Events

Amanda Kabage, M.S., joined the Microbiota Research and Therapeutics team in 2014 after battling a 14 month illness with C. difficile. She was ultimately cured with an intestinal microbiota transplant in September 2013, performed by Dr. Alexander Khoruts. It was a no-brainer to join this team, as Amanda already worked in research at the University of Minnesota, and went through a firsthand experience with C. difficile and IMT treatment.

Prior to joining the Microbiota Therapeutics team, Amanda worked in Pediatric Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota for 8 years, studying the genetics of pediatric cancer. She took an interdisciplinary approach to her education, with undergraduate studies focused on Biology and Ethics. She went on to receive a Master of Science in Science, Technology & Environmental Policy with a minor in Bioethics.  

When Amanda’s not working, she’s most likely traveling somewhere in the world. Even though she had never been on an airplane until she was 20 years old, she has visited over 30 countries and most states in the U.S. Amanda enjoys lifting weights and running, reading history of science books, seeing live music, dining at all the restaurants around town, and hanging with her dogs, Rocky and Wally.

Complaining to God about God is a Jewish tradition that begins with Abraham, the biblical prophets, and the psalmist poets and has continued to this day. We will sample a few modern Hebrew poems that reflect on the Holocaust and beliefs about God. 

Dr. Jonathan Paradise received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania where he specialized in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Biblical Studies. His doctoral research dealt with family law documents, written on clay tablets in the cuneiform script.

Jonathan established the program in Hebrew studies at the University of Minnesota where he taught courses on the Bible in the context of the Ancient Near East, Hebrew language and literature, and occasionally courses on Judaism. He retired from the University of Minnesota in 2003.

From 1989 to 2014 Jonathan travelled once a week to the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire to serve as the L.E. Phillips visiting professor of Jewish Studies in the Philosophy & Religion Department, teaching courses on the Holocaust, the Bible, and Judaism.

During his retirement he spends his time doing voluntary teaching, translating Hebrew poetry, and writing software to support his Hebrew textbook, The Key to Modern Hebrew.

No Meeting - Winter Break

Happy Holidays!

No Meeting - Winter Break

Happy Holidays!

JudyAnn and Paul Mork completed five years of Tai Ji in August, 2023. Paul received his certification from a senior trainer for Enhanced Training of Tai Ji Quan: Movement for Better Balance on March 21, 2023. His level-1 Instructor Certification was completed in March 4, 2020 in Mankato. In addition, this required 48 hours of teaching all class sessions. This Tai Ji introduction session will include movements that are designed for all ages and strengths. To learn more about this practice and its benefits, click here.

Jasna Burza is an internationally-recognized certified Life Coach and a spiritual advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and dreamers. Having lived in a refugee camp during the war in native Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jasna teaches about resilience, life purpose, and connecting to a deeper meaning of life. She holds a Master's degree in Public Policy and is a sought-after motivational speaker and is a regular guest expert on various news & TV shows. Learn more at www.jasnaburza.com

Kylie Cooper joined Rise Early Learning Center in March 2023. Kylie previously served as the Assistant Director of Education Quality for Community Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington (CAPRW), and the Workforce Development Coordinator for Child Care Aware of Minnesota. Kylie holds an MA Ed in Early Childhood Education and is driven to shine a light on the impact that high-quality early childhood education can have on society as a whole. 

In 2018, Kylie was recognized as an “Exchange Leader” by Child Care Exchange magazine. She has served as Co-President for the Minnesota Association for the Education of Young Children (MnAEYC) and has been a Master Trainer certified through the Minnesota Center for Professional Development since 2015 (MNCPD). Kylie is a member of the Sunrise SLP Rotary Club.

Not a meeting to be missed! The Golden Valley Rotary Club members will have a discussion on membership, dues, public relations, leadership opportunities, grants, and future projects, etc. You'll definitely want to attend this Rotary meeting to contribute to the important Club conversations.

Sharon is the incoming District 5950 Governor for 2024/2025 year from Minneapolis Rotary Club #9. She just celebrated her 20th anniversary in Rotary last year!

Sharon owns one of the largest private investment firms wholly owned by a woman in Minnesota and Florida. She says she attributes much of this success to Rotary. This is where she learned her public speaking and leadership skills, and her fellow Rotarians mentored her and welcomed her into this community. She is committed to giving back to Rotary. Last year she completed the largest ever fundraiser for our Rotary District – raising $3 million on top of the usual annual $1 million as District Foundation Chair.

For fun she coaches the top 150 women in global tennis on financial behaviors. She is a five-time MN State Fair blue ribbon winning flower arranger, and she collects shoes of very famous women including Margaret Thatcher and Audrey Hepburn.

Leah Persky is an experienced educator with an expertise in public health, political science, family well-being, and conflict resolution. She has experience in the university and non-profit settings. Persky completed her PhD in political science and has her master’s degree in conflict resolution, is a Certified Family Life Educator, and is training to become a certified life coach. Leah has a passion for running, reading, fitness, being outside, and gardening. She has two kids, two cats, and one puppy. She works to support families and the community in her role as the Manager of Professional and Community Education & Addiction and Recovery Services at Jewish Family and Children Services of Minneapolis.

As Vice President of Member Services with the Minneapolis Regional Chamber, Megan Krohn serves as the bridge between member needs and quality programming. She is responsible for engaging with the business community, regardless of their membership status, to better understand the challenges they face and innovate on how the Chamber can best support them. In her two and a half years with the Chamber, Megan has built lasting relationships with an array of communities and businesses, small and large, building bridges across our community and creating opportunities for small businesses. Some of her proudest moments include speaking at ribbon cutting ceremonies for local businesses such as Spire Credit Union this summer and the Franklin Center last year.
 
Prior to working at the Chamber, Megan had 15 years of nonprofit leadership experience at Youth Frontiers. She was responsible for producing high quality events, building culture and community, and developing strategies to promote effective business operations and growth opportunities. As Director of Programs, Megan oversaw the successful facilitation of over 800 programs that impacted 125,000 students and educators annually.
 
While born and raised in the City of Minneapolis, Megan also expanded her horizons when she lived in New York City, shortly after graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College. Her diverse background in music, theatre, and public policy has helped strengthen her ability to connect with a variety of people. Megan understands the value of collaboration, promotion of diverse voices, and being a civically engaged leader.
 
When not speaking with business leaders and community members, Megan enjoys her time watching her stepsons George and Isaac on the basketball court or in the baseball/soccer/lacrosse/football (you name the sport!) fields with her wife, Sarah.

Golden Valley Police Chief Virgil L. Green Sr. was sworn in as the new police chief of Golden Valley on September 6, 2022. Green’s over 38-year law enforcement career started with the Lea County Sheriff’s Department in Lovington, New Mexico and includes time as a patrol officer with the Oklahoma City Housing Authority Enforcement Division and as police chief with the jurisdictions of Boley, Oklahoma; Spencer, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City; and Helena West Helena, Arkansas. In 2018 he became the deputy police chief/major for the Tulsa, Oklahoma school district’s campus police department. Green has a bachelor's degree in police administration from the American Military University. Read Green's full bio here. One of his goals is to implement "21st century policing" by focusing on six pillars, including officer wellness and safety as well as community outreach.

Roll up your sleeves and start thinking creatively! We will be painting bowls at PRISM to support Empty Bowls.

WHAT IS EMPTY BOWLS? A grass-roots effort to raise money for local food shelves. The event in March is open to the public and raises money through sponsorships and donations. At the event, they feature handmade ceramic bowls which are created by the community and local artists. Entertainment by musical groups and a light soup dinner are enjoyed as we come together to raise awareness and funds for local hunger.

PRISM will fire the bowls, so save the date for Empty Bowls on Tuesday, March 19, from 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. at Cooper High School. Find and purchase your beautifully painted bowls, supporting a great cause. Don’t miss out on this fun-for-all event that lets you unleash your inner artist while making a meaningful impact. https://ced.rdale.org/community/empty-bowls

Culver's lunch will be served at 12:00 p.m.

John R. Crippen has been Executive Director of Hennepin History Museum since 2019. John has an extensive career in museum management having worked at the Minnesota Historical Society for 30 years, including serving as Director of the Mill City Museum and, more recently, as Director of Historic Sites and Museums. A native of Minnesota, John earned his B.A. in History at the University of Minnesota and received his M.A. in History Museum Studies from Cooperstown Graduate Program at SUNY-Oneonta.

John uses creative program leadership and strategic partnerships to bring diverse communities together and seeks ways to find new, sustainable operating models for the places that make history relevant to people in the 21st Century.

Hennepin History Museum brings the diverse history of people in Hennepin County to life and helps visitors understand the world through an exploration of local history with exhibits, collections, public programs, a magazine, and a research library.

Betty Folliard is a nationally known thought leader and political strategist. She is Founder of ERA Minnesota - an organization dedicated to passing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) into our state & federal constitutions.

A former three-term Minnesota Legislator, Ms. Folliard served six years in the Minnesota House. She has worked in government at the local, state, & national levels: as Hopkins School Board Vice Chair; as State Representative in the Minnesota House, and as Community Representative in the Office of Congressman Keith Ellison.

Betty’s first career was in the Arts. She earned a BA in Drama from Stanford University & MFA from Wayne State University, then directed & performed nationally & internationally. With a background in sales, marketing, and market research, she co-owned a business and political consulting firm called Strategy Partners.

In 2007, Ms. Folliard volunteered with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to muck out houses after the Hurricane Katrina. To better understand global challenges women face, Betty volunteered on missions in Peru & Rarotonga, Mozambique & Haiti; and travelled with women leaders to study the economic status of women in Israel, Palestine, India & Bangladesh. In 2022, she travelled to the Texas/Mexico border to help newly arrived immigrants in San Juan, the poorest county in the U.S.

In 2014, Betty founded ERA Minnesota (www.eramn.org) to revitalize the Equal Rights Amendment movement in Minnesota, which earned her the Minnesota Women’s Press Changemaker Award. She executive produced and hosted a feminist, progressive talk show. Among various recognitions and awards, in 2017, Ms. Folliard received the Minnesota Women’s Summit Committee ‘Woman of Distinction Award’.

Betty is an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, and in 2018 served as a National Presbyterian Delegate to the United Nations 62nd Commission on the Status of Women. Ms. Folliard served on many boards & commissions and was the first Board Chair of nonprofit law firm Gender Justice, as well as Board Chair of PRISM, a social services agency.

In 2022, Ms. Folliard sat on Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s Women’s Task Force on Expanding Economic Security that presented a report to the Minnesota Legislature listing 115 needed law changes to improve women’s economic status. In 2023, she led the successful effort to pass a resolution telling Congress to enact the ERA.

Mother of three, grandmother of three, Betty loves to sing, cook, dance, hike in the woods, and her true passion is the full emancipation of women worldwide.

After co-founding, drumming, touring and recording in Minnesota band Mango Jam, Bret's second career started by going back to school. He spent a year at Brown Institute for PC/LAN and another year for Computer Programming. During school in 1998, he started interning for Passkey and ended up staying, falling in love with the relationships and challenges with small and medium business technology. Bret sits on several boards and technology committees. He is a formation committee member for the NSITSP (National Society of IT Service Providers), a local campus IT task force, a non-profit foundation, an IT grant giving committee, and an Insurance industry Automation Committee. Bret also sat on the board for the Association for Corporate Growth, Minnesota Chapter where he headed the Social Media and Innovation committee.  He enjoys speaking on IT, innovation, and most of all CyberSecurity.

Passkey Technology is an IT Service Provider and CyberSecurity firm in Golden Valley, MN. We specialize in providing consulting and 24/7 support services for small and medium businesses. We can help with security, business continuity, backup strategy, disaster recovery, planning, monitoring, maintaining, purchasing, installing, and general IT support; remote and on-site.

An annual tradition! Bring your (Rotary appropriate) jokes for some good laughs in celebration of April Fool's Day. Can't find a joke? Never fear; Peggy Leppik has pre-approved jokes for sale.

Dr. Jafar Golzarian graduated magna cum laude from the University of Brussels School of Medicine in Brussels, Belgium. He completed his radiology residency at Erasme Hospital, University of Brussels School of Medicine, and then completed his fellowship training in interventional radiology at the same hospital. He is board-certified in interventional radiology and licensed in Minnesota to practice medicine.

He is a professor of interventional radiology at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where he became the first doctor to perform the prostate artery embolization (PAE) procedure in the United States. He was also one of the first interventional radiologists to perform uterine fibroid embolization (UFE). He has extensive experience in peripheral vascular disease and interventional oncology. Dr. Golzarian is a key opinion leader in the field of Interventional Radiology. He is the founder and course director of major meetings in the field including Global Embolization symposium and Technologies (GEST) and has authored more than 170 papers and more than 400 national and international lectures. https://northstarir.com/team/jafar-golzarian/

Aala Rashid recently graduated from the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management with a major in Finance and minor in Marketing. Last summer, Aala interned at Medtronic as a Marketing Finance Associate on the Sales Finance Team. This allowed her to acquire valuable project management and communication skills as she worked across different teams and functions. She joined People for PSEO in January and is working part-time until she starts her full time job at Medtronic in June doing Investor Relations.

Highway 55 Clean-Up
Tuesday, April 23, 5:00 p.m.
NE Corner of Hwy 55 and Winnetka Ave.

SIGN UP HERE

The Golden Valley Rotary Club is in its 28th year of caring for our stretch of Highway 55; our work continues on Tuesday, April 23! Community members are welcome to join us in this fun and easy project.

• Meet at the NE Corner of Hwy 55 and Winnetka Ave.
• Please bring and wear your own gloves.

SIGN UP HERE

Dinner at Doolittle's to follow the service project.

Meet at New Hope YMCA at 12:15 p.m. for a Culver's lunch and tour of New Hope YMCA.

7601 42nd Ave N, New Hope, MN 55427

The YMCA is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.

Keith Baker is the executive director for ReConnect Rondo, an umbrella advocacy organization committed to addressing racial disparities in Minnesota. Keith is leading the organization’s mission to revitalize the Rondo community of St. Paul with a 21-acre land bridge that reconnects the historic African American community and creates Minnesota’s first African American cultural enterprise district. Keith has more than 35 years of experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. His 18 years with the Minnesota Department of Transportation included oversight of federal and state professional technical contract administration and construction compliance monitoring. Keith served as a member of the Ramsey County Blue Ribbon Commission in 2010, which was in the forefront of elevating Minnesota’s ranking as 50th in the nation for racial disparities. Over the years, he has identified and executed strategies supportive of equitable development, entrepreneurism, ownership, business and workforce development, and opportunity access. As a strategist, connector, and influencer, Keith has a reputation for seeing the big picture, along with the connective links needed for genuine progress. He’s known for skillfully navigating within constrained environments, creating outputs that result in equitable outcomes. These characteristics were instrumental in the successful orchestration of a collective impact approach that ensured equitable inclusion of minority- and women-owned engineering and architect firms on the billion-dollar U.S. Bank Stadium project. https://reconnectrondo.com/

Scott Schwefel works with organizations who want to leverage new communication strategies to increase sales, profits and productivity. As a serial entrepreneur, Scott founded and grew Minnesota’s largest technology training company to over $12MM, and then sold the company in 2003.

His company was named one of the 50 fastest growing private companies in Minnesota in 1997 and 1998, and he was named to Minnesota’s 40 under 40 list of successful top executives. Scott then founded and grew Insights Twin Cities to over $3MM and sold it to Insights in Scotland in 2014.

Scott Schwefel has been speaking and teaching new communication strategies to organizations globally for over a decade. He has presented in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Geneva, Shanghai, and Kuwait, and he has also trained and coached over 1500 CEOs personally.

He is a published author, has lived remotely with the Hadza and Maasai tribes in Tanzania, and is a featured speaker for Vistage, the largest organization of CEOs in the world.

https://discoveryourself.com/

Ethan Kehrberg, Sustainability Specialist, City of Golden Valley

Ethan Kehrberg graduated from St. Olaf College, interned at a renewable energy company, and completed a service year through Minnesota GreenCorps before joining the City of Golden Valley in 2022. He currently works on recycling and waste reduction, energy efficiency, electrification, climate resilience, and a variety of other sustainability initiatives.  Ethan grew up in Golden Valley and is passionate about protecting the planet while making Golden Valley a greener, healthier, and more equitable community for everyone.

Also presenting with Ethan is Andrea Knoll. Knoll is serving a one-year service term with Minnesota GreenCorps, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency-coordinated program training a new generation of environmental professionals. As a GreenCorps member, Andrea assists City staff with environmental health-related projects and initiatives through community outreach, site assessments, and data collection and analysis. Following her service term, Andrea plans to pursue a graduate degree in environmental science and continue her work preserving and protecting Minnesota’s ecosystems and communities.

Not a meeting to be missed! The Golden Valley Rotary Club members will have a discussion on membership, leadership opportunities, grants, and future projects, etc. You'll definitely want to attend this Rotary meeting to contribute to the important Club conversations. We'll also be discussing our upcoming Taste & Tour of Golden Valley event, scheduled for Thursday, July 25. To put on a successful event, we will need all hands on deck with the planning. There are many opportunities to make a difference in this project! Look forward to seeing you there!

Emily Wallace-Jackson is the Executive Director of the Hopkins Education Foundation (HEF), a nonprofit that kickstarts learning opportunities for students in the Hopkins Public Schools. She served on the HEF Board of Directors from 2014 through 2019, and was president of the board during that time. She also worked as the Executive Director of the Seven Dreams Education Foundation that supported Robbinsdale Area Schools. Emily and her husband raised their three children in Hopkins Schools. She has been a passionate advocate for Hopkins schools and public education, serving as a member and co-chair of the Hopkins Legislative Action Coalition. Emily has also served as a commissioner on three City of Hopkins commissions: Human Rights Commission, Charter Commission, and Zoning & Planning Commission. Earlier in her career, Emily worked as an attorney and also volunteered as a pro bono attorney for clients at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. https://www.hopkinseducationfoundation.org/