Avenidas Lifetimes of Achievement 2010 Honorees
Marge Bruno
Community
leader Marge Bruno is well-known for her service in and around
Los Altos, where she was twice elected Mayor and served two City Council terms.
Marge has been on the boards of the Los Altos Community Foundation and Pilgrim
Haven and was the first woman President of the Los Altos Rotary Club, where
in 1995 she established the Partners-in-Education tutoring program. She was
a founding member of the Los Altos Library Endowment Board, chaired the board
of the Los Altos Mediation Program, and was president of the board for the
Community Services Agency of Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.
Marge earned her MBA from San Jose State University in 1977 and founded Adobe
Financial Group in 1980, which she ran for 14 years. Her additional government
experience includes time spent chairing the boards of the Bay Area Air Quality
Management District, the League of California Cities’ Committee on Revenue
and Taxation, and the Santa Clara County Paratransit Committee. Marge and
her husband, Mike, still reside in Los Altos and have two children and two
grandchildren.
Elizabeth Wolf
Longtime Palo Alto resident, community volunteer, and philanthropist Elizabeth Wolf has focused her most recent efforts on children, education, and issues of equality of opportunity. Elizabeth and her late husband, Hans (also a former Lifetimes honoree), established a small family foundation in 1966 and worked untiringly on many community projects, including her local church. In addition to providing homes for exchange students at Gunn High School, she also had many international graduate students living in their home for more than 20 years. She has helped with fund development at Eastside College Prep, Wheelock College in Boston, and The Aloha Foundation in Vermont. She served on the boards of Family Service Association, Community School of Music and Arts, and the Tech Museum of San Jose, and is currently a board member of Abilities United (formerly CAR). Elizabeth has four children and five grandchildren.
Emery Rogers
In 1979, longtime Hewlett-Packard employee Emery Rogers was invited by the company’s founders to create and direct a foundation for the organization. Emery was uniquely qualified for the position, having served on a board that directed research grants to the University of Delaware while he was in Wilmington heading up one of HP’s instrument company acquisitions. Emery has been president of the board at CHC and vice president of the Palo Alto United Way Board, and chaired the boards of the Scientific Apparatus Makers Association, San Jose PBS TV station KTEH, Channing House, Stanford Convalescent Hospital, and Castilleja School. A Stanford graduate with an AB & PhD in Physics, Emery also served on a joint Army-Navy science team at the US Naval Research Lab, which came up with a solution to the severe “precipitation static” problem causing aircraft to lose crucial radio contact during storms. Emery has three children, five stepchildren, and eight grandchildren, and he and his wife, Nancy, currently live in Palo Alto.
Gordon Russell
Portola Valley’s Gordon Russell was a general partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital for over 20 years. Specializing in high technology and health care, Gordon has held senior management positions in the biomedical and health care industries. He is a founder of the Sun Valley Writers Conference and serves as a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Woods Hole Research Center, and Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto. He also served as a trustee and chairman of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and chaired the boards of the Peninsula Community Foundation and Community Impact. He holds a BA and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Dartmouth, where he is a member of the Native American Visiting Committee and the Presidents Leadership Council as well as a former chair of the Dartmouth Medical School Board of Overseers. Gordon is the proud parent of one son and two stepsons.
Fred and Marcia Rehmus
As a team, Fred and Marcia Rehmus gifts to the community include endowment funding and art gifts to the Rehmus Family Gallery of Native American Art at Cantor Arts Center and endowment of the Frederick P. Rehmus Family Presidential Professorship of Humanities at Stanford. A founding principal of Brownson, Rehmus & Foxworth, Inc., Fred has generously shared his knowledge of investment and finance with several nonprofits throughout the years. Both have been involved with Gamble Garden Center, Marcia as a past board president and Fred as a finance committee member. In addition to serving on boards and committees of Menlo-Atherton High School and schools in the Menlo Park School District, Marcia has focused a great deal of her volunteer efforts to the benefit of Avenidas, serving stints on the Agency’s board and on various fundraising committees. A co-founder of Avenidas Village, Marcia is involved with the endowment fund of the Junior League and is on the board of Breast Cancer Connections. A loyal alumnus and fundraiser for Stanford Business School, Fred chaired the membership board at Cantor Arts Center and is currently on the board of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The couple recently moved to Palo Alto after living in Atherton for many years and has 3 children and 6 grandchildren.
