Andrew Erlich, Ph.D., is a prominent clinical psychologist, author, and nationally-known speaker. His newest book, The Long Shadows, is a true-life novel about the remarkable life of his beloved uncle, Jake Erlich (also known as Jack Earle), an accomplished artist, silent film star, circus performer, and at an astonishing 8 foot 6, one of the world’s tallest men.

Dr. Erlich spent ten years researching and writing the book, which he describes as both a labor of love and an inspiring example of human resilience and transcendence in the face of adversity. The Long Shadows is available at www.TheLongShadowsBook.com and major online retailers including Amazon.

Dr. Erlich is the author of two previous books, Selling to Latinos: Building a Bridge to Understanding, and Exploring Culture: Cultural Overviews and Insights. Both books provide essential insights drawn from his nearly three decades of cross-cultural research, motivational analysis and studies of organizational development.

Dr. Erlich is a frequent contributor to national news and business publications. His byline has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Adweek Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine and Advertising Age, among others. His cross-cultural insights and expert commentary have also been featured in Forbes, USA Today, Business Week, Newsweek and The New York Times. Dr. Erlich has appeared on a variety of local, national and international Spanish-language radio and television shows, including “La Nueva California,” a 19-part television series about the Latino population broadcast by Univision.

Dr. Erlich is also a renowned motivational speaker and educator whose speaking engagements include Freeing the Giant, The Yoga of Change, and Cross-Cultural Success.

In 2010 and 2011, Dr. Erlich was awarded the prestigious “Top5 Speaker” designation by Speakers Platform, one of the nation’s most prominent speakers bureaus. He also earned the “Platinum Speaker” designation offered by Meeting Planners International.

Dr. Erlich has been a clinical psychologist for more than thirty years. He began his first psychotherapy practice in Los Angeles in 1981 and opened his current practice in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 2002.

Fritz Maytag will regale us with stories about his early years at Anchor Brewing when it was the first and only craft brewery in the US.  He will also tell the tale of his 1989 recreation of “Sumerian Beer.”  This was the first serious effort to understand and recreate as accurately as possible the beers that were brewed in ancient Sumeria, circa 3000 BC.

Fritz Maytag was born in 1937 in Newton, Iowa. He spent many years in his youth enjoying living with his family in an adobe house built by George Ellis just a few hundred yards from the Ellis compound. He graduated from Stanford in 1959 with a liberal arts B.A., and then spent several years in graduate school at Stanford studying modern and classical Japanese.

Fritz purchased the Anchor Brewing Co. in 1965 and gradually developed the business until the brewery moved in 1979 to a new facility on Potrero Hill in San Francisco.

In August of 2010 Fritz sold the company and lived happily ever after.

Mr. Maytag continues as owner of York Creek Vineyards in the Spring Mountain appellation of Napa Valley, and as a Director of The Maytag Dairy Farms, his family’s blue cheese company in Newton, Iowa.

Is the human gut microbiota a “forgotten organ” essential to human health and happiness? Many scientists seem to think so. However, it is an organ unlike any other, consisting of multiple different species each vying for habitat and resources. Competition can be good for us, for instance when a diverse microbiota prevents pathogens from establishing an infection. On the other hand, microbes might hijack our nervous system to promote their fitness at the expense of ours!  If so, our choices may be less an issue of willpower, and more the result of our gut bacteria.

Microbes can also make us more vulnerable to extreme environments and may be involved in heat stroke, acute mountain sickness, and complications of trauma. Understanding the evolutionary principles that govern our relationship with our microbiome can help us treat these and other diseases.

Joe Alcock MD MS is an emergency physician and professor of emergency medicine at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Alcock received his Master’s degree in Neurobiology and Behavior from Cornell University and his MD from UCLA in 1997. He finished residency in Emergency Medicine at the University of New Mexico in 2000. Dr. Alcock is a professor of emergency medicine at UNM where he currently practices in the emergency department. In addition, Dr. Alcock is a faculty member for the UNM Wilderness Medicine fellowship and the International Mountain Medicine Center at UNM. He also teaches evolutionary medicine to medical students and biology undergraduates. He current research interests include the effects of stress and night shift work on the human microbiome.

John Flicker spent 21 years as one of The Nature Conservancy’s top deal-makers and 15 years as President of the National Audubon Society. During that time, he was at the center of numerous battles to protect important and threatened habitat across the nation. John will give you his candid behind-the-scenes stories of how some of his most interesting deals actually came together. These include Channel Islands Park in California, the Niobrara National Scenic River in Nebraska, Florida Forever and Everglades protection, and Pale Male, the most famous bird in the nation on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

John Flicker is the President of Prescott College in Prescott Arizona, a position he has held since 2014. Before Prescott College, he was president of the National Audubon Society in New York City for 15 years. During his tenure at Audubon, he was best known for creating a network of over 40 Audubon Nature Centers in communities across the country, with many of them located in low-income urban areas. He also led Audubon’s efforts to protect critical habitat from the Everglades to the Arctic National Refuge.   

Prior to leading the Audubon Society, John worked with The Nature Conservancy for over 20 years in various positions around the country including Midwest Regional Attorney, Great Plains Director, Florida State Director, General Counsel, and Executive Vice President in the Conservancy’s Arlington Virginia Headquarters.

John is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington DC, and former founding co-chair of the Blue Sky Funders Forum, a foundation affinity organization dedicated to advancing environmental education. He is currently Chair of the Board of Directors of the George B. Storer Foundation in Jackson Wyoming.

John grew up on a family dairy farm in Pierz Minnesota which his bother still operates. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota and received his Juris Doctorate from William Mitchell College of Law.

Hear how a dumpster-lined, utility corridor canal was transformed into today’s vibrant Scottsdale Waterfront.  How did the final leg of the Valley’s loop freeway come to be in that location?  How did Scottsdale preserve almost a third of its landmass to protect the McDowell Mountains and Sonora Desert within its borders?  How do we as a community continue to protect that billion-dollar investment?

Sam Campana, well-respected advocate and public policy maker on behalf of the arts and environment, has been the leader for many quality-of-life issues in Arizona. 

The former mayor of Scottsdale (The West’s Most Western Town and a Most Livable City) – her home for 50 years, she served on the Scottsdale City Council for twelve years – the last four as mayor. Her vision and planning for an urban downtown, an active waterfront in the sustainable and vibrant downtown, an ASU presence, an expanded public art program (including the 7-mile stretch of the Pima Freeway murals), a mutually productive relationship with the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, and a connected open space from Scottsdale’s northernmost border (the 30,000+ acre McDowell Sonoran Preserve) to Tempe have all come to fruition.   

Sam was a Fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington DC and studied public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Sam helped create Arizonans for Cultural Development and went on to be its first successful Executive Director, serving in that role for almost fifteen years.  She is Chairman Emeritus of the organization, now known as Arizona Citizens for the Arts and also had a long stint on the Scottsdale Public Arts Board.  She served on the founding Board of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts (was its third, first woman president). 

She helped found the Scottsdale Foundation for the Handicapped, Share the Health Foundation, the Scottsdale Western Arts Associates (which recently established a western art museum in downtown), and Scottsdale Leadership (who selected her for the prestigious Drinkwater Award), following her participation in Valley Leadership (who selected her as Woman of the Year 2010).  She has been appointed by four mayors, four governors and two presidents to serve on various arts/enviro boards, commissions and task forces.  She also has served on three corporate boards. 

After an International Leadership Fellowship in 2001, she was recruited by the National Audubon Society to establish Audubon Arizona here – and to head up an organization of 10,000 members, nine active chapters, and an 8,000-acre Research Ranch.  Audubon Arizona completed a $7.3million campaign to build a nature education center, the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center – open to the public and embraced by the community since October, 2010.  Sam continues to volunteer after heading a 3-year effort to site a similar project in Scottsdale.    

Following 12 years with Audubon, she now is writing a book and speaking about epiphanies manifested while making public policy and breaking glass ceilings in her public and private life. Sam lives in a 50-year-old former farmhouse where acres of pecans once grew in downtown Scottsdale with a pound dog, Harold, a desert tortoise, 2 chickens – Babe and Emma.

Catherine Dockendorff – Join us for a lively evening of music and singing. Experience the basics of singing with an accomplished vocal coach in a safe and encouraging environment. 

Catherine Dockendorff received her Bachelor Degrees in Voice Performance and Choral Education as well as her Masters Degree in Voice Performance from Arizona State University.

Ms. Dockendorff has soloed with Arizona Opera, Phoenix Symphony, Scottsdale Symphony, Guadalajara Symphony, Music Academy of the West under Martial Singhier and Madame Koldofsky, Blossom Festival with Robert Shaw and many Oratorio and Chamber work performances throughout Arizona with Daniel Durand’s CD Singers.

Ms. Dockendorff has sung lead roles in musicals under Janie Ellis’s direction such as, The Fantasticks and Pirates of Penzance. Also, lead roles in Carousel, Kismet, and Promises, Promises with Phoenix Theater.

In addition, lead Opera roles include Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Massenet’s Manon, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and Liu in Turandotby Puccini.

Ms. Dockendorff has been honored with a Faculty Service Award for her teaching voice at Phoenix College. She currently teaches a night class at Phoenix College, teaches at home in her private studio and cantors at St. Mary’s Basilica.

Connie Galeener: Professional Puppeteer – Join us for an evening of Puppets and Puppetry. Explore how these magnificent instruments can be utilized for entertainment as well as used as therapeutic tools.

Connie Galeener is a native of Phoenix, Arizona and has been performing since 1983 as an actress and stunt woman in various roles, both male and female, with Buffalo Rick’s Wild West Inc. Connie starred at eh Wild West Opryhouse in Williams, Arizona playing 3 characters in “The Wild West Revue.” As an “on-call” talent for Educational Management Group. Connie performed numerous historical and fictional characters in custom educational programs presented via satellite into classrooms across the United States. Connie played the lead, Lady Rutherford, in “Murder at Rutherford House,” in Phoenix. In addition, Connie starred in film and television programs, during the 1980s and 1990s as well as local and national commercial appearances.

As a professional puppeteer since 1998, Connie was featured in a series of educational programs such as “Marshal Go Get It,” for Educational Management Group. She has performed alongside a cast of human actors, reciting voices for and puppeteering all 13 characters in “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” for the White Bison theatre troupe. Additionally, Connie has performed in 30 puppet shows, some Raas a part of an annual event as Scottsdale Center for the Arts, and others at public libraries, schools, and special events. Rawhide theme park contracted Connie to write and perform a custom “Western Christmas Carol,” puppet show which was presented in an exclusive theatre during the holiday season. Connie has been awarded a grant from Puppeteers of America and has been an active member of the Phoenix Guild of Puppetry since 1989. Furthermore, Connie was employed at The Great Arizona Puppet Theatre in the early ’90s.

Connie is contracted as an Artist in Residence at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts and also as a theatre teacher. Currently, she is employed full time at Civilian Foundation as the theatre teacher where she writes and adapts plays with up to 60 developmentally disabled adult actors, dancers, and puppeteers. This work has become an integral part of Connie’s passion for theatre.

Dennita Sewell: Former Curator of Fashion Design, Phoenix Art Museum– Join us for an evening of Fashion and Design. 

For as long as she can remember, Dennita Sewell was in love with fashion. “Some people save photographs, I archived my clothes,” states Sewell, who took her passion and forged a distinguished career path that has included a coveted job in New York as collections manager at The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art where she worked under esteemed curator Richard Martin. Sewell’s decision to move on and accept a position as curator of fashion design at the Phoenix Art Museum was simple. “I had ideas that I wanted to express, much like an artist,” she says. 

Sewell has originated 34 exhibitions since her start in 2000 and brings a definitive point of view to her curating. “This isn’t about fashion on display like in a store window,” she says. “Here, the history behind the clothes are just as important as the objects themselves.” A self-declared minimalist, most days Sewell favors black slacks and T-shirts, claiming when she’s selecting pieces from the vault, a neutral palette is less distracting. “But come opening night, I still love to dress up,” she says, “and I’m the first one to put on Ralph Rucci or Vivienne Westwood.”

In 2017 Dennita joined the faculty of ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.  There, she developed a new fashion program for the University that welcomed its first students in the fall of 2017.  Dennita currently directs and teaches in ASU’s Fashion Program.