LA OPERA BOARD DIRECTORY

One of the world’s preeminent conductors, James Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire, and has conducted virtually every prestigious symphony orchestra in the U.S. and Europe. He has been the Richard Seaver Music Director of Los Angeles Opera since 2006 and is the principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of the RAI in Torino. He previously was music director of the Ravinia Festival (2005-2015),the summer home of the Chicago Symphony ; music director of the Cincinnati May Festival (1979-2016); Principal Conductor of the RAI Italia National Orchestra in Turin ( 2016-2021), the Paris National Opera (1995-2004); general music director of the City of Cologne (1989-2002); and music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (1983-1991). He has conducted more than 270 performances at the Metropolitan Opera. He won two Grammy Awards for LA Opera’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and another Grammy for LA Opera’s recording of The Ghosts of Versailles. He has made a significant effort to increase awareness of a lost generation of early 20th-century composers whose works were suppressed by the Nazi regime and was honored in 2007 by the Anti-Defamation League for his work in this area, and a recipient of the Zemlinsky Prize from Austria.  In 2005 he was one of five recipients of the inaugural Opera News Awards, given in recognition of distinguished contributions in the world of opera. Conlon’s extensive discography can be found on the Bridge, Capriccio, Decca, EMI, Erato and Sony Classical labels; and his recordings of LA Opera productions including Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles released on PentaTone and Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny on EuroArts have received four Grammy® awards. Conlon was named the Italian Republic, and Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture. In 2002, he received France’s highest honor, the Légion d’Honneur, from then-President of the French Republic Jacques Chirac.  

Marc Stern is Chairman of The TCW Group, Inc., a Los Angeles-based asset management firm with approximately $250 billion of assets under management. Since 1990, Mr. Stern has held a number of senior management positions at TCW including CEO, President and Vice Chairman. He also held a variety of senior positions at Société Générale Group, one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, which owned TCW from 2001 to 2013. Prior to joining TCW in 1990, Mr. Stern was President and a Director of SunAmerica and prior to that, was a senior executive with the Henley Group and its predecessor companies. Mr. Stern began his career in 1970 as an attorney with the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton.  Mr. Stern is a minority owner of both the Milwaukee Brewers and the Milwaukee Bucks. He is also Honorary Chairman of the Los Angeles Opera. In addition, Mr. Stern currently serves on the Boards of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, The Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, The Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Committee, the California Institute of Technology, the Alliance for Southern California Innovation and The Los Angeles Coalition for the Economy & Jobs.  Mr. Stern was formerly a Director of Qualcomm, Inc., a Vice-Chair of The Salk Institute, and was Founding Chairman of both the Mayor’s Fund Los Angeles and of The President’s Council of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He holds a BA from Dickinson College, an MA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Public Law and Government and a JD from the Columbia University School of Law.  Mr. Stern and his wife, Eva, live in Malibu, California, and have two children and six grandchildren.

Bernard A. Greenberg is a longtime member of the Los Angeles Opera board and is also an emeritus member of the Los Angeles Music Center board. Mr. Greenberg and several of his law school classmates, together with a few interested others, founded the Los Angeles Civic Grand Opera with its initial performances at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. The company moved to the Music Center as the resident opera company shortly after the completion of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the mid 1960s. After hiring Peter Hemmings as its general director in the mid 1980s, the company began creating its own productions. Mr. Greenberg has continued on the board throughout the company’s history and has served as president, as chairman and now as a vice-chairman. Bernie lives in Beverly Hills with his wife, Lenore, who is an Honorary Life Director of the board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  

Leslie A. Dorman is president of the Sterling Foundation, a philanthropic foundation which focuses on programs that address barriers to college for African-American and Latino students in inner-city Los Angeles neighborhoods. She previously served for eight years as executive director of the Whitecap Foundation which funded projects involving family support, youth education, and wildlife conservation. She has also held positions as assistant executive director of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, director of development for KUSC-FM, and she spent ten years with the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, a non-profit, non-partisan international affairs organization. In addition to her work on the board of Los Angeles Opera, she serves on the board of the Yosemite Conservancy.  A native of Winnetka, Illinois, Ms. Dorman holds a BA in political science and sociology from Occidental College. She is married to John Dorman and they have one daughter, Brooke Niss.

Marilyn Ziering is retired after three decades as senior vice president of Diagnostic Products Corporation, a company she founded with her late husband Sigi Ziering. She is founding president of the Women’s Group at the Friends of Sheba Medical Center where she received the Woman of Achievement Award. An active member of Temple Beth Am, she has chaired the Capital Campaign, served on the board, and was inducted into the Hall of Honor.  She and her husband were founders of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is chair emeritus of the board of the American Jewish University, where she spearheaded the creation of the Sigi Ziering Institute. She endowed LA Opera’s multi-year Recovered Voices project, dedicated to the music of composers whose work was sup- pressed by the Nazis, for which she received a Treasures of Los Angeles award from the Central City Association, and she supports the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices at the Colburn School. She is the president of the Ziering Family Foundation.  She serves on the boards of the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Her greatest achievements to date are her four children and nine grandchildren.

Penelope D. Foley is a portfolio manager for TCW Emerging Markets and serves on the board of The TCW Group. Prior to joining TCW in 1990, she was a senior vice president of Drexel Burnham Lambert where she was involved in the management of DBL Americas Development Association, L.P., and in the provision of investment and merchant banking services in Latin America. Before Drexel, she was a vice president in Citicorp’s Investment Bank and was responsible for Eurosecurities, project finance and private placements in Latin America and Canada. Previously, she was an associate in the corporate finance department at Lehman Brothers.