Inside Our Room

Directors & Advisors

Directors and advisors include volunteers from a wide variety of backgrounds with expertise in the arts, arts management, business, theology, and psychology.

Board of Directors

• Darlene Chandler Bassett, President and Founder
• Mark DeGarmo
• Mary Johnson
• Jean Richardson
• Lindsay Lancaster
• Sharon Oard Warner
• James K. Baird, Jr.
• Kate Gale

Advisory Council

Leslie Belardi, Kenny Fries, Vickie Giblin, Joanne Heyler, Bruce Karatz, Patti Lovaas, Gail McMeekin, LICSW, Marilynne Robinson, Judith Roderick, and M. Willson Williams.

About Darlene Chandler Bassett

In 2000, Darlene Chandler Bassett founded A Room Of Her Own (AROHO), a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation which provides innovative arts patronage for women writers and artists.

A retired corporate executive, Bassett worked for two decades with famed entrepreneur and arts patron, Eli Broad. At various Broad entities, Kaufman and Broad, Inc., Broad Inc., and SunAmerica, Bassett was the senior human resources officer in charge of organizational planning and development. In this capacity she served as internal consultant to the Chairman regarding the continued development of an innovative corporate culture.

Concurrent with her corporate management positions, Bassett was Board Chairperson of The California Abortion Rights Action League—South from 1984 to 1991. Under her leadership, the political non-profit increased its effectiveness in the fight to protect women's reproductive freedom.

Now bringing her unique combination of corporate and non-profit management experience to the arts, Bassett is focusing her efforts on women writers and artists. Bassett is committed to building a public foundation which uses performance standards which are typically reserved for the for-profit world of business.

AROHO's Gift of Freedom award program grants up to $50,000 to one woman writer or artist. Using a business approach to the artistic process, AROHO bolsters the financial gift with practical help from mentors who work through the grantee's "business plan."

Bassett is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara in Classics and was a guest lecturer at the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Business.

About Mark DeGarmo

Mark is a dancer/choreographer with more than 70 works in his company's repertory. The company, Mark DeGarmo & Dancers, which presents duo, trio, or sextet programs and has made more than ten international tours, including France, England, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and Slovenia. He received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to Peru which lead to the creation of a joint U.S.—Peru contemporary dance company. Mark DeGarmo is the recipient of numerous fellowships, commissions, awards, and honors that reflect his twenty-six years in dance in New York City and his ongoing commitment to dance, education, intercultural communication and international exchange and understanding.

About Mary Johnson

Mary is a writer whose need for a room of her own was a catalyst in the initial formation of AROHO. She holds an MFA from Goddard College and currently works as a freelance editor while writing a memoir based on her twenty years as a nun with the Sisters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Mary has been the recipient of several awards and scholarships for her writing and is pleased that AROHO offers her the opportunity to offer support to other women writers and artists.

About Jean Richardson

Jean received her doctorate of ministry from the San Francisco Theological Seminary and served in various pastoral, ministry and consultant positions with the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Jean was a board member of the Larkin Street Youth Center and the Bay Area's Women's Resource Center. She is currently Development Director of Ghost Ranch Conference Center, Abiquiu, New Mexico.

About Lindsay Lancaster

Lindsay Lancaster is the Community Relations and Marketing Director for the Flying Star Cafe and Satellite Serious Coffee, a 20 million dollar urban restaurant company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lindsay's background is in community collaboration and publishing. She graduated Summa cum Laude from the University of New Mexico, with a degree in creativity and collaboration. She built that degree in part with the leading female creativity guru, Vera John-Steiner. Lindsay served as the community relations director for an independent bookstore in Albuquerque and as editor-in-chief of The Magazine. She has given many book marketing workshops at bookseller conferences and also served two years as one of the poetry editors for the Blue Mesa Review. She is an avid poetry consumer and believes that poetry and art are not luxuries. She has served as Director of External Affairs for AROHO for the past 18 months.

About Sharon Oard Warner

Sharon Oard Warner is Director of Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico, as well as Director of UNM-sponsored Taos Summer Writers' Conference. Her works include an edited collection of stories titled The Way We Write Now: Short Stories from the AIDS crisis; a novel, Deep in the Heart; and a short story collection, Learning to Dance and Other Stories. Her stories and essays have appeared in a number of publications including Sonora Review, Green Mountains Review, Other Voices, The Year's Best Writing on Writing, The AWP Chronicle, Studies in Short Fiction, The Writer, and The Writer's Digest. She has reviewed books for The Kansas City Star, The Dallas Morning News, The Des Moines Register, and The New York Times. Currently, she is completing a novel-in-stories entitled Sweetness.

About Jim Baird

Jim Baird is Program Director at Ghost Ranch Abiquiu/Santa Fe. He has a B.A. in English Literature/Philosophy from Texas Christian Unniversity and an M.A. in Theater/Speech from Kansas State Teachers College. Past work experiences include Production Stage Manager/Stage Director at Bonfils Theater, Denver; Executive Director, Denver Civic Ballet; Instructor of English/Speech at both Denver Technical College and Santa Fe Community College/Division of Corrections Education; and Partnership Coordinator, Plaza Resolana, Santa Fe. He has served on many boards including Denver Center of the Performing Arts, Hope House (Santa Fe), Santa Fe Cares, and the New Mexico Conference of Churches.

About Kate Gale

Kate Gale, PhD is the 2005-2006 President of PEN USA, and president of American Composers Forum/LA, Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor at The Los Angeles Review, as well as a writer of poetry, novels and librettos. She has founded or co-founded the Red Hen Press, The Los Angeles Review, the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Series, the Geffen reading series, and a "Writers in the Schools" program for underserved communities. She acquired her PhD in literature from Claremont Graduate University. Gale has also published four books of poetry, a novel, a bilingual children's book, as editor of three literary anthologies, and completed the libretto for the opera "Rio de Sangre" by Don Davis. A mother of three, Gale resides in Los Angeles. For more about Kate and Red Hen Press, visit www.redhen.org.