Posted by Carrie LaBriola on Jul 31, 2018
Dr. Carla Walter joined the Rotary Club of San Francisco in January 2017 and immediately got involved, ”because that’s how you get to know people.” She really enjoys the social events and has helped with scholarship evaluations for RYLA, as well as raising money for the Club. She’s just started a two-year term on the board of the Rotary Club of San Francisco as Vice President for Development.
 
“Rotary is an organization that you don’t feel embarrassed to ask for money, that you can really get behind,” she says. “It’s a good cause, important. And I like making friends, hearing success stories.”
A native of Los Angeles, Carla has a BA in economics from UC Riverside, an MBA from Cal State San Bernardino and a doctorate in dance history and theory from UC Riverside. She’s had a long career in business and organizational leadership, serving as CEO, COO and CFO for a number of nonprofit organizations. In addition, she’s been a dean, vice president, provost and president of several academic institutions, including the Presidio Graduate School, where she was interim president.
 
“But the thing I really care about is the performing arts,” Carla says. “I’ve been doing ballet my whole life, more than 50 years.”
 
She had her own nonprofit professional ballet company in Temecula and in 2014 founded Dance in the Spirit, a company that provides dance meditation workshops and retreats and spiritual writing classes and produces the quarterly Dance in the Spirit journal. She lives in Hayward with her husband of 10 years, Erik, who works in tech in Silicon Valley and is also a member of the Club, and has a 30-year-old son who lives in Reno.
 
Carla first joined Rotary in 2004 in Joplin, MO, where she was on the business faculty of Missouri Southern University. When she moved back to California, she joined a Rotary Club in San Diego, where Erik was living. After the couple moved to the Bay Area, she joined the Rotary Club of Hayward in 2014 while she was working at Chabot College as Vice President and CFO.
 
In addition to dancing a couple of times a week at LINES Ballet and ODC Dance Commons, Carla says, “I like to play the piano and write novels and provocative stories.”
 
Her development plans include helping the Club to meet its fund-raising goals for The Rotary Foundation, making Emergency Services Day into a corporate-sponsored event, helping Past President John Mathers turn the Gold Miners Ball into a signature event for the Club, and raising funds from outside the Club for the San Francisco Rotary Foundation.
 
All of which sounds like her initial involvement is only going to grow.