Board of Directors
Jeff Marinelli
Jeff has extensive experience as a software engineer, entrepreneur, and marketer. He has successfully led companies and teams spanning business products, media, and software platforms. Jeff is the CEO and founder of Art and Living magazine, a global publication that features creators around the world. Prior to establishing Art and Living, Jeff headed up his own software consulting practice with a team that serviced Fortune 500 companies in implementing financial and human resource systems. Jeff began his career in technology in the energy sector starting with HL & P and then ENRON as he supported the petrochemical pipeline industry.
The story of the Art and Living Charitable Foundation begins in 2012 at a foster care center in Los Angeles where, while interviewing the director of the center for a magazine article, Jeff took notice that children in one of the center’s programs were using art to express their ideas and thoughts, hopes and dreams, and to heal emotionally. Struck by this experience and its implications, Jeff undertook a study of the broader arena of children’s art programs offered by schools, museums, and other community support agencies and realized that art was quickly vanishing as a core ingredient in the lives of our children. The relevance of art in the lives of the children he had observed seemed obvious and profound and it was then that Jeff committed to finding a way to tap the power of art to make a difference. The result was the evolution of Arts Connect program currently made available through the Art and Living Charitable Foundation.
Candace Crawford
Candace is CEO of Maverick Brands, a consumer products company which targets healthy and organic beverages to consumers. Candace has more than twenty years experience in senior leadership roles in financial management and operations in both public and private companies. Prior to joining Maverick Brands, she served as a C level executive for such brands as Zico Beverages, POM Wonderful, Virgin Entertainment and Metropolitan Theaters. She has built world-class management teams and has been instrumental in working with entrepreneurs to nurture exponential company growth while maintaining necessary financial and operational disciplines. Candace began her career at Price Waterhouse as an auditor where she received her CPA license.
Candace has a passion for the Arts Connect program designed to bring arts back into the classroom. While volunteering at a local public high school, she realized how many children had true creative passion and talent and would be inspired by exposure to the arts, although parents and other life-guides were not supportive of artistic endeavor because of the lack of perceived connectivity of the arts to real-world job opportunities – a consideration of paramount importance to families for whom college attendance was not a financially feasible option. Candace believes that the Arts Connect program offered by the Art and Living Charitable Foundation has potential to overturn these beliefs and thus to forever change the range of actual opportunities for these students.
Diane Watson
United States Congresswoman (retired)
