About Us: Board Members

Board Officers

Joseph M. Cicero
Mayor of Lyndhurst, Ohio
Chair

Lois K. Goodman
Work and Family Consulting Group
Co-Chair

Mitchell Balk
President of the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation
Treasurer

Julie Rittenhouse
Secretary

Board of Directors

Mitchell Balk : :Joseph A. Calabrese : :Gerald Chattman: :Joseph M. Cicero : : Michael A. Dover: :Jane E. Fumich : : Lois K. Goodman : : Mareyjoyce Green : : Ron Hill : : Kevin Kennedy : :Earl M. Leiken : : Howard R. Maier : :Julie Rittenhouse : : Charles E. Smith : :Eleanor Steigman : :Allison L.E. Wallace

Mitchell Balk
Appointing Authority: The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation
Mr. Balk is the founding President of The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation, a grantmaking organization resulting from the 1996 sale of the Mt. Sinai Medical Center and related Cleveland hospitals. As of December 2004, the Foundation has distributed more than $40 million in its initial seven years of grantmaking. In 2003, Mr. Balk was elected founding board chair of the Health Policy Institute of Ohio. This Columbus-based Institute is a source of nonpartisan information for making health policy decisions. Mr. Balk holds a Bachelor degree in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Minnesota and a Master Degree from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.

Joseph A. Calabrese
Appointing Authority: Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority
Joe Calabrese is the CEO/General Manager of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA), overseeing a $300 million annual budget and 2,700 employees.  RTA serves 200,000 daily customers on its 650 buses and 108 rail cars that operate throughout Northeast Ohio.  With a motto of “back to the basics”, Joe has led an aggressive campaign that improved the quality of RTA’s services, leading to six consecutive years of ridership growth.  In 2007, RTA was awarded the Smart Business/Lexus “World Class Customer Service Award”, and named “The Best Public Transit System in North America”.  In 2008, Joe was named the “Best Public Transit Manager in North America”.  Joe received his undergraduate degree from Syracuse University, his MBA from the University of Buffalo, and completed post-graduate fellowships at Northeastern, the University of Chicago and the Wharton School.  Past president of the NY State Public Transit Association and Ohio Public Transit Association, Joe currently serves on many local non-profit boards.

Gerald Chattman
Appointing Authority: Cuyahoga County

Gerald Chattman is a partner at the Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs law firm located in Cleveland. He served as Vice President of the law firm’s Board of Managers and was Managing Partner of its Cleveland office. Mr. Chattman Chairs the Firm's Nonprofit Practice Group.  He specializes in business transactions and labor and employment issues within the for-profit and non-profit sectors. He has received special recognition for 20 consecutive years or more as one of The Best Lawyers in America. He was also recognized as one of Ohio’s Super Lawyers, as voted by his peers.

Honorable Joseph M. Cicero
Appointing Authority: Cuyahoga County Mayors and Managers Association
Mayor Cicero, serving his first term as Mayor, has been a life-long resident of the City of Lyndhurst. Prior to being elected mayor, he was on the City Council for fourteen years. Mayor Cicero is the president of the Council of Governments for the Tri-City Consortium on Aging and is active with the Cleveland Foodbank and is a strong supporter of the educational process in public and private schools. Mayor Cicero is a graduate of Charles F. Brush High School and has attended Lakeland Community College and Ursuline College.

Dr. Michael A. Dover
Appointing Authority: Cuyahoga County
Dr. Michael A. Dover earned his M.S. in Social Work from Columbia University in 1980.  His practice experience includes ten years directing employee assistance programs in trade union-based settings, including five years of work with retired merchant seafarers at the National Maritime Union Pension and Welfare Fund in New Orleans.  In 1987, he was a Consultant for the Manhattan Borough-Wide Interagency Council on Aging, Inc., regarding a citywide para-transit system and safe access to buses and subways.

A trained gerontologist, his Ph.D. in Social Work and Sociology from the University of Michigan, completed in 2003, was supported by a five-year Pre-Doctoral Training Grant from the National Institute of Aging.  The co-author of the entry on Human Needs in the Encyclopedia of Social Work, he has a longstanding interest in aging and human needs.

He is an Ohio native born in Alliance and partially raised in Maple Heights. His dissertation was an historical sociological study of the social system of real property and the property tax exemption in Ohio’s urban areas. He is currently a full-time faculty member at the Cleveland State University School of Social Work, where he teaches social welfare policy.  He is the 2013 Coordinator of the Cuyahoga County Conference on Social Welfare and Editor of Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping, a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal. His professional affiliations include National Association of Social Workers (since 1976), American Sociological Association (since 1991), Council on Social Work Education, and the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action.

Jane E. Fumich
Appointing Authority: Mayor, City of Cleveland
Ms. Fumich is the Director of Cleveland's Department on Aging. She was appointed to this position by Mayor Jane Campbell in 2002 after having served as the Director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Senior and Adult Services since 1999. The Cleveland Department of Aging mission is to enhance the quality of life for Cleveland's senior through advocacy, planning, service coordination and the delivery of needed services. Ms. Fumich oversees a budget of approximately $1 million and a staff of twenty. Ms. Fumich has a Bachelor of Science degree in Health, Physical Education and Recreation from Kent State University and a Master Degree in Gerontological Studies from Miami University's Scripps Gerontology Center.

Lois K. Goodman
Appointing Authority: United Way Services of Greater Cleveland
Ms. Goodman is the President of the Work and Family Consulting Group, Incorporated, a consulting service that helps employers manage the changing needs of a diverse work force. The Work and Family Group reviews personnel policies and benefits, does surveys and feasibility studies and provides management training. Prior to starting her consulting firm, Ms. Goodman was Director of Employee Development for Ameritrust Company. Ms. Goodman has a Bachelor degree from the University of Michigan in Liberal Arts and a Master of Art degree from Case Western Reserve University in Guidance and Counseling.

Dr. Mareyjoyce Green
Appointing Authority: Mayor, City of Cleveland
Dr. Green was an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Women's Comprehensive Program at Cleveland State University. Dr. Green is also Project Director of Push to Achievement, a pre-Welfare Reform program designed to enable qualified students receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to earn a baccalaureate degree. Dr. Green is a graduate of Wiley College, a historical black college, in Marshall, Texas and attended graduate school at the University of Wyoming and Case Western Reserve University.

Ron Hill
Appointing Authority: Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging
Ron Hill is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging (WRAAA), in Cleveland, Ohio. He has been employed at the WRAAA for 20 years as the CEO or Executive Director and before that two years as Associate Director for Planning and Program Development. The WRAAA is a non-profit organization, created jointly by the State of Ohio and the five counties it serves, to be the local implementing agency for the federal Older Americans Act. Its mission is to empower and support older adults to maintain wellness, independence and dignity.

Ronald Hill’s background includes 18 years of experience in housing and community development with municipal and county governments and 20 years of experience in aging service development and administration in the non-profit sector. He earned a BA degree from Ohio University and a MS degree from Cleveland State University. He also more earned a graduate certificate in Gerontological Studies at Cleveland State University.

Current community and professional service includes membership on the governing board of the Ohio Association of Area Agencies on Aging where he served as president in 1997 and 98; the Institutional Review Board of the Benjamin Rose Institute; the Executive Committee of the Western Reserve Geriatric Education Center; the Advisory Board for MSAS at CWRU; Ohio and numerous ad hoc committees. His honors include: appointment as a delegate to the 1995 and 2005 White House Conferences on Aging; a honorary life membership in the Phi Alpha National Social Work Honor Society at Cleveland State University (CSU); recipient of the 2003 Dean’s Distinguished Alumni Award from the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at CSU; and 2004 recipient of the Dr. Arnold L. Heller Memorial Award of the Menorah Park Center for Senior Living in Beachwood, Ohio.

Honorable Kevin Kennedy
Appointing Authority: Cuyahoga County
The Kennedy family settled in North Olmsted in the 1932 when most of the city was still farm land. Mayor Kennedy's father, John, was reared in North Olmsted and became a North Olmsted Fire Fighter and his mother Kathy works for the North Olmsted School System. Mayor Kennedy and his wife Anne are the proud parents of four children: Jackie, Jamie, Kellie, and Ryan. Mayor Kennedy is a graduate of St. Richard's School, St. Edward's High School, and Ashland University where he earned a B.S. in Business Administration and a double major of Marketing/Management.

In 1991, Kevin Kennedy started his own computer hardware company, Computer Management International. Over the years, he and his employees have built it into an international multi-million dollar company that is headquartered in downtown Cleveland. He was selected in 2002 by Crain's Cleveland Business Magazine to be a member of the 40 under 40 most successful leaders in our community. Kevin Kennedy served as Council President from 2005 until 2009. He was sworn in as Mayor of North Olmsted on January 1, 2010.

Honorable Earl M. Leiken
Appointing Authority: Cuyahoga County Mayors and Managers Association
Elected Mayor of the City of Shaker Heights in 2007, Earl Leiken previously served two four-year terms as a City Council member, from 2000 through 2007.  He was a member of the Shaker Heights Board of Education and served as its president. Leiken was a partner of the law firm of Baker & Hostetler, and past president of Shaker Family Center. He also served on the Youth Center Board.  He has been a member of the Jewish Community Center board and served as its president. Mayor Leiken is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Howard R. Maier
Appointing Authority: Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency
Mr. Maier has been the Executive Director of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) since 1989. NOACA is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for five counties (Cuyahoga, Geagua, Lake, Lorain and Medina) which does transportation planning, transportation-related air quality planning, and area wide water quality management planning, as defined by federal and Ohio mandates. Mr. Maier is directed by a thirty-eight-member Governing Board of local and appointed officials. NOACA has forty full-time employees and a budget of approximately $6 million. Mr. Maier has a Bachelor Degree in Economics from Ohio State University, a Master of City Planning from Ohio State University and a Master of Science in Public Management from Case Western Reserve University.

Julie Rittenhouse
Appointing Authority: Cleveland City Council
Julie Rittenhouse has an in-depth knowledge of the nonprofit sector and nine years of philanthropic experience with strategic initiatives, program management and evaluation.  Ms. Rittenhouse is an active volunteer with human services and educational organizations serving Greater Cleveland.  She holds a bachelor of arts degree in government and international studies from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s of science in social administration from Case Western Reserve University. 

Honorable Charles E. Smith
Appointing Authority: Cuyahoga County Mayors and Managers Association
The Honorable Charles E. Smith is the mayor of the Village of Woodmere. He was elected mayor in 2009. Mayor Smith describes Woodmere as having city flair with a rural feel. He is a graduate of Central Arizona College and the University of Phoenix. Mayor Smith earned an Associates and Bachelors Degree in Business Administration. He is a former Major League Baseball player and has spent sixteen years playing for teams including the Florida Marlins, Atlanta Braves, and has played overseas for teams in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Mayor Smith has been married for ten years to his wife, Krista and they have two children named Casey and Cameron.

Eleanor Steigman
Appointing Authority: Cuyahoga County Mayors and Mangers Association
Having served as a community volunteer for 52 years, Eleanor Steigman’s personal dedication and advocacy on behalf of the elderly has been far reaching. Many of the services available to the elderly today in Cuyahoga County are linked directly to
Eleanor’s work to provide much needed support to the aging community. Countless organizations have benefited from her strong leadership and solid expertise.

She continues to serve as distinguished board officer and member of many local agencies, including JFSA, United Way Services, Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging, Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, NCJW and many others. In honor of Eleanor’s passion and commitment to helping seniors remain independent and productive the Eleanor Steigman Fund for Older Adults was established.

Allison L.E. Wallace
Appointing Authority: Cuyahoga County
Allison L.E. Wallace is the Executive Director of Greater Cleveland Neighborhood Centers Association (an umbrella organization of 13 Neighborhood Centers). In this position since 2006, she is responsible for the management, oversight and leadership of the organization.