Alumni Association elects Board of Directors, National Council members

The Arizona State University Alumni Association recently elected its 2011-2012 board of directors and National Alumni Council. Terms for all members of both entities began July 1.

Board/Council Officers
The following persons have been elected to serve as officers of the board of directors and the National Alumni Council.

Chair: George Diaz Jr. ’96 B.A., ’99 M.P.A.
Diaz works as a senior public affairs representative for Pinnacle West Capital Corp. He has served as a lobbyist before executive, legislative and administrative bodies, with a concentration in providing defensive and affirmative representation at the state legislature. Diaz currently serves as chair of the March of Dimes Arizona Chapter and is on the governing boards for Chicanos Por La Causa and the Border Trade Alliance. He has been president of the Los Diablos chapter of the ASU Alumni Association. In his service to the Alumni Association, Diaz has served on the association’s board of directors since 2006 and worked with its advocacy, marketing, Founders’ Day and Medallion Scholarship committees.

Chair-Elect: Barbara Clark ’84 M.Ed.
Barbara Clark was first elected to the board of directors in 2006 and has served as chair of the Founders’ Day committee and a member of the executive, scholarship and board development committees. Clark’s civic affiliations include the AZ K-12 Center, the AZ STEM Center and AZ STRUT (Students Recycling Used Technology). From 1991 to 2006, she collaborated with the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering on projects relating to their minority engineering programs. She has been honored for her contributions to the community with the 2004 Women in Business Award from the Phoenix Business Journal and the Girl Scouts’ 2004 Women of Distinction Award.

Treasurer: Bob Boschee ’83 B.S., ’85 M.B.A.
Boschee, who begins a second one-year term as treasurer, is a wealth management advisor with Merrill Lynch, as well as one of the principal partners of the Ashley & Boschee Group, a team specializing in financial advisory services for clients with investable assets in excess of $1 million. After graduation, he worked for ASU Public Events. He was elected to the Alumni Association board in 2008, where he has served on the finance and audit committees and has served as a liaison to the Arizona State University Foundation Investment Committee. Boschee is president of the Phoenix Chartered Financial Analyst Society, a designated instruction leader for Landmark Education, and a member of Class XXXII of Valley Leadership.

Past Chair: Chris Spinella ’83 B.S.
Spinella is CEO of Apriva, a company specializing in wireless applications and smart card technologies. An entrepreneur at heart, he also co-founded NetSearch LLC, a wireless application company and was the chairman and co-founder of Zanova, Inc. He has been an active member of the ASU Alumni Association, serving as founding member and past president of the organization’s Leadership Scholarship Program alumni chapter. While on the Alumni Association board, Spinella has served on the audit committee, the finance committee and the Medallion Scholarship committee.

ASU Alumni Association Board of Directors
The following persons were elected to their first three-year term on the Alumni Association’s board of directors, effective July 1:

Theresa Esparza ’94 M.Tax.
Esparza is the director of tax for P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, Inc. A graduate of the Hispanic Leadership Institute at Arizona State University, Esparza is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ State and Local Taxation Technical Resource Panel. She is also a past treasurer and a sustaining member of the Junior League of Phoenix, Inc., and has worked as a loaned executive for the Valley of the Sun United Way. Prior to joining the board of the Alumni Association, Esparza was a member of its National Alumni Council.

Brian LaCorte ’85 B.S.
LaCorte is a partner in the intellectual property department of Ballard Spahr LLC and a member of its intellectual property litigation, patents, trademarks and copyrights groups. He has served on the education subcommittee of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America/American Association for Justice, the governor’s “Smart Beginnings” task force, and has been a member of the Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness. He is active in the St. Thomas More Society, Valley Leadership (Class XI), and the Valley Citizens League. He has served on the board of Crisis Nursery and is a past president of Southwest Human Development.

Stephanie Nowack ’76 M.B.A.
Nowack is president and CEO of the Tempe Tourism Office. Prior to joining the tourism office, she held positions in both the corporate and nonprofit fields, working at Security Pacific Bank (now Bank of America), Motorola, and Valley of the Sun United Way. Nowack serves on the boards of the Tempe Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Tempe Community, and the Arizona Tourism Alliance. She is a graduate of Valley Leadership Class IV, Sky Harbor’s Aviation Academy, and the Phoenix Police Department’s Citizen’s Police Academy, and served for many years as a reading tutor for the Boys & Girls Clubs and All Star Kids Tutoring.  She also has worked as a faculty associate at ASU, teaching special event management, and as a marketing instructor for the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation.

The new board members join Todd Siffren ’91 B.S., who will start his second term with the board this year, as well as continuing board members Andy Hanshaw ’87 B.S., Barbara Hoffnagle ’83 M.S.E., Ivan Johnson ’73 B.A., ’86 M.B.A., Dan Mullen ’66 B.S., Martin Quintana ’87 B.S., ’04 M.B.A., J. Scott Rhodes ’95 J.D., and Jeff van Raaphorst ’87 B.S., ’97 M.B.A.

ASUAA National Alumni Council
Two persons were elected to their first three-year terms on the Alumni Association’s National Alumni Council:

Michael Grosso ’97 B.S.
Grosso is an advisor/partner at TCI Wealth Advisors Inc. Prior to joining TCI, he worked with Charles Schwabb and Co. Inc., as a consultant to registered investment advisory firms throughout the southwestern United States. Grosso currently serves as treasurer for the W. P. Carey School of Business alumni chapter and is an active member of the White Mountain alumni chapter. He also is a member of the Men’s Art Council and serves on the committee for the Phoenix Children’s Hospital annual golf tournament.

Guy Patrick Roll ’90 B.S.
Roll’s law office specializes in bankruptcy, divorce and civil/commercial litigation, as well as commercial transaction matters.  He is the secretary and a founding member of the board of directors for a business bank focused on serving the Hispanic business community in Phoenix. He has served his community by being a member of the Tempe Diablos; a board member for the Tempe Sister Cities program, acting as a country coordinator for Macedonia since 2009; the Arizona region mountaineering director for National Ski Patrol; and by participating in the Tempe Leadership Program (Class XII). He is also a member of the Arizona State Bar Association. Roll was a member of the ASU Alumni Association board of directors from 1998 to 2000, and is a past board president of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Alumni Association.

These new members join the following persons, who will be serving their second term on the council: David Benner ’02 B.S., David Covert ’78 B.S., Curtis Frasier ’77 B.A.E., Jeffrey Olen ’97 B.S., and James Shaughnessy ’72 B.A.E., as well as continuing council members Steven Balthazor ’91 B.S.E., Charlie Broucek ’93 B.S., Eddie DeVall ’93 B.S., Christine Devine ’87 B.A., Dick Foreman ’76 B.A., ’79 M.P.A., Matt Gervin ’01 B.S., Bret Giles ’87 B.S., Marnie Green ’87 B.S., ’91 M.B.A., Nick Kieffer ’00 B.A., Jonell Lucca ’95 B.A., Vada O’Hara Manager ’83 B.S., Frank McCune ’92 B.A., Anne Sawkiw ’99 B.A., Darren Skarecky ’94 B.S., Joseph Udall ’92 J.D., and Kathleen Duffy Ybarra ’81 B.A.