Meet Our New Board Members
By A Noise Within
July 19, 2021
We are thrilled to announce that four members of the Los Angeles community will join our Board of Directors! Randi Tahara, Susan Toler Carr, Veralyn Jones, and Alan Blumenfeld bring a wide range of experience and expertise along with diverse perspectives to ANW as we enter the 30th Anniversary Season.
Producing Artistic Directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott said, “We are very excited to announce four new additions to our Board of Directors. We are so appreciative of this new slate of board members, each with a unique point of view due to their involvement with the community, diverse cultural backgrounds, and vast array of professional skills. We are also happy to announce the appointment of two Resident Artist seats on our board. This will be our first time adding artistic board member positions, and we believe it will be a tremendous help in broadening our collective understanding for decision making at A Noise Within.”
Randi Tahara is a 2nd generation native Angeleno and a proud product of LAUSD. For the last 25 years, she served three Los Angeles County Supervisors in a variety of areas, including the development of arts and culture policy and programs through an equity lens. Prior to that, she worked in four different law firms, starting off as a summer receptionist and eventually becoming the office administrator. She is an unabashed, self-proclaimed theatre geek and supports many arts organizations. Her other board memberships include the Los Angeles Police Museum and the Nihon Buyo Kai of California, which is dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Japanese classical dance in California.
Susan Toler Carr, P.E., earned a degree in Civil Engineering and a Certificate in Business Management Effectiveness from the University of Southern California (USC). She holds licenses as a Registered Professional Engineer (PE) in California, Arizona, and Florida. She also has certificates in College and Career Counseling from UC San Diego, Grief Recovery Method® Specialist, and Mental Health First Aid. Her career as a PE has also included engineering and management positions at Walt Disney Imagineering, Universal Studios Creative, Thinkwell Design Group, and SoCal Gas Company.
Carr is currently the Co-Founder and an Education Advocate for Justin Carr Wants World Peace Foundation (JCWWP) www.justincarrwantsworldpeace.org, which was formed after she and her husband Darrell lost their only child Justin. The Justin Carr Wants World Peace Foundation’s mission includes three arc platforms: Art, Heart, and Peace.
Alan Blumenfeld: As the first people to bring the storytelling power of theater to the law and its emotional truth to witnesses, Alan and his wife and partner, Katherine James, created ACT of CommunicationTM over four decades ago. Their company specializes in live communication skills based in the discipline of theatre and has been working to make attorneys and their witnesses better communicators in and out of the courtroom. Over 50,000 attorneys have taken training in ACT workshops, both live and virtually, and they have been a part of trial teams in more than 1500 matters. Read more at www.actofcommunication.com and www.harvestingwitnessesstories.com.
Veralyn Jones is a native of Grenada, West Indies and grew up in New York. She has had a love affair with theatre ever since seeing her first Broadway show at 14. She earned a degree in Dance from Brooklyn College. In 2010, she along with her husband and two colleagues founded Lower Depth Theatre, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. She currently serves as Associate Artist Producer.
She has served on the board of The Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company and mentored many young girls in the company. She is also a member of The Antaeus Theatre Company and The Actors Studio. She is an award-winning actress who has worked at The Denver Center, South Coast Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, The Kirk Douglas Theatre, and internationally at LaScala Theatre, Stockholm, Sweden.
