie began as a volunteer secretary on the LACA Board in 2005 and was subsequently invited to join as a full member.

Jesse A. Canchola - Jesse joined LACA in 2005. Though a native Californian, his parents came from Mexico. Jesse is a biostatistician at Siemens Medical Solutions Diagnostics in Berkeley CA as well as a dedicated photographer and videographer. Close to his heart is LACA’s mission to the Tarahumara Indians in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. In one recent LACA mission there, he took over 600 still pictures as well as several hours of video, which, in his labor of love, he melded into a wonderfully moving short film for all to see. Jesse hopes to continue with the LACA vision of helping others help themselves and to serve as an example for others to to the same.

Mary Mapelli-Conway is a registered nurse who holds Master’s Degrees in both nursing and counseling. She is employed as a District Nurse for the San Lorenzo Unified School District. She is a volunteer at a free health clinic in San Leandro and assists Lil Trillo with coordinating the medical trips to Central America.

Dolores Mijares-Downing - Dolores is a native Californian of Mexican descent. She has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of her life and is an active volunteer in the hispanic community. She has been on the LACA Board of Directors since its inception in 1992, and has participated as a translator for medical clinics in Honduras and El Salvador. Dolores is the Board’s correspondant with the staff of the Nina Carolina Day Care Center in El Salvador where she matches a needy child at the Center with a LACA sponsor. Working with children is a job she cherishes. Dolores and her husband John have six grandchildren.

Martha O. Duarte

Christopher Ingram - Chris has been a member of the Board for over 10 years, and has served several terms as Vice President. He has also been an avid participant in numerous missions to Central America, doing mostly translation and interpretation for dactors in the exam rooms. Chris was born in South Carolina but gew up in California and Oregon. After a successful 20-year career as a trial lawyer in San Francisco, he went back to school to study horticulture and tree care. He is now an internationally certified arborist and professional aesthetic pruner. He was recently honored to be selected as one of only two professional aesthetic pruners allowed to work in the famous San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden.

Sheila McAlinden, a former history instructor at Marygrove College, has been on the LACA Board for over six years. She serves as vice-president of the Board and co-editor of the newsletter.

Bridget Meyer - Our newest Board member studied political and economic development of third world countries at UC Berkeley. Her studies opened her eyes to the inequalities throughout the world and inspired her to make a difference. She traveled to 25 different counties and conducted research in New Zealand, Cuba, Chile and Guatemala. Upon graduating, she founded Global Healthcare Project (GHP), a disease awareness and prevention non-profit organization which serves the rural poor in Guatemala. Bridget is currently working full time in the marketing department at Genentech, but says her passion will always be helping the rural poor of Latin America.

Linda M. Palmeri - Linda is a CPA and has worked in public accounting for 24 years. She has been the treasurer for LACA since December 2001. Beside working with numbers, Linda enjoys spending time with her husband, Steve, and their two children, Angela and Matt.

Lillian R. Trillo - Lillian’s background is in public health nursing, tending the disadvantaged both in Detroit’s inner city as well as among migrant workers inn Gilroy CA. Even so, she was overwhelmed by the poverty she found among the rural poor on a trip to Honduras in 1988. She founded LACA in 1992 and has served as the Foundation’s president for 13 or its 15 years. Prior to LACA, Lillian volunteered with four International Health Service medical teams to Latin America, and has led two eye clinics and five medical clinics with LACA.

Walter R. Turner - Walt has been a member of the Board of Directors since its inception in 1992. Walt is a transactional attorney who has been in private practice in Oakland CA for almost 30 years. He has been working feverishly to improve his fluency in Spanish–which remains at the kindergarten level despite his participation in LACA’s three most recent missions in Latin America. “Yo soy tambien y salsa!” he recently exclaimed in his first complete (albeit nonnsensical) sentence in the language he intends to master before he returns to Nicaragua in 2008.

Adelmise Warner is a Labor and Employment attorney working at the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office. She was born and raised in a small village outside of Léogâne, Haiti until she was 16 years old when she immigrated to the United States. She now lives in the East Bay with her husband and two children.