Lydia Aguilar, PhD, Board Member

Lydia was trained as an MD in Mexico City and because of her interest in Human Genetics came to the United States to get a PhD in Genetic Epidemiology. She has spent almost 42 years in the US and besides her involvement in basic research in diabetes mellitus, she has been engaged in many different efforts supporting the Latinx community and women in Science and outside of science.  After retirement, she had more time and decided to get involved with several of the non-profits in the island, with the idea of helping and supporting the Latinx community, through those efforts. Towards that end, she volunteered and was on the Board of the Food Bank, subsequently participated in the creation of a Hospital District and Vashon be Prepared to organize a NERO group in her neighborhood and is currently part of the MRC and doing COVID-19 testing. She started volunteering at Voice of Vashon with Mi Genet Latina where PSAs are translated into Spanish, music from all Latin America is played and that has evolved into a much larger information center for the Latino Community.

Craig Beles, Board Member

Craig Beles has been a Vashon resident for 30 years during which time he has served as chair of Vashon Allied Arts, Vashon-Maury Island Community Council, and the King County Vashon Governance Options Committee. He has also served on the executive boards of the Land Trust, the DoVE Project, and Northwest Folklife among others. Craig is also a member of the Vashon Community Emergency Response Team – CERT.

After a career as an Assistant Attorney General in the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Divisions and as a Gonzaga law professor teaching Constitutional Law and Torts, Craig turned his law practice to international arbitration and mediation. He currently serves as an ADR neutral on the rosters of several domestic and international institutions, including the ICC, ICDR, WIPO and FINRA. He is immediate past-chair of the Washington State Board of Bar Examiners and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section. Craig also serves as a State Bar Disciplinary Hearing & Settlement Officer.

In 2010, Craig was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and taught International Dispute Resolution in Prague and Brno, CZ. In 2013, the U.S. State Department named him to a 6-year term as a Fulbright Specialist in International Peace & Conflict Resolution. During the summer of 2015, Craig assisted the Republic of Mauritius in “fostering a culture of alternative dispute resolution.”

Craig received a BA in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz in 1971, a JD from Gonzaga School of Law Magna Cum Laude in 1975, and a Master of Law in International Practice from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) with High Honors in 1987.

Geoff Fletcher, Board Member

Geoff Fletcher is a retired educator who taught grades 8-12 and was an assistant professor Miami University. He also is a recovering bureaucrat, having served as  associate commissioner at the Texas Education Agency. He was editor of two technology and education publications and assistant executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, and he also served on their board. Locally, he served on the board of Vashon Allied arts, was President of the Board of Vashon Island Pet Protectors and currently is their Treasurer, and he is the proud producer of the weekly radio show on VoV, Boogie Back to Texas.

Jon Flora, Treasurer

Jon Flora joined NACM (National Association of Credit Management – Western Washington Alaska Hawaii) in 2012 following senior executive roles in private higher education, health care, and other non-profit organizations. His experience includes chief executive positions with the Independent Colleges of Washington, Childhaven, and the Franciscan Foundation.   He has led and rebuilt associations and development programs that have generated in excess of $150 million in revenues. He also brings a background in organizational and financial management; facilities planning; corporate and foundation relations; marketing; public relations and community grant making.

Jon has served on several community boards focused on historic preservation, higher education, and philanthropy. He currently serves on the Boards of the NACM (Columbia, MD) and Voice of Vashon (Vashon, WA).

Jon is a graduate of Whitworth University (Spokane) and makes his home on Vashon Island, WA.

Michael Golen-Johnson, Board Member

Michael Golen-Johnson used to dee-jay nightclubs in the late ’80s and early ’90s and still dee-jays an occasional wedding or party. An audio engineer, he got involved with VoV in 2000 during a stint of unemployment after the dotcom crash. He never looked back. Indeed, he’s been on the board since 2002.

Michael and his wife Elizabeth Golen-Johnson, a teacher, discovered Vashon in 1998, after helping a friend who was in search of his birth parents move to the region. Raised in an Illinois farm town, Michael was drawn to Vashon’s rural lifestyle as well as its proximity to Seattle. (He and Elizabeth lived in Chicago before moving here.) He worked for Washington Mutual for five years, leaving that job, he notes, just before Washington Mutual unraveled. He now works for Boeing..

His talents as an audio engineer, editor and all-around IT expert have been put to full use at VoV, where he produces Bill Wood’s The Jazz Guy, helps to get the live high school sports broadcasts on air and is the lead techie for VoV’s web-based radio station. He likes being a part of the VoV gang – “I know I can be of assistance,” he said. He also really loves working with Bill Wood.

Mary Marin, Secretary

Mary developed a diverse skill set during her extensive work across multiple companies and industries in corporate America. She now uses her skills to help others through her consulting and coaching business, providing expertise in Lean methodologies and process efficiency. Mary loves working one-on-one with clients to help them achieve their best selves, both in their work and personal lives. Mary and her wife Linda moved to the island in 1997. Devoted to serving the community, Mary was a board member and president of The Dove Project for five years.

In her free time, she’s a Zumba instructor and LOVES to dance and is pleased to bring great music to her listeners on her show Rock of Ages on Voice of Vashon. And she cooks like a BOSS!

Truman O’Brien, Board Member

Truman is a recent member of the VoV Board. His interest in radio began at age thirteen when he earned his Novice Amateur Radio license (KN7LUG). Building a transmitter, he began communicating around the world in Morris Code. At fifteen his interest in girls overtook his interest in radio so he traded his Hallicrafters receiver and home-built transmitter for a Honda motor-scooter. Interest in aviation arose at about this same time; soloing at age sixteen he never imagined a career in aviation. Radio again appeared when the Key Club (junior Kiwanis), of which he was a member, took over the local AM radio station for their annual fund-raiser in Miles City, Montana. The quirky little station (KATL – pronounced “Cattle” radio!) even had a show at noon every day called the “Dinner Bell Roundup” where they introduced the show by clanging on a cowbell.

After a three-year stint in the Army (Vietnam and Germany) he graduated from the University of Montana and moved to the Pacific Northwest. He first lived on Vashon when he became Superintendent of Camp Sealth. He and his wife Mary lived at the camp from 1975-1978 until his love for aviation finally overwhelmed him and he began flight instructing in Seattle. Through a circuitous route – including hauling fish in Alaska from an open ocean beach in a DC-4 aircraft – he worked for twenty-three years as a commercial airline pilot, retiring after the last twelve as a Boeing 737 Captain.

Moving back to Vashon in 1991 he was sucked into island politics, serving eight years as a Park Commissioner for the Vashon Park District. Retiring from this board he was soon drafted to the Board of Vashon Community Care where he served as President for six years. At that time, he saw a need for more stable funding so he founded the VCC Foundation, serving as its president for three years. He earned his General Amateur radio license (KG7CFG) and volunteers in emergency communications for the Vashon Emergency Operations Center on the island.

Joining KVSH he hosted the very first regularly-scheduled live broadcast with the Tuesday Morning Scramble where he still co-hosts with his daughter, Molly.

Richard D. Reed, Board Member

A true native son, Richard Reed was born in Seattle and has lived in the Puget Sound area all of his life. He is an expert skier, competent sailor, sore-footed hiker, and lousy golfer. A world traveler who has been to scores of countries, he likes nature and to be outdoors in any kind of weather.

In June of 2006 he moved to Vashon from Lake Forest Park, because his wife Molly Reed had been hired as Executive Director of Vashon Allied Arts. Since then he has found many ways to be engaged with the community, including being an active volunteer at VAA and the Vashon Community Emergency Response Team (“CERT”), and also is a co-leader in the Plans Section of the Vashon Emergency Operations Center.

During his 34 years as a trial lawyer, he represented individuals in employment law matters. He served in various professional capacities including Chair of the Washington State Bar Association Civil Rights Committee and served on the Amicus Committee of the Washington Employment Lawyers Association. He recently retired.

Rik’s love of R&B and soul music is the basis for his program R-E-S-P-E-C-T, now broadcasting on KVSH 101.9 FM.

Rick Wallace, President

Rick Wallace, a board member since 2009, comes to Voice of Vashon with an extensive background in radio and television news. He landed his first paid radio job when he was 17 and went on to work in broadcast news for the next 20 years. He won numerous awards for both breaking news and investigative reporting, capping his journalism career as a news assignment desk editor at a Los Angeles TV- station.

Rick then took his skills in information-gathering, writing and analysis and went to work for a division of Publicis Groupe, a multinational advertising and public relations firm headquartered in Paris. His 18-year career at Publicis, where he eventually became a vice president, took him to Cameroon, Chad and Papua New Guinea, as well as many other places. He began that work in Los Angeles, where he lived with his wife Karen Baer, a pediatrician.

As the couple readied for retirement, they began considering the Northwest and made several trips to the region. Somewhere along the way they discovered Vashon and fell in love with the place. They moved to Vashon in 1999 and he retired in 2011. “We liked the idea of moving to a community where we could dive in,” Rick says. And dive in they did. With his background in breaking news, Rick took an interest in Vashon’s emergency preparedness group and now heads VashonBePrepared. He has served as Vice President of Vashon Allied Arts. He’s also involved in the Friends of Mukai. Karen, a singer, is in both the Vashon Opera and Vashon Chorale. And as for Voice of Vashon, well, how could a former radio and TV man resist?