Four Los Angeles business and community leaders joined the board of directors for the Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation, the fundraising arm of UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Alan N. Berro is senior vice president at Capital World Investors. He is a UCLA alumnus and received a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School. Berro has held all major offices, including chairman, at Inner City Arts and also serves as trustee at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Berro resides in Beverly Hills.
Mary Anne Keshen is a private investor and attorney. She is co-founder and chair of Tallen & Keshen Holdings, LLC and RTA Investments, LLC, with real estate and corporate investments on the West coast, the Southwest and Florida. She is a University of Florida alumna and received her juris doctorate degree from South Texas College of Law in Houston. Keshen also has extensive board experience on business, legal and advocacy matters. She resides in Malibu and San Francisco.
Linda Miller Savitt is an attorney and partner at Ballard Rosenberg Golper & Savitt, LLP and the immediate past president of the Association of Southern California Defense Counsel, a professional organization for civil defense lawyers in seven southern California counties. Savitt, a UCLA alumna, is an advocate level member of the American Board of Trial Advocates and a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers. In 2012, Savitt was named one of the top 50 women litigators in California by the Los Angeles Daily Journal and has repeatedly been named one of the state’s top labor and employment lawyers. Savitt resides in Holmby-Westwood.
Clare Suomi is a pediatric cancer activist and has organized numerous fundraising events, including for the University of Michigan’s Mott Children’s Hospital and the Aquarium of the Pacific. Suomi and her husband, Marvin, also are supporters of LA’s BEST After School Enrichment Program (Marvin is the chair). They live in Beverly Hills with three of their six children. Their seven-year old daughter is a pediatric cancer survivor.
“We are pleased to welcome these four outstanding community leaders to the Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation board of directors,” said Judith C. Gasson, the cancer center’s director and a professor of medicine and biological chemistry. “We appreciate the commitment of Alan Berro, Mary Anne Keshen, Linda Miller Savitt and Clare Suomi to raising funds to hasten discoveries and provide more effective therapies for cancer patients everywhere.”
Each board member will serve a three-year term, which began this month.
The Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation board is led by Chair Randall M. Katz, and Vice Chairs Jay Sures and Dana Walden. Katz is president of Milestone Entertainment and a director of the Ron and Maddie Katz Family Foundation. Sures is a partner and board member at United Talent Agency and the 2007 recipient of the foundation’s Gil Nickel Humanitarian Award. Walden is chairman of 20th Century Fox Television, and received the Gil Nickel Humanitarian Award in 2007 with fellow Fox chairman Gary Newman. Other 2012-2013 foundation board officers include Treasurer Jonathan Davidson, a partner at Westridge Capital LLC, and Secretary Leonard Rome, senior associate dean for research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Gasson also serves as president of the foundation board of directors.
The Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation, founded in 1945, is the single most important vehicle for raising private funds for cancer research at UCLA. Through events such as Taste for a Cure and Connect for the Cure, the foundation supports high priority cancer research efforts focused on converting laboratory discoveries into more effective and less toxic therapies for cancer patients.
