The NonprofitCenters Network

Staff Members

China Brotsky
Managing Director, Tides Shared Spaces
Executive Director, The NonprofitCenters Network

China Brotsky is a Senior Vice President at Tides and Managing Director of Tides Shared Spaces, a Tides initiative which creates, operates and promotes sustainable work space for nonprofits. China joined Tides in 1990 as Chief Financial Officer. During her tenure at Tides, China managed the restoration and development of the Thoreau Center for Sustainability, a multi-tenant nonprofit center in San Francisco 's Presidio National Park and home to Tides. China has recently completed another multi-tenant nonprofit center; Thoreau Center New York in Lower Manhattan and is responsible for partnership development, design and construction, financing and leasing for that project. China also co-founded and directs The NonprofitCenters Network, a cross-sector national network of nonprofits and their real estate partners. She has lectured and consulted nationally on the creation and operation of nonprofit facilities. China also served as the founding executive director of Groundspring.org, a nonprofit internet tools provider and grantmaker. Prior to Tides, China served six years in public accounting and was the Deputy Director of Finance and Administration at the Exploratorium Science Museum . China is a member of the board of directors of Global Greengrants Fund and CorpWatch. China received a B.S. in accounting from Golden Gate University and is a CPA in the state of California.

Roxanne Hanson
Associate Director

As Associate Director of The NonprofitCenters Network, Roxanne manages NCN's membership, education and publications on the creation and operation of quality nonprofit office and program space. Prior to joining NCN, Roxanne spent twelve years working in the national and international nonprofit community based in Washington, DC. She has provided fundraising, program and planning consultation for both large and small nonprofit organizations. She has been an active board member of community arts organizations and serves as a volunteer management trainer.

Tuan Ngo 
Marketing & Membership Manager

Tuan works with our vibrant community of NCN members across North America, reaching out to new nonprofit centers, helping to organize training events, and producing new publications for our sector. Prior to joining NCN, Tuan was a Coro Fellow, where he spent nine months dissecting the systems that make our democracy function. He has taught students in Sacramento's low-income neighborhoods and initiated an English camp in a leprosy community while studying in Thailand. As an undergraduate, he was the Editor-in-Chief of his college journal on international affairs, addressed campus policies towards students of color, and raised money for orphans living with HIV/AIDS in Africa. For his undergraduate thesis, he produced a documentary that examined Vietnam's political, economic, and social landscape. Tuan holds a B.A. in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College. 

Shantel Nilson
Coordinator

Shantel has seven years experience in accounting and administration. Before coming to Tides Shared Spaces, Shantel worked for an architectural modeling company where she nearly ran every operation from handling HR to payroll to managing special projects. Shantel has a certificate in Accounting.

Steering Committee Members

Chair
Tim Wintermute
Executive Director
Luella Hannan Memorial Foundation, Detroit, MI

Tim Wintermute has been actively involved in working with nonprofit organizations since 1971 when he began working at Project FIND, a nonprofit social service agency for low income senior citizens residing in New York City. In 1982, he started his own consulting business in Ann Arbor, Michigan and assisted a number of nonprofits in the development and construction of over 3,000 units of housing. After serving in a consultant capacity to the Hannan Foundation, Tim was named its Associate Director, then appointed Executive Director in 1996. In 1993, the Foundation converted Hannan House, a 50,000 square foot facility, into a center that provides office space and infrastructure support for a number of non profit organizations.

Vice-Chair
Shelley Hamilton
Executive Director
MarinSpace, San Rafael, CA

Shelley Hamilton joins MarinSpace after spending more than 10 years as a consultant in both the Public Benefit and Information Technology sectors. She is founder and principal of NetCentric Designs, a business strategy, team facilitation, and organizational design firm. For the past 7 years, Shelley's projects have focused on collaborative nonprofit capital infrastructure projects, mainly in the form of creating and operating Multi-tenant Nonprofit Centers. She has facilitated strategic planning, organizational development, and program design projects for the Thoreau Center for Sustainability, Fort Mason Center and the United Way of Grand Forks, ND. Shelley was the lead project consultant for both Collaborating for Success Nonprofit Centers Conferences (San Francisco '01 & New York '03).

Vice-Chair
Andy Johnston
Executive Director
Loudoun Cares, Leesburg, VA

After leaving Loudoun United Way in the winter of 2003, Andy Johnston became executive director of Loudoun Cares a multi-tenant nonprofit center start-up effort in the fastest growing county in the United States . Loudoun Cares currently has twelve health and human service nonprofit organizations interested in partnering in a future facility. Prior to joining Loudoun Cares, Johnston worked as a consultant with nonprofit organizations and helped establish an environmentally focused residential development, EcoVillage of Loudoun County. In 1999, he became Assistant Director of Loudoun United Way , with primary responsibility for community development initiatives, as well as fundraising, public relations, and managing a grantmaking process that distributed more than $1,000,000 to agencies serving Loudoun residents. Johnston also worked with community leaders to establish the Loudoun Human Services Network, serving as one of the co-chairs of this "coalition of community organizations working through advocacy and collaboration to ensure availability and access to human services for Loudoun County residents."

Jerry Bilton
Executive Director
The Community Service Building, Wilmington, DE

Jerry Bilton is a Certified Facility Manager and holds an MA in Economics from the University of Delaware. He has been Executive Director of the nonprofit Community Service Building Corporation since 1996. The corporation owns and operates a twelve-story multi-tenant nonprofit Center in Wilmington, Delaware housing 78 nonprofit tenants. Jerry is responsible for construction, operations, maintenance, tenant and public relations, and contract and fiscal management. The CSB is Delaware's first commercial building recognized by the EPA as an Energy Star Building. Previously Jerry was employed as a construction project manager for PNC Bank where he built and renovated banks and bank offices. Throughout his career, he has volunteered to assist nonprofit organizations with their facility needs.

Dave Buckler
Chief Financial Officer
Detroit Youth Foundation, Detroit, MI

David Buckler, C.P.A. is Director of Finance for the Detroit Youth Foundation. David is responsible for finance, information systems and investment management of the foundation and is also coordinating the renovation/construction of YouthVille Detroit, a 75,000 square foot, multi-tenant youth development center. He formerly served as CFO of both a major Detroit law firm and a large bank. David is an active board member of Detroit's chapter of Habitat for Humanity and holds a residential builder's license from the State of Michigan.

Joseph Connor
Founder/Chief Executive Officer
The Collaboratory for Community Support, Ann Arbor, MI

Joseph A. "Jay" Connor, JD/MBA, is the Founder/CEO of The Collaboratory for Community Support and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan. He has extensive leadership experience in the business, nonprofit, and public policy arenas. From Conner's work with leaders of diverse constituencies in communities across North America, Jay has seen that in order to be effective, emerging community leaders must be comfortable at the intersection not only of organizations and cultures, but also of the nonprofit, business and governmental sectors. This is a key message of his new book, published Spring 2004 by Wilder Press, Community Visions, Community Solutions: Grantmaking for Comprehensive Impact.

Kim Frentz
President
Ventura Partners, San Francisco, CA

Kim Frentz has been involved in real estate development throughout the United States for over twenty-five years. She has worked on a broad range of residential and commercial projects including full-service offices, historic mixed-use projects, and retail/office condominiums. Since returning to California in 1989, Kim has focused her work on nonprofit commercial development. She and the staff at Ventura Partners provide a comprehensive package of services ranging from project management to leasing and property management for commercial and mixed-use properties. They also work with clients to develop Asset Reserve Analyses and Facilities Operating Plans that provide blueprints for the long-term health of their properties. Her most recent venture is the start-up of GreenWorthy Janitorial, an innovative cleaning service using green products and methods and emphasizing recycling and waste management in commercial settings.

Michael Gathercole
Chief Operations Officer
Fairhill Center, Cleveland, OH

Michael became Fairhill's Associate Director in January, 2001, after retiring from a 38 year career in the British Diplomatic Service where some of his appointments were in senior property and operations management positions. Michael plays a leading role in the management of 140,000 square feet of leasable space at Fairhill and in the planning and execution of projects to bring a further 50,000 sq. ft. back into use. He supervises the Computer Learning Center and Intergenerational Resource Center and is currently leading the development of an assistive technology center.

LoriAnn Girvan
Project Manager in Housing Development
Common Ground Community, New York, NY

LoriAnn Girvan is a Project Manager in Housing Development for Common Ground Community, New York City 's largest supportive housing developer. She is also a 2004-06 Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania 's Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence. Prior to this position, Lori served as an independent consultant, providing technical support and training in program design and participatory planning to social change organizations. Most recently, her services have focused on market research and business planning for nonprofits developing Multi-tenant Nonprofit Centers in the United States and Canada . As a consultant to Third Sector New England, she coordinated the predevelopment analysis for a 125,000 sq. ft. office and program facility for Boston-area nonprofits. Lori previously served as Executive Director of Equality Colorado, a statewide civil rights organization. She also has over ten years of professional experience in West and Southern Africa , where she designed and managed research and capacity-building initiatives in legislative strengthening and gender-equitable economic development. Lori has an M.A. in African Area Studies from the University of California and has completed her Master's coursework in Urban Planning at McGill University . She is a graduate of Colgate University. Lori is a founding member of the board of the NonprofitCenters Network.

Neel Hajra
Chief Operating Officer
Nonprofit Enterprise at Work, Ann Arbor, MI

Neel Hajra is the Chief Operating Officer of Nonprofit Enterprise at Work, Inc. (NEW) in Ann Arbor , Michigan . NEW is a management support organization that operates an office facility for 20 nonprofits, and also provides a wide range of capacity-building services to area nonprofits. Hajra oversees all of NEW's programs and internal activities in order to ensure efficient operation and mission alignment. In addition to his COO duties, Hajra remains active in providing technology advice to nonprofits. Before joining NEW, he represented Ford Motor Company as an attorney in the Global Business Operations Group. Hajra received both his Bachelor of Science in Physics and his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan.

Jonathan Spack
Executive Director
Third Sector New England, Boston, MA

Jonathan Spack has over twenty-five years experience leading and consulting to nonprofit organizations. During his 22 years as Executive Director of Third Sector New England and its predecessor, he has successfully guided the organization through several transitions, including its recent transformation to a multi-service information and management resource for community based nonprofits. TSNE's programs and services include a national publication, The Nonprofit Quarterly , a biennial skills-building conference, fiscal sponsorship services, management consulting, two unique grant programs, and an Executive Transitions Program serving Massachusetts , Rhode Island , and Connecticut . In 2004 TSNE acquired a 120,000 sq. ft., first-class office building in downtown Boston which it has developed as a Nonprofit Center . Mr. Spack's expertise includes Board-staff relations, business strategy and planning, and organizational change management. A former legal services attorney, he holds a law degree from New York University and a Master's degree in Human Services Management from the Heller School at Brandeis University . He is co-author of the Executive Director's Guide, published by TSNE in 2002. Mr. Spack is a founding member of the Nonprofit Centers Network.

Amy Tobin
Executive Director
David Brower Center, Berkeley, CA

Amy Tobin is the Executive Director of the David Brower Center. Prior to her current position, Amy worked extensively in arts and event production, nonprofit management, and community development, consulting with organizations such as Fua Dia Congo, ShadowLight Productions, Playwrights Foundation, Fifth Stream Music, the 14th Street Y, Heeb Magazine, Killing My Lobster, Cartoon Art Museum, and San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest. From 1999-2003, Amy worked at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco in program development and fundraising. A graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Amy received the Joshua Venture fellowship for social entrepreneurs in 2001. She was the founding Artistic Director of The Hub at the JCCSF, dedicated to exploring current Jewish identity, fostering intercultural dialogue, and building community through performing arts.

Margie Zeidler
Founder
Urbanspace Property Group Ltd.

Margaret Zeidler is the Founder and President of Urbanspace Property Group Ltd, a mission-driven development company specializing in the adaptive re-use of old buildings. Originally a trained architect, Ms. Zeidler has brought her love of historic buildings and belief in the power of built-form to help foster community to two, century old, former factory buildings. The first project–401–houses a diverse community of over 130 artists, cultural entrepreneurs, micro-enterprises and social innovators. The Robertson Building, also located in Toronto, has become a hub for organizations, large and small, the majority of whom are social mission-driven, be they profit or not-for-profit. Ms. Zeidler is the recipient of the Jane Jacobs Prize (2003), the Toronto “Best Friend of the Arts” Award (2004). She co-founded the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto in 2004 (a 20,000 square-foot shared space for social enterprise and innovation located at the Robertson building) as well as The Centre for City Ecology and Jane’s Walk (an annual event to celebrate the life and ideas of Jane Jacobs) in 2007.

Alan Zimlicki
Consultant
ASZ Associates, Cambridge, MA

Alan Zimlicki, the principal of ASZ Associates, has a Master of Science in Urban Planning and extensive planning, redevelopment and real estate development experience. He was project director of the National Urban Design award winning East Cambridge Riverfront Redevelopment Project and has since developed housing, office buildings, R&D buildings, retail, assisted living residences and various public facilities such as parks, parking garages, roadways and community facilities. Alan has a wide range of experience with the use of creative finance techniques, private finance, government finance and finance strategies for community economic redevelopment.

Alexander Zwissler
Executive Director
Chabot Space & Science Center, Oakland, CA

Alexander Zwissler is the Executive Director/CEO of the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland California. Prior to Chabot, Zwissler was the Executive Director of the Fort Mason Foundation from 1999 to 2006. The Fort Mason Foundation manages the Fort Mason Center, a former US Army base on the San Francisco Bay, which has been converted to a cultural and recreational complex housing museums, theatres, non profit agencies, exhibition halls and classroom space. Prior to joining Fort Mason in early 1999, he had a 17-year career in the cable television and telecommunications industry.