PO Box 9921
Truckee, CA 96162

Paula Ash, Executive Director - paula [ at ] guacfund.org   

For general Inquires please send to: info [ at ] guacfund.org  
 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS
We feel honored to have them as part of our team. All of them are devoted activists in their own rights.

Paula Ash
Paula Ash has been with Avocado Productions and The Guacamole Fund since 1995, volunteering at her first concert in Santa Cruz, California, marking the 30th Anniversary of bombing of Hiroshima. That volunteering lit a fire and she has dedicated her time ever since, starting as a show runner and then assisting in many myriad tasks over the years helping produce our benefit concerts. For the last 16 years, Paula has coordinated the non-profit tabling for multiple artists on their commercial tours, where she connected with amazing non-profit organizations and their teams. Paula has been running the business side of things for The Guacamole Fund since 2013, which includes the day-to-day operations, grant distribution, and  now serves as our Executive Director. Paula lives in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Baja California with her husband and Yellow Labrador, Lollipop.

Diane Leigh Koletzke
Diane has been deeply involved with the Guacamole Fund, in a variety of roles, since 1995.  She is also an activist with a focus on animals with whom we share our planet. A former animal shelter worker, volunteer and Board member, she developed many outreach and education programs, and is co-author of the book "One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter" documenting life in US animal shelters. She also founded and served as president of the non-profit independent publisher No Voice Unheard, whose photojournalism books have won numerous national awards. Diane continues her work for a better world with her small business, Love Shared Collections, creating and selling handcrafted items and donating all profits to charity.

Rick Leach, Attorney At Law
Richard (Rick) Leach, president of Main Sail Strategies, has established and led organizations and initiatives to address social issues including global hunger, environmental threats, and public health challenges. He is currently working on public and private sector initiatives to help integrate nutrition-related interventions into the U.S. healthcare system, including serving on Food is Medicine advisory boards. He is also helping establish a new university-based center on pandemic response and preparedness to address future public health crises.

Rick is former president and CEO of World Food Program USA (WFP USA), an organization he established for the United Nations. Serving in that role for ten years, he led efforts to expand U.S. government operations to address global hunger while also developing partnerships with the private sector to enhance WFP operations. Prior to his leadership of WFP USA, Rick launched and directed a global campaign in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Cancer Society that identified and built support for public policies to protect children from tobacco use. He also developed the plan for WHO to halt the production and trade of counterfeit drugs. For the World Wildlife Fund, Rick developed and launched the Living Planet Campaign which united the organization’s network of 25 country offices around a common plan to promote biodiversity by protecting key ecosystems. In 1993, Leach was appointed by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to create and direct the federal government’s child immunization campaign. Prior to this appointment, he served as foreign policy advisor to the U.S. House of Representative’s Select Committee on Hunger.

Leach practiced corporate and maritime law from 1986 to 1990 and served as a member of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Reform of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. He has published articles on international human rights and micro-enterprise development, served as a correspondent on Harvard Law School's Human Rights Internet Reporter, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Leach was chairman of the board of directors of the American Lung Association for the District of Columbia from 2004-2006, a member of the board of directors of Winrock International from 2013-2023, and currently a member of the boards of the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation and George Washington University's Planet Forward. Rick is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara and California Western School of Law. He resides in Washington, D.C. and Middleburg, Virginia with his wife, Holli.

Jeff Smith

Guacamole Fund Internet Systems Communications and Support