The Sonoma Valley Hospital Foundation (SVHF) announces that Simon Blattner and Cherie Hughes have joined the Board of Directors. Both have been long-time supporters and we are now incredibly pleased to have their community knowledge and nonprofit expertise helping to drive the SVHF mission of cultivating community support and raising funds for Sonoma Valley Hospital.
Simon and Cherie join our current Board members including Kevin Jaggie (Chair), David Good, Jim Lamb, Marcia Levy, Nancy Lilly, Roger Nelson, Buddy Pepp, Jean Arnold Sessions, and Jerome Smith, MD; and Advisory Council members Suzanne Brangham, Gerry Brinton, Tom Landy, and Gary Nelson.
Simon Blattner is currently working and living in Sonoma. In 2013 Simon served as co-chair of the Capital Campaign committee, which raised the $11 million necessary to complete the new emergency and surgery complex at Sonoma Valley Hospital.
He has been a long serving Board member of the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art including as President of the Board twice, in 2006-2008 and again from 2014-2016.
Recently, Simon and several colleagues formed a committee to operate a micro loan fund for La Luz Center. The low interest funds are designed to level the playing field for aspiring entrepreneurs who do not have the capital to get started.
After a long career in the printing, paper, and Fine Arts industries, Blattner is also an investor in real estate transactions and volunteering in non-profit activities in the Valley. In his early working years (1968-1970), Blattner founded the San Francisco Local Development Corporation to assist minority business development in San Francisco.
He and his wife, Kimberly, live full time in Sonoma where she is also very active in numerous community nonprofits and committees.
Cherie Hughes, Ph.D., and husband, Keith, are co-owners of Hughes Family Vineyards, an artisan family winery with organic vineyards in Glen Ellen, CA. Prior to returning to California in 2001, Dr. Hughes was a clinical psychologist who specialized in working with children, adolescents, and their families in her private practice in Dallas, Texas. She also worked at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas assessing neuropsychological disorders and treating problems associated with stress. She was a consultant to schools where she developed a school suicide and violence prevention program. She has published research on ways to improve health by controlling stress and has been a frequent guest speaker about parenting issues, school problems, learning differences, anxiety, stress and the mind-body connection.
Dr. Hughes earned her doctorate in Psychology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She holds master’s degrees in Communication Studies from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, and in Clinical Psychology from SMU. Her B.A. is from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Cherie serves on the Board of Directors for the Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance where she served as President, and the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. She is an active founding member of Impact 100 Sonoma. She has served on several other boards including the Alumni Advisory Board for the School of Arts and Science at Miami University, the Mental Health Association of Dallas and the Executive Board of Dedman College at SMU.
Cherie and Keith live full time in Sonoma where he is also active in numerous community activities and organizations. When not tending to the daily operations of the winery, Cherie enjoys fishing on the reefs or in the gulfstream off of Key Largo, Florida, golfing, swimming, gardening and preparing farm to table dinners for family and friends.