MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation has tapped six new members of its board of directors: Donna Barranco Fisher, Angela Krablin, Mieko Kusano, Austin Lampson, Chetan Nayak and Jackie Schaffer.
MOXI’s volunteer board works directly with the museum’s president and CEO to oversee and support the organization’s commitment to its mission to ignite learning through interactive experiences in science and creativity.
“MOXI is fortunate to have a passionate, dedicated board that enthusiastically supports our work to make science learning accessible to all,” said CEO Robin Gose. “This year we are thrilled to add these talented individuals, with their diverse perspectives and experiences, to our board.”
The MOXI Board of Directors executive committee is led by Alixe Mattingly, chair; Susan McMillan, vice chair; Justin Anderson, treasurer; Andy Winchester, secretary; Jill Chase, at-large; and Jill Levinson, at-large.
Fisher, an expert in early childhood education, brings experience in nonprofit organization building, operations, and governance. She was executive director for Storyteller Children’s Center for some seven years and served on the boards of CALM, Girls Inc., Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation, Hospice of SB, Transition House, Jodi House, and Casa Pacifica.
She continues to be involved in looking out for the welfare of children as a board member at Children and Family Resource Services; and in her participation in organizations such as the Santa Barbara County Child Care Planning Council, Early Childhood and Family Wellness Coalition, and Quality Counts California.
Krablin grew up in New Jersey and graduated Rutgers University with a double major in economics and Spanish in 1983. She moved to California to be close to her family in 1985, and began her career in banking in 1986; working in retail branch banking, project management, and digital banking.
She began working for Santa Barbara Bank & Trust in 1995, and stayed with them through the acquisition by Union Bank; leaving in 2018 to join Montecito Bank & Trust, where she now serves as the director of bank operations.
Krablin has been on the Advisory Board of the Santa Barbara Salvation Army for some 22 years and has been the chair of that board for the last 12 years. She lives in Montecito.
Kusano is the founder and CEO of Mameko LLC, a niche corporation that advises high-growth, private companies and provides product and design leadership.
Previously, she was a senior director at Sonos for 15 years. Kusano founded both the product management and design groups and spearheaded Sonos’ approach in cohesive design experience. She helped Sonos establish itself as an innovation powerhouse and helped the company transition to the next stage of growth as a public company.
Prior to Sonos, Kusano was vice president of product management at Invention Machine, a company specializing in semantic search and innovation software. She started her career at Philips Electronics, where she created a personal communicator for children, collaborating with MIT Media Lab and Mattel Research to study the cognitive development of children ages 6-12 years.
Kusano graduated Cum Laude from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, with a masters in industrial design engineering. She was featured in The 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company in 2010.
Lampson is the branch manager and mortgage loan officer at Homeowners Financial Group, overseeing a team of six professionals. Austin is a process-driven professional, serving clients across a broad spectrum, from low-to-moderate income, first-time buyers, to professional and move-up buyers.
From a community perspective, Lampson has served on the board of NWABO, Coastal Housing Partnership and the American Heart Association. She has volunteered with the Natural History Museum for 15 years, has been a committee leader for groups including Junior League and Jodi House.
She has also written for the Santa Barbara Lawyer Magazine and is certified by the State Bar of California to teach continuing education to attorneys with regards to Trust & Asset administration from a lending perspective. Lampson has a YouTube channel dedicated to financial education.
Lampson’s interest in MOXI personal. She grew up in New Orleans, where the local Louisiana Children’s Museum had monthly free days. Her parents, who were not well off financially, believed in education and took advantage of free days from all museums, but the Louisiana Children’s Museum (LCM) was Lampson’s favorite.
Like MOXI, LCN is a hands-on museum. LCM made math and science exciting, and was open to all. In third grade, Lampson failed math and her mother saved to buy a membership to LCM so she could better understand the importance of math.
Today, Lampson uses the critical thinking skills learned at LCM every day. Her work is a balance between math and emotion. Without access to places like LCM or MOXI, Lampson believes she wouldn’t be in the position she is in, with both financial security and the ability to teach others to get there as well.
Nayak is the general manager for Quantum Hardware at Microsoft and a Professor of Physics at UCSB. His research focuses on solid state physics and quantum computation. Born and raised in New York City, Chetan received an A.B. degree in physics from Harvard in and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton.
He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the UCSB. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1997 and in 2005 became a founding member of Station Q, a Microsoft-funded research institute on topological quantum computing on the UCSB campus. In 2007, he became a professor in the UCSB Physics Department.
Nayak has been a visiting professor at Nihon University in Japan and a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington. He has published 150 papers in refereed scientific journals, garnering more than 22,000 citations.
He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Outstanding Young Physicist Award from the American Chapter of the Indian Physics Association, and an NSF Early Career Award.
Nayak’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Army Research Office, Disruptive Technologies Office, and Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, in addition to the Microsoft Corporation.
He was a general member for 15 years and a trustee for 10 years of the Aspen Center for Physics. Nayak has served on the editorial board of Annals of Physics. His work in solid state physics has covered such topics as high-temperature superconductivity, novel types of metala, the quantum Hall effect, and time crystals.
Schaffer is a writer, director and producer of film and television. Raised in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, she attended Viewpoint School, where she currently serves on the Headmaster’s Leadership Council, prior to receiving her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University.
Schaffer lives in Los Angeles, Montecito and Seattle with her family.
For more information, visit moxi.org.