Deb and Rocky are longtime donors and enthusiastic audience members at the Green Music Center. They became supporters back in 2007 as part of the Telecom Valley community’s push to name the concert hall. Their appreciation of the Music Center’s mission grew as they experienced season after season of compelling artists in Sonoma County’s newest venue, and enjoyed its relative convenience to their home in Sebastopol.
Rocky explains why they support Green Music Center: “There are so many great musicians. Plus, the experience from door to hall is so easy and so pleasant, with ample parking and seamless logistics.”
Deb enjoys the sense of community they gain through their involvement: “We can sit where we want, and we love spending time in the donor lounge with our friends. Honestly, we feel rather disconnected from people at other arts venues. You can see people you know here, and get to really know them in the donor lounge before shows and during intermission.”
While their first experience with concert pianist Lang Lang was a one-of-a-kind lifetime experience, they agree that their favorite concert was American guitarist, singer, and songwriter Jason Mraz. Rocky remembers the story that Jason actually asked to play the hall. The acoustic concert was spectacular and unique for them, as they had seen him twice before in concert with his full band and production elements.
Deb comes from and began her work journey in Iowa as a school psychologist. Deb took a small step, which turned into a huge leap, to a rewarding three decade-long career in engineering and software program management at Broadcom. She started going to night school at a local community college, taking on one class at a time. Encouraged by her friends who were also engineers, she found that she liked solving problems and achieving solutions in engineering. She reduced her hours to part-time to take afternoon classes, and told herself she would keep taking classes until she didn’t like it. That never happened. She then took a leave of absence, and kept on this new path.
Fresh with a degree in hand, Deb was assigned to Rocky as her mentor for her entry into the world of software engineering at Tegal, a semiconductor equipment manufacturing company. Rocky observed that Deb was not a typical engineer; she was positive, upbeat, personable, high energy, and could bring people together on projects. (And, she had a great smile!) Her career took flight at DSC Communications Corporation, and led her eventually to software management at Broadcom.
Rocky’s time in the Air Force led him to his career path. Directly following high school, Rocky went through USAF technical training and was sent to England and Spain during Vietnam. His military electronics experience served as a useful foundation for what became a civilian career integrating microprocessors into commercial process control and telecom systems. A native of Petaluma, Rocky found no place outside of Sonoma County he’d rather settle in spite of a few years of business traveling to almost every state in the nation.
Both retired, they are leaning in to enjoy music at the Green and traveling. Their first bust-out trip post-2020 took them on safari in Tanzania’s Serengeti, Ngorongoro, and Tarangire parks followed by trekking the volcanoes of Rwanda to visit with mountain gorillas! They both are active in the community locally including involvement with Transcendence Theatre Company and the Ceres Community Project. They are also supporters of assistance NGOs in their adopted city of San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico.
