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Meet Our New Board Members

January 04, 2026 8:54 AM | Bill Magargal (Administrator)

US Map with 4 new board members superimposeed over their regionby Deirdre Marlowe

The 2025 US Servas elections held this past October seated four new board members. They come from the West Coast, East Coast and middle of the  country, and most have already been active in Servas.

Lisa Aiken, a multi-lingual Spanish and French speaker, will serve from 2026-2028. She is from Massachusetts and has worked with several committees including Volunteer Coordination as well as assisting at events and tabling for Servas at a foreign language teachers conference.

Giovanni Dubois hails from California and will also serve from 2026-2028. In addition to being a mechanical engineer, he has worked to further partnerships for Latino and other youth. He hopes to increase our outreach to youth and is ready to roll up his sleeves and support Servas.

Steven Starr was an interim Board member for much of 2025 and will continue serving on the Board through 2028. He is a retired Chicago math teacher and former industrial model and toy maker. He would like to see more time spent on outreach to younger people and a re-emphasis on peace building.

Kenneth Ventress lives across the river from NYC in Jersey City. He is a software engineer and looks forward to putting his skills to use as well as redoubling our efforts with younger members. He will serve from 2026-2027.

There will be a Board retreat later this month. It will be a time of conversation and goal setting for the new year. Look for news of the retreat in the next issue of Open Doors.

Comments

  • January 05, 2026 4:52 PM | Amanda in MN
    Brand new member here 👋🏼. Thank you all for rolling up you sleeves and serving on the board. Special thanks to Lisa and her husband for doing a fantastic job of teaching others about Servas at ACTFL in NOLA. It’s why I’m here!

    I’m also excited to see the emphasis on ongoing outreach to younger members. My young adult kids and their partners were excited to learn about Servas, SYLE, and the scholarships.
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  • January 07, 2026 6:51 AM | Mary Jane Mikuriya, San Francisco
    Northern California has the most SERVAS members in region due to its quarterly local gatherings in different parts of the San Francisco Bay area.

    Our last gathering was held just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Over 40 attended several travel traveling more than 50 miles to get to the event.


    It was a sitdown, potluck event where our hostS borrowed fold up chairs, saw horses and planks to make tables in order to enable a sit down event in 2 adjoining rooms.

    Usually gatherings are about 20 to 25 people. Due to the large number of participants, we introduced ourselves through a whip of answers . The first question was what’s your name and where are you from? That’s when it was clear that several people traveled over 50 miles to come to the event. The second question was where were your guest from? That was impressive to hear so many hosts having guests from so many different places in the world.

    As a result of this animated, sit down, potluck, several people who were friends of SERVAS reported that they would be joining as hosts and travelers .

    As the previous regional coordinator, I am always on the lookout for individuals willing to take over the leadership of different geographic areas in Northern California. As it happened, the woman across from me is just retiring as an administrator of an organization and said she was going to become more involved with Servas. She was from the Sacramento area which had been active until the SERVAS coordinator for Sacramento became ill and died. I was able to give this volunteer’s name to the US Servas board member in the San Francisco area for follow up.

    One northern California Servas leader had just come back from a trip to Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkey and reported on the changes on the SERVAS international website and the need for all SERVAS members to update their information on the SI website

    We are fortunate to have an events volunteer for the last 20 + years who finds individuals in different parts of the San FranciscoBay Area to host our quarterly Servas events.

    Two of our long time regional SERVAS leaders are in their 90s, so age should not be a barrier in in recruiting local leaders to help revitalize SERVAS
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