Donna Pedota
President
Donna, SaddleBrooke Ranch Resident, is currently a Strategy Director at Anthem Healthcare; she has spent much of her career in healthcare and as a consultant supporting many fortune 100 organizations. Donna has experience strategic planning including Technology and Consumer Trends. She holds a Masters in Organizational Management.
Donna supports charitable health clinics for underserved children across the US and has prior experience leading fundraising and community health education/outreach for underserved communities including well as women and infants. Her goal is to support and deliver on the OSF Foundation Mission and Vision.
Dale Farland
Vice-President
Dale was born and raised in the Cleveland, OH suburbs. Her undergraduate degree from Michigan State is in Urban Planning and was Planning Director of a suburb of Detroit. She also has her Master’s degree in U.P. from the University of Michigan. Her MBA from Michigan is in a concentration of Finance, Marketing and Real Estate Finance. She has worked as a commercial loan officer and trust and wealth management officer for three banks.
While living in Michigan, Dale was on the board and president of an organization for foster children who were emotionally and physically abused. Her last place she lived was Iowa City, Iowa. She has one daughter who is an Epidemiologist. She retired to SaddleBrooke Ranch, with her husband, to Tucson from Boston to teach and do research at the University of Arizona.
Richard Borland
Treasurer
Richard has over 41 years of management experience in working in commercial/retail banks and credit unions. He also has expertise in all aspects of consumer and commercial and mortgage lending in addition to human resource and consumer issues for various financial institutions. Richard is a member of various chambers of commerce and community groups and a founder of a Co-Ed Soccer Program in New Jersey. He was a Rider College all-American soccer candidate as a player and team captain and is a member and officer of various local United Way programs.
Chris Crum
Secretary
Chris has been a member of the Foundation Board since 2016. She is a retired Juvenile Court attorney who has been an active child advocate for decades. She is also the Mt. Vista 3rd grade Garden Club sponsor. She and her husband Larry live in SaddleBrooke and spend the hot months in Wisconsin with their family.
Ann Vernon
Fundraising
Joy is a third-generation teacher with 44 years of teaching experience, having taught in four different states. She earned her B.A. at the Univ. of Kentucky and her M.A. in English at Mississippi College. She piloted the first gifted program in Rankin County, MS which expanded from 21 students to over 600 before moving to Florida. The last 28 years of her teaching career, she taught gifted and International Baccalaureate English for grades 9 and 12 in Miami, FL. She earned her National Board certificate in Adolescent and Young Adulthood/English Language Arts and was Teacher of the Year in Mississippi and a finalist for Teacher of the Year in Florida. In addition to teaching, she coached Odyssey of the Mind teams with her teams achieving three World Championships and six Creativity awards.
Outside of teaching, her passions are riding her horse and spending time with her children and grandchildren. Retiring from teaching in 2014, she remains keenly interested in the education of Arizona’s children. As part of OSF, she will be an advocate for Oracle’s teachers and children.
Sherry Kaplan
Member-at-Large
Sherry Kaplan taught history, civics and English at Lane Technical High School. An all boys high school in Chicago, IL. She retired to raise her two children.
She also worked as a paralegal specializing in Estate Planning and real estate law for 20 years for 2 law firms in the Chicago area. When her husband became Mayor of Riverwoods, IL she quit her job and became his partner selling real estate in their community.
Upon moving to SaddleBrooke Sherry worked at “Kids Closet” and volunteered as a reading tutor at Mountain Vista school in Oracle. She has been both tutoring and reading to the children of the 3rd and 4th grade classes at Mountain Vista and also brings her therapy dog “Zoey” to visit the pre-school and kindergarten classes for the past 6 years. She and Zoey also have been visiting the patients at Sierra Tucson where Zoey has been a favorite.
Sherry is a member of SaddleBrooke Community Outreach Enrichment Committee and of SaddleBrooke Sunrise Rotary.
Terri Tindal
Member
During Terri’s 34 years in education, she was both a a teacher and administrator. She taught as both an Elementary classroom teacher and a Special education teacher. She was also asked to create and act as lead teacher in a program for emotionally and behaviorally challenged students in Grades Kindergarten through Sixth.
Her time as a school administrator started as a Principal in School District Eleven in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She retired as the Principal of Gateway Elementary in Woodland Park, Colorado and moved to a barrier island near St. Augustine, Florida for the wonderful experience of living near the ocean. In 2018, she wanted to move back West and was lucky enough to discover Saddlebrooke where she has been an active member of the SaddleBrooke Lady Niners Golf League. Terri has also enjoyed volunteering on behalf of the Oracle School District. Her work includes helping with the annual Fueling the Future effort and serving on the Political Action Committee which successfully advocated for Proposition #481 ensuring continued local funding for the District.
Joyce Hillard
Member-at-Large
Joy is a third-generation teacher with 44 years of teaching experience, having taught in four different states. She earned her B.A. at the Univ. of Kentucky and her M.A. in English at Mississippi College. She piloted the first gifted program in Rankin County, MS which expanded from 21 students to over 600 before moving to Florida. The last 28 years of her teaching career, she taught gifted and International Baccalaureate English for grades 9 and 12 in Miami, FL. She earned her National Board certificate in Adolescent and Young Adulthood/English Language Arts and was Teacher of the Year in Mississippi and finalist for Teacher of the Year in Florida. In addition to teaching, she coached Odyssey of the Mind teams with her teams achieving three World Championships and six Creativity awards.
Outside of teaching, her passions are riding her horse and spending time with her children and grandchildren. Retiring from teaching in 2014, she remains keenly interested in the education of Arizona’s children. As part of OSF, she will be an advocate for Oracle’s teachers and children.
Jessica Nehrmeyer
Member-at-Large
Jessica Nehrmeyer is a 4th grade teacher at Mountain Vista Elementary. She is a proud mother of two wonderful kiddos who both attended the preschool program at Mt. Vista. She is married to Matthew, who is a native to Oracle and his family has been part of the Oracle community for a long time. Jessica is a 4-H leader, the director of Miss Turquoise Circuit Pageant, and loves to volunteer her time helping others. She looks forward to helping the OSF Board so she can continue to make a positive difference in the Tri-Community.
Crystle Nehrmeyer
Superintendent
Oracle School District
Crystle informally entered the education profession when she was five years old and went home each day after school to teach her dolls what she learned in school. She is a graduate of both the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. She was a middle school teacher, instructional coach, and assistant principal before becoming a K-8 principal. As the Superintendent of the Oracle Elementary School District, she proudly serves on the Oracle Schools Foundation Board and takes great pride in the support they provide for the children of our community.
Alan Levenson
Honorary Member
Alan practiced labor law for 50 years in Portland, ME, first 25 before NLRB and the U.S. Courts of Appeal including one oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. The last 25, he represented clients who had been discriminated against by employers. Alan also served on the Portland School Committee for 7 years to include as chairman. With his wife Betsy, he operates a commercial real estate company in Portland and suburbs. Alan has tutored in the 1st and 2nd grades at Mt. Vista Elementary for 10 years. Betsy and he also established the Reach Scholarship which they have supported for years.
Linda Lyon
Honorary Member
Colonel Linda Lyon retired from the Air Force in 2007 at Andrews AFB, Maryland (home of Air Force One) where she served as the Mission Support Group Commander (city manager) for a 20,000-person community with 2,000 people under her command.
After retirement from the Air Force, she managed a contract at the Department of Energy and was a deputy program manager for L-3 Communications on the Secure Border Initiative Program.
As of 2022, Linda has also served ten years as a member of the Oracle School District Governing Board. She was named the Arizona School Board Association’s (ASBA) Advocate of the Year for 2013 is a past-president of both ASBA and the Friends of ASBA.