Team

Small crew, bold vision.

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  • Lani Rovzar comes to BACF with a deep working history in the Bay Area arts community, as well as many years of experience helping scale globally a successful start-up. She's worked with nonprofit organizations such as The Sharon Art Studio, New Langton Arts, Museum of Craft & Folk Art, Headlands Center for the Arts, and served on the Advisory Board for the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. Passionate about supporting local artists and community, she founded 42 Degrees Arts Agency, an incubator program through Intersection for the Arts. She believes it is especially important to support the wonder, inquisitiveness and joy creativity invites in young people, so that it has the opportunity to grow into a natural modality that shapes the way they approach their lives and the world. For fun, Lani enjoys taking photos with her vintage Polaroid LandCameras on hikes in the Mojave Desert.

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  • Kirstin Bach is a long-time San Francisco resident, arts administrator and mother of two teenagers. She has organized and produced artist projects and exhibitions in a variety of cultural settings. She formerly headed up the Arts program at the Exploratorium where she led the artist-in-residence program as well as art installations, programs and performances. Previous to her work at the Exploratorium, Kirstin was an exhibition coordinator at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Assistant Director for Administration at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and Program Director for The Seed Fund. Kirstin has learned through her experience working with artists and scientists, that curiosity and creativity fuel innovative thinking and drive learning. She is fervent in her support of creative youth, and through her work hopes to cultivate an understanding of the value of lifelong creativity.

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  • Grace is a marketing leader with over a decade of experience building brands, leading strategy, and executing campaigns across B2C, B2B, and B2B2C channels. She has worked at early-stage startups and mission-driven organizations, where she's led everything from product launches to partnerships and creative content development. She was drawn to BACF by its commitment to uplifting young artists and valuing the creative process—a mission that deeply resonates with her own experiences and values. Creativity has been a central thread throughout Grace’s life. She studied vocal performance in college, directed her a cappella group, and has performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She’s passionate about design, and has recently taken up watercolor painting as another creative outlet.

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Meet our board of directors.

  • As a long-time Bay Area resident and supporter of the Arts, Dr. Emil Kakkis, formed the Bay Area Creative Foundation to establish a non-profit organization promoting creativity in young people in the Arts and Sciences. We seek to inspire local residents, schools and businesses to support creativity and creative efforts of our local creative youth. The goal is to increase the awareness of the importance of creativity in all of our lives and encourage our young creatives by acknowledging that they have a special place in the world and are valued by their community.

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  • John Ditton is the CEO of Granville Management and serves on the board of directors of the Bay Area Creative Foundation and other biotech and technology start up companies. Before forming the BACF with founder Dr. Emil Kakkis, John worked as a patient group liaison and leader in commercial operations & marketing for rare disease companies. John helped launch the Rare Artist competition and web gallery for the EveryLife Foundation and seeing the joy this brought to the participants, he was immediately drawn to take on the challenge of encouraging creativity in our high schools. John’s passion to develop creative business leaders willing and able to tackle tomorrow’s challenges was formed working with marketing agencies, salespeople and innovative scientists for 20+ years. John is a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Duntroon and the University of Tasmania and lives in the Nevada Sierra surrounded by the creative energies of his wife Katie (arts & crafts) and his two sons, Ty (aspiring actor) and Jack (redesigning gaming for the next generation).

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  • Tishan Cowan is an innovative partnerships leader with over 20 years experience designing impactful partnership strategy roadmaps and building best in class teams that deliver on organizational goals and missions. Having worked at both entertainment media companies and technology start ups, she enjoys building new roadmaps that haven’t existed before. Currently, she serves as the Head of Partnerships at Understood.org, a social impact organization dedicated to helping individuals with learning and thinking differences thrive.

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