Board & Staff Bios
Liesa Schimmelpfennig, Director/President
As educator, art historian and artist, Liesa strives to help SEEDS provide children with many diverse opportunities for personal and intellectual growth, through enriching educational and arts-related experiences. Her devotion to the Arts was born from early childhood experiences in a school that fostered free creative expression and offered myriad experiences for brain and moral development. During the twenty years that she has taught art, she has observed how the Arts in education stimulates the imagination, triggers the creative process and nourishes emotional and intellectual reservoirs in children.
She believes that rich educational experiences connect children to their moral centers and to the culture in which they live. Because of her firm commitment to and understanding of the power of education she believes she can contribute to the development of SEEDS in many ways: by designing multi-faceted programs and events, by addressing the diverse educational needs of children, and by branching out to other communities that call for SEEDS to plant and spark educational opportunities.
Her background in the Arts and her work in the field of education, as well as her years of running a painting cooperative in San Francisco gives her the necessary abilities and vision to bring the Arts and other unique educational opportunities to community.
Elise Higley, Director/Vice President
As a mother of three, Elise is passionate about educating children about the world around us. She feels it is our responsibility to foster our youth in a nourishing and caring environment. It is her hope that SEEDS will enable all children to have this opportunity of education. Elise is a native Laguna Beach resident and alumni of Anneliese’s School. With many years of managerial and fundraising experience, her unique ideas, problems solving skills and ability to bring people together for a common cause are an asset to SEEDS.
Lesley Kurose Ho, Director/Treasurer
Lesley is a mother of two school-aged children. She resides with her family in Orange County, California. She is an entrepreneur having founded an Human Resources consulting firm. Lesley has over 18 years of experience in corporate environments. Her areas of expertise include global and international benefits strategy and governance, budgeting and financial management of benefits programs, and vendor selection and management. Lesley has also served as a steering committee member and as a consultant to the Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Employers International Forum (SVEIF), a non-profit coalition of US multinational high technology employers focused on international employee benefit issues.
Maria M. Bashaw, Director/Secretary
Maria received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California at Irvine in 1991 and her Juris Doctor degree from Western State University College of Law, California in 1994. She began her legal private practice of law focusing in the areas of corporate law and has represented and counseled private clients in diverse corporate matters, including the formation and compliance of non-profit entities.
Maria joined the legal department of a publicly held $240 million Southern California corporation to advise corporate management and direct outside counsel in areas including intellectual property, contract law, corporate compliance, antitrust, immigration, real estate, labor and employment and products liability. Her areas of practice now include estate planning, asset protection planning and corporate formation and compliance.
As a mother of two school-aged children, she is passionate about the environment and the education and welfare of children. She is one of the original Board members of SEEDS Arts and Education, Inc. Her knowledge and expertise in non-profit formation and compliance has been an integral part of SEEDS’s success.
Maria Onesi, Director
As a member of the SEEDS Board, Maria Onesi brings 20 years of experience in education and a passion for creating optimal learning opportunities for children. She feels strongly that when home and school work together to enrich the lives of children, they become life-long learners who are vested in their future success by becoming engaged and responsible for their own learning. Our responsibility is to stimulate our children by offering meaningful programs, employing dynamic teaching methods and introducing engaging interdisciplinary activities.
Maria obtained her Bachelor of Education from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and specialist certificates in Reading Instruction and Teaching French as a Second Language from the University of Toronto. She taught for The Scarborough Board of Education and Toronto District School Board in Scarborough, Canada. Subsequently she relocated to Southern California where she taught as a classroom teacher at Anneliese’s Schools for several years before serving as curriculum advisor to the school. Her classroom experience includes teaching all subjects in both the English and French Immersion Classroom at every grade level from Kindergarten through sixth grade. She currently acts as Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Anneliese’s Schools in Laguna Beach, California. When Maria is not working, she can be found cooking; cheering at countless hockey or soccer games; reading or enjoying time with her family.
Anneliese Schimmelpfennig, Director
Anneliese is the founder of Anneliese’s Schools Inc., founded in 1968. The school philosophy promotes deep learning, foreign language acquisition, creative expression and values, such as: compassion, self-discipline, sensitivity, and freedom. Anneliese is both an educator and philosopher. Her main goal as educator is for children to become self-confident, strong and caring individuals who are respected for what they bring to world, whether it be academic, artistic, humanitarian or vocational. Anneliese will be instrumental in helping SEEDS generate ideas for its programs and events. After working with hundreds of children over forty years she knows what children need in order to grow into balanced people and self-actualized individuals. She will be an invaluable contributor to the development of SEEDS.
Sharael Kolberg, Community Liaison
Earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from the University of Hawaii in 1996, Sharael has worked for print, Internet and television media. As a nationally published journalist, she has had more than 100 articles published in magazines, newspapers and online.
Sharael went on to earn a certificate in Intermediate Multimedia from the Bay Area Video Coalition, which led to her building Web site for several Internet companies in Silicon Valley. Upon the birth of her daughter in 2003, Sharael switched her focus to photography and started a portrait photography business that specialized in pregnancy, newborn and family portraiture.
Sharael enjoys utilizing her multiple skills to develop and promote SEEDS programs to the Orange County community.
