Board of Directors

Rose-Marie Klipstein

President

Rose-Marie Klipstein has been a community volunteer in Rochester for over 45 years, serving on boards of schools, libraries, and the arts, including The Norman Howard School, Literacy Volunteers, Brighton Memorial Library, Friends of Eastman Opera, among others. She taught at Nazareth College and maintained a private practice tutoring learning disabled adolescents while raising three sons with her late husband, Dr. Frederick Klipstein.

Suzanne Gouvernet

Vice President

Suzanne Gouvernet, a founding board member for Friends of Eastman Opera, grew up in New York City. She moved to Rochester in 1982 but has also lived in Boston, Tunisia, and France. Suzanne’s volunteerism in began with Young Audiences of Rochester, where she served on the board. She also has served on the Eastman Council, the Junior League, the Gallery Council and Travel Committee of the Memorial Art Gallery (where she also was a docent), the Downstairs Cabaret advisory committee, Shipping Dock Theatre board, the Arts and Cultural Council board, and the Rochester Area Community Foundation board.

Patricia Carey

Treasurer

Patricia Carey’s expertise and employment have centered around non-profit administration. She served as Executive Director of Voluntary Action Center and Granger Homestead and Carriage Museum in Canandaigua, Business Manager at Gilda’s Club in Rochester and spent 14 years with Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. Tricia has long been an active volunteer, having served on boards for The Susan B. Anthony House, Fairport Baptist Home Foundation Board, the Rochester Chamber Orchestra, and many others. She is currently part of the Rochester Women’s Giving Circle and in addition to her board position with FLO, Tricia is the Treasurer of the Ontario County Historical Society Board of Directors and volunteers with the PRIS program at the Brighton Memorial Library.

Helen Zamboni

Secretary

Helen Zamboni, a lifelong lover of opera, is one of the founding members of the Board of Directors of Finger Lakes Opera, Inc. She grew up in the New York City metropolitan area and went to her first performance at the “old” Metropolitan Opera House on her eighth birthday. Helen has served on the Board of Trustees of Geva Theatre Center, a regional theater in Rochester, New York, and the Board of Directors of the YMCA of Greater Rochester (Board Chair 1999-2001) and remains an active volunteer of both organizations. In her professional life, Helen is Senior Counsel at the Rochester, New York, law firm of Underberg & Kessler LLP, concentrating in the corporate, real estate and health care practice areas of law.

SUSAN COTRONEO

Board Member

CHRISTOPHER DAHL

Board Member

Christopher Dahl is President Emeritus and retired Professor of English at SUNY Geneseo. A life-long choral singer and opera lover, he helped Gerard Floriano found Finger Lakes Opera at Geneseo in 2012. He achieved the pinnacle of his operatic career, however, in the 1980s, when he appeared as an extra in several Metropolitan Opera productions in Detroit, back when the Met still toured. He has served on or chaired a variety of Rochester-area and national boards including those of the Rochester Area Colleges, the Allendale-Columbia School, the Center for Governmental Research, and the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

MARION ROBINSON
Board Member

Marion Swett Robinson is a financial services professional at Atrevida Partners, an investment advisor and hedge fund manager located in Rye, NY. Her business career spans a number of global financial institutions, including Bankers Trust Company, Deutsche Bank and Nomura Securities. In addition to her role on Finger Lakes Opera's board, she also serves on the Mesa Verde Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic partner to Mesa Verde National Park. Her interests include classical music, travel, and western plein air art. As a child, she studied music (piano, drum, theory, sight reading) at the Eastman School of Music. She has a BA from Wellesley College and an MA and MBA from Stanford Business School.

MARGARET SÁNCHEZ

Board Member

Margaret A. Sánchez is Principal of Sánchez & Associates; a Rochester-based, organization development consulting firm. Her experience includes senior management roles in both the private and not-for-profit sectors and as adjunct faculty member at both the university and community college levels. Her expertise includes organizational culture change, strategic planning, diversity initiatives, leadership
development, assessment and research, and group facilitation processes.
She currently resides in Rochester, NY where she dedicates significant time and energy in volunteer activities and has served in volunteer leadership roles for the Rochester Area Community Foundation, the American Red Cross-Greater Rochester Chapter, the Al Sigl Foundation, and Literacy Volunteers of Rochester. In addition to Finger Lakes Opera, she currently serves on the board of PathStone Foundation and Action for a Better Community.

ROBERT SHAPIRO
Board Member

A commercial trial lawyer for more than 40 years, Rob is also a philosophy professor and journalist, who splits his time between Chicago and Honeoye, NY. During the pandemic, he has continued his teaching in the U.S. and, virtually, abroad, in India, China, and Vietnam. Starting in the spring of 2022, he will be teaching philosophy at St. Bonaventure University. He and his wife Susan, a retired high school history teacher and Holocaust scholar, are enthusiastic patrons of the arts. In addition to being a board member at FLO, Rob serves on the boards of Chicago Opera Theater and the University of Chicago’s Court Theater and has a weekly radio show on classical music and opera on student radio.

Barbara Walker

Board Member

In addition to her responsibilities with the FLO board, Barbara Walker also is a board member with Temple Hill Cemetery and Livingston County Board of Health. A graduate of the University of Rochester, Barbara received her Bachelors and Masters in Nursing and recently retired from her work as a Certified Family and Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. Barbara has enjoyed playing French horn in several groups, including Chorus Pro Music (Boston), Eastman Choral Society and SUNY Geneseo Festival Chorus.

James Walker

Board Member

James Walker, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor of Music Emeritus, recently retired after 46 years at Geneseo as Director of Instrumental Activities. He holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin and Harvard University. He became the youngest conductor of a major university ensemble when he was appointed to the Harvard Faculty as Conductor of the University Bands at age 22 back in the 1960s. Jim has appeared as guest conductor with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, the University of Victory Symphony and more. He studied composition with Milton Rusch, Leon Kirchner, Roger Sessions, and Billy Jim Layton.

Nancy Williams

Board Member

Nancy Williams relocated to Rochester in 2016 after her professional retirement. Most recently she was the founder and CEO of US based Security Division of Cotecna Inspection, SA, a global Swiss company based focused on worldwide collaboration of supply chain security and chaired global International Standards Organization committee to draft Management Systems standard on supply chain security. Previously, she was the owner of Nancy Williams Ltd., McLean, Virginia. Commercial and general real estate brokerage, development, and historic restoration company. She has been an intelligence analyst in the Diplomatic Corps of the Department of State; a partner in Holding company engaged in privatization and new ventures in Russia and former Soviet states and with Kuwaiti investors, in a commercial real estate development company, greater Washington, DC area.