LEADERSHIP TEAM:

	Dina Zarif \| Artistic & Managing Director Dina is an Iranian immigrant, performer, designer, and vocalist who combines Western classical singing with Middle Eastern styles inspired by her Persian roots. Some of her credits include SF International Arts Festival, Palace of Fine Art, San Jose Stage, Golden Thread Productions at Brava Theater, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and the staged reading of Layla & Majnun at BAMPFA as part of the symposium with Mark Morris Dance Group and the Silk Road Ensemble. She tours both nationally and internationally as a costume designer and actress in the shadow light production Feathers of Fire. Dina is also a part-time architect and holds an MA in Landscape Architecture from the University of Tehran’s College of Fine Arts.
	Tamara Hull \| CPA Tamara Hull is a seasoned accounting and tax consultant who thrives on solving financial messes—complicated tax issues, disorganized bookkeeping, and incomplete records. She supports businesses at every stage, from startup to wind-down, and specializes in QuickBooks training. With over 20 years of nonprofit board experience (often as treasurer), she has helped many organizations form, regain tax-exempt status, and return to compliance. Nonprofit challenges are her specialty—and her passion.
	Finny Balboa \| Marketing Consultant Finny Balboa is a local Bay Area marketing entrepreneur as well as an artist and spends her time at the intersection of business and creativity. When she discovered, as an artist, that she could not allow her art to be commercially sold, she sought another role in marketing and found a home working with creative people to help them get their messages exposed.Thus she has had her own marketing company for the last 16 years, Orange22 whereby she’s been focusing on media planning for both start-up and large companies, and focused on working with creative teams to light her creative spirit.Over her career, she has collaborated with teams to launch local startups like eBay, to help Fortune 500 companies like Levi Strauss and Apple go e-commerce, or to help a few pro-bono issues such as Breast Cancer initiatives or helping to get out the Vote.Extremely resourceful, and just as effective helping small cash-strapped start-ups as larger, national or international organizations, she differentiates herself as putting creativity first.Finny studied fine art at Western Kentucky University, the Colorado Institute of Art, and San Francisco State. Many years were spent doing open studios in San Francisco, with multiple local showings, including a one-day residency at the Legion of Honor, and first place in multiple art shows in South San Francisco. Finny also mentors young people in both their business and artistic endeavors, and is working on her own startup, which focuses on helping young artists realize their potential.
	Puja Kapur \| Visual Artist Puja Kapur is a practicing mixed-media artist in San Francisco, and her interest in art was initiated in her home country of India through her training in art and architecture, in which she holds a bachelor’s degree. She began her career in India, working as an architect before moving to the U.S. to pursue an education in real estate in 2001. She received her master’s in real estate development from Columbia University in New York. Puja has since held various positions within the corporate real estate industry, and for her contributions in the Bay Area, she was recognized as one of the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Women of Influence in 2016.As a leadership team member, Puja contributes to the Red Poppy by supporting its growth in areas of operational and strategic development. As many of you may know, San Francisco has experienced a dramatic increase in the displacement of artists and art spaces over the last ten years, as high rents push them outward to other areas. Puja’s extensive experience in corporate real estate has been an invaluable asset for the Poppy’s team in terms of providing council for how to contend with re-negotiating the Poppy’s lease within this aggressive market.As a passionate chef, she aspires to introduce the culinary arts to the Red Poppy to support its core conception as a cultural site for encounter, to enhance its value in social practice and discourse.Puja is part of the artist community of ArtSpan and 1890 Bryant Street Studios.
	Mark Eisner \| Writer Mark started collaborating with the Poppy in 2004, shortly after its founding. At the time, he was wrapping up City Lights’ The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, whose red poppy cover inspired the art house’s name. Fourteen years later, his Pablo projects culminated in Neruda: The Biography of a Poet. Mark then co-edited Tin House’s anthology Resistencia: Poetry of Protest and Revolution. He is now finishing a book about photographer Tina Modotti’s life in 1920s Mexico.
	Todd Thomas Brown \| Founder Emeritus Todd Thomas Brown is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural connector, equally engaged in artistic practice and developing community-based arts models. He is the founder of San Francisco’s Red Poppy Art House and the Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP), a neighborhood festival that has produced over 75 events. His mixed-media painting has led to residencies with the de Young Museum and Residencia el Otro Lado (Chiapas, MX), and he was a founding fellow in the de Young’s Artist Fellowship Program. As a performing artist, he has received grants in music and theater from the SF Foundation, Zellerbach Foundation, and SF Arts Commission. Named to the YBCA 100, Todd currently serves as Project Director and Music Curator for Flying Under the Radar, a Bay Area–Rio de Janeiro arts festival and lab.

	Dina Zarif \| Artistic & Managing Director Dina is an Iranian immigrant, performer, designer, and vocalist who combines Western classical singing with Middle Eastern styles inspired by her Persian roots. Some of her credits include SF International Arts Festival, Palace of Fine Art, San Jose Stage, Golden Thread Productions at Brava Theater, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and the staged reading of Layla & Majnun at BAMPFA as part of the symposium with Mark Morris Dance Group and the Silk Road Ensemble. She tours both nationally and internationally as a costume designer and actress in the shadow light production Feathers of Fire. Dina is also a part-time architect and holds an MA in Landscape Architecture from the University of Tehran’s College of Fine Arts.
	Tamara Hull \| CPA Tamara Hull is a seasoned accounting and tax consultant who thrives on solving financial messes—complicated tax issues, disorganized bookkeeping, and incomplete records. She supports businesses at every stage, from startup to wind-down, and specializes in QuickBooks training. With over 20 years of nonprofit board experience (often as treasurer), she has helped many organizations form, regain tax-exempt status, and return to compliance. Nonprofit challenges are her specialty—and her passion.
	Finny Balboa \| Marketing Consultant Finny Balboa is a local Bay Area marketing entrepreneur as well as an artist and spends her time at the intersection of business and creativity. When she discovered, as an artist, that she could not allow her art to be commercially sold, she sought another role in marketing and found a home working with creative people to help them get their messages exposed.Thus she has had her own marketing company for the last 16 years, Orange22 whereby she’s been focusing on media planning for both start-up and large companies, and focused on working with creative teams to light her creative spirit.Over her career, she has collaborated with teams to launch local startups like eBay, to help Fortune 500 companies like Levi Strauss and Apple go e-commerce, or to help a few pro-bono issues such as Breast Cancer initiatives or helping to get out the Vote.Extremely resourceful, and just as effective helping small cash-strapped start-ups as larger, national or international organizations, she differentiates herself as putting creativity first.Finny studied fine art at Western Kentucky University, the Colorado Institute of Art, and San Francisco State. Many years were spent doing open studios in San Francisco, with multiple local showings, including a one-day residency at the Legion of Honor, and first place in multiple art shows in South San Francisco. Finny also mentors young people in both their business and artistic endeavors, and is working on her own startup, which focuses on helping young artists realize their potential.
	Puja Kapur \| Visual Artist Puja Kapur is a practicing mixed-media artist in San Francisco, and her interest in art was initiated in her home country of India through her training in art and architecture, in which she holds a bachelor’s degree. She began her career in India, working as an architect before moving to the U.S. to pursue an education in real estate in 2001. She received her master’s in real estate development from Columbia University in New York. Puja has since held various positions within the corporate real estate industry, and for her contributions in the Bay Area, she was recognized as one of the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Women of Influence in 2016.As a leadership team member, Puja contributes to the Red Poppy by supporting its growth in areas of operational and strategic development. As many of you may know, San Francisco has experienced a dramatic increase in the displacement of artists and art spaces over the last ten years, as high rents push them outward to other areas. Puja’s extensive experience in corporate real estate has been an invaluable asset for the Poppy’s team in terms of providing council for how to contend with re-negotiating the Poppy’s lease within this aggressive market.As a passionate chef, she aspires to introduce the culinary arts to the Red Poppy to support its core conception as a cultural site for encounter, to enhance its value in social practice and discourse.Puja is part of the artist community of ArtSpan and 1890 Bryant Street Studios.
	Mark Eisner \| Writer Mark started collaborating with the Poppy in 2004, shortly after its founding. At the time, he was wrapping up City Lights’ The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, whose red poppy cover inspired the art house’s name. Fourteen years later, his Pablo projects culminated in Neruda: The Biography of a Poet. Mark then co-edited Tin House’s anthology Resistencia: Poetry of Protest and Revolution. He is now finishing a book about photographer Tina Modotti’s life in 1920s Mexico.
	Todd Thomas Brown \| Founder Emeritus Todd Thomas Brown is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural connector, equally engaged in artistic practice and developing community-based arts models. He is the founder of San Francisco’s Red Poppy Art House and the Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP), a neighborhood festival that has produced over 75 events. His mixed-media painting has led to residencies with the de Young Museum and Residencia el Otro Lado (Chiapas, MX), and he was a founding fellow in the de Young’s Artist Fellowship Program. As a performing artist, he has received grants in music and theater from the SF Foundation, Zellerbach Foundation, and SF Arts Commission. Named to the YBCA 100, Todd currently serves as Project Director and Music Curator for Flying Under the Radar, a Bay Area–Rio de Janeiro arts festival and lab.