The Santa Barbara Symphony is has welcomed two new members to its Board of Directors, Anne Sage, and Rachel Kaganoff Stern.

“We are honored to welcome these community leaders to the Santa Barbara Symphony’s Board of Directors,” said Kathryn R. Martin, Santa Barbara Symphony president/CEO.

“They bring tremendous passion and commitment to the performing arts, and as the symphony continues its forward momentum providing the community with world-class performances and music education programs, these leaders will be important in shaping that vision,” she said.

Originally from New England, Sage is an entrepreneur, mother, wife, traveler, trained chef, sommelier and philanthropist.

With a M.S. in hospitality administration and Grande Diplome de Cuisine from Le Cordon Bleu Paris, she has worked in hotels, restaurants, and as a chef. She owned Fat Cat Catering in Boston and Newport, Rhode Island, for almost 10 years, and recently sold her second business Sage Cellars, Inc., a wine and spirits distribution company.

Most recently, she attended the HEG/DUGGAT graduate program at the University of Reims, France ,where she received the highest level degree in gastronomy. She and her business partner/husband are also dedicated to the integrity of California winemaking in the wake of agricultural impacts from climate change and related issues.

Kaganoff Stern is the CEO of the Junior State of America, a national nonprofit that provides civics programs to high school students. She serves on the board of the Santa Barbara City College Foundation. She just concluded six years of service on the board of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University (where she earned her master’s degree in public policy).

She spent five years as a director and member of the executive committee for the Alliance for College-Ready Schools, a Charter Management Organization that operates free, public middle and high schools that serve 13,000 low-income students in Los Angeles.

Kaganoff Stern is the former co-chair of the Women’s Political Committee, a Los Angeles-based political action committee that raises money for progressive women candidates for office, and spent seven years serving as a member of the board of Planned Parenthood’s Advocacy Project. She spent 11 years serving on the steering committee of the Women in Leadership Initiative at Princeton University.

Kaganoff Stern spent 15 years as an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, where she worked across a number of research areas including health care, civil justice, and national security policy. Before that she worked as a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington, D.C.

She graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in politics from Princeton University and has a master’s degree in public policy from Duke University.