When Dave Cort took the job of executive director at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center in June 1991, it was a part-time role with just three requirements: a truck, the ability to lift over 100 pounds, and a willingness to along with others.
The community center had two paid positions and an annual budget of $30,000. His meager salary of $600 a month could pay rent for the cottage he and his wife, Howie, shared in Jewell and leave him with $100 leftover.
Dave was reluctant to apply at first, but he was at a crossroads in his career and Howie told him he could hold onto the extra $100 if he got the job. Dave handed in his resume with a dream of buying a membership at the golf course down the road.
“I was at this major pivot point in my life, trying to decide what to do next,” Dave said. “Howie said ‘C’mon! Give it a try!’”
In the ensuing years, the community center grew into its role as the heart of the valley. It worked in tandem with the Lagunitas School District to create immersive programs for children and facilitate daycare and afterschool programs. From founder Jean Berensmeier to B.B. Martinelli to folk singer Kate Wolf, the people who made the center a staple of community values also turned it into a flagship for progressive arts and educational programing. The center now has 22 employees and an annual budget of over $2 million.
After 32 years, Dave is retiring from his role. Come July, Lagunitas native Alexa Davidson will take over, after five and a half years building progressive infrastructure in the center, including the last six months as associate director. Dave will move into a part-time role of community ambassador focused on major gifts and public funding.
“I’m just super psyched to hand it over to Alexa,” Dave said. “She’s much tinier than I was, but she can lift 100 pounds!”
Alexa said she is part of a competent team that provided a smooth and welcoming transition. “I couldn’t do this job, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing this job, without having these other amazing people doing what they do,” she said. “What Nicole Ramirez does in human services and youth programs, Michele McCourtney running operations and facilities, H.R. and strategies, and then Helen Ferlino doing the finance—it allows me to feel super confident that they’re taking care of their stuff.”
Growing up in Lagunitas in the ’90s and 2000s, Alexa went through the Lagunitas School’s Montessori program and spent her afternoons in community center programs. When she was in sixth grade, she was elected as the student body president and worked with community center staff to develop her communication, fundraising and organization skills.
She attended the University of California, Davis, and then San Francisco State, where she received a degree in psychology. Afterwards, she worked for two years as a counselor for kids in dire straits, often in the foster care system or on probation.
“It was one of the saddest jobs in my life,” she said. “I started to really see the systems that were working against these families. No matter how hard a kid tried or how much progress they made, if you’re in the system, one tiny mistake and you’re back in juvenile hall. I wanted to work more at a level where I could create a system and environment that worked for people.”
Alexa returned to school in 2017 to get a master’s in nonprofit administration from the University of San Francisco. The program was uniquely hands-on, she said, requiring students to help local nonprofits work on strategic models and fiscal outlines. She also ran a fundraiser at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center. After the campaign increased the center’s endowment, the board approached her about working as their young-adult coordinator.
The center had strong programs that for decades had created space for tykes and tots to play and do arts and crafts, and for students in the elementary and middle schools. With senior dinners and the food bank, the community center was a hub for all but young adults. The center had hired a few young-adult coordinators, but Dave said under Alexa’s leadership “it just exploded.”
“We realized that was an area we were lacking in,” he said. “We needed that next gen area because a lot of people like Alexa would go off to travel or go to college and when they returned to the valley there was kind of nothing here for them.”
Alexa helped create an umbrella next-gen program for young adults in the valley going through what she called “a natural transient state of life.” One of the clubs was Greenstitch, a high school student internship program founded by Woodacre resident Cory Van Gelder focused on raising awareness of the effects of climate change. The group put together their own fundraisers, painted murals and signs and educated the community and others across the county on how climate change stokes fear and anxiety for kids.
“Right from the get-go, [Alexa] was very supportive in wanting to bring in programs specifically for this population of young people,” Ms. Van Gelder said. “The community center has historically been awesome with supporting younger students and the senior community, but she really championed the programs that offered a way for that young adult population to get involved.”
Alexa wrote her master’s thesis on building a diverse board of directors. In doing her research, she started spending more time on the governmental side of the center, where Dave said her resourcefulness and savvy took him by surprise.
“She was really in tune with the most cutting-edge systems in nonprofit leadership,” he said.
“My degree was in human development and social policy from the ‘70s, but Alexa comes in from this groundbreaking graduate program from U.S.F. and has grown up in this community. Everything I had sort of been naturally doing for 30 years, she was sort of taking a very interesting approach to. I loved it! It was an incredible learning curve for me. We had a couple of years of that under our belt, and boom! March 16, 2020, hit and we were set to shut down for three weeks.”
The Covid-19 pandemic shuttered the center’s in-person programs for roughly a year. Earned income—roughly 25 percent of the center’s annual revenue—came to a grinding halt. When relief funds started pouring in, Alexa built teams that could help direct money through different avenues, all while teaching the ins and outs of Zoom to her co-workers from her dining room table.
“Because I had such a good relationship with fund development from [the U.S.F.] project, they crafted ways for people to donate and get involved, and the center actually grew its budget from that period,” she said.
Alexa excelled in her position and was promoted to director of development and strategic initiatives in February 2021.
“To say she’s open minded is to not say enough,” said Helen Ferlino, the center’s finance manager. “I’m a very literal person. But she can always see things from different perspectives to bring a new focus on an issue. We’d have a meeting and Dave would say, ‘Should we get Alexa on this?’ And I’d say ‘yeah!’ because she opens my mind up in ways that challenge what I think. We were all in on her. If there was gonna be any change in leadership, it made sense that there’d be someone as well respected as Alexa is. Growing up here and being part of the community and having so many trusted relationships with community members—it makes sense.”
Dave had begun thinking about retiring before the pandemic but was concerned the role would be filled by an outsider, so he told the board he wanted to hire within. When the topic came up again last August, he approached the board president, David Bernard, and his predecessor, Steve Granville. To them the answer was clear: Alexa was the woman for the role. With the staff and board in support, she moved into the role of associate director on Jan. 1.
“It was a beautiful process,” Dave said. “Alexa was so eager to get everything systematized or organized for a new chapter at the center.”