SENIOR STAFF ALUMNI
Senior Staff ProfilesThe following individuals have served as members of the Burning Man Senior Staff in previous years:
Ada Lee Chester
Operations Manager, DPW
On a hot summer afternoon, while traveling through New Orleans, Ada made surprise discovery in a brochure tossed on a friend's coffee table: Burning Man. Two weeks later, Ada assembled a crew from Austin, Texas, and arrived in the desert on a hell-bent mission to volunteer for three months at DPW. Years later, Ada now splits her year living between San Francisco and Gerlach, working full time for Burning Man in DPW.
As Operations Manager of DPW, Ada oversees DPW business management, including purchasing, receiving, human resources, accounting, volunteerism, the Gerlach offices, and other behind-the-scenes support. Ada's background is in purchasing, event coordination, and bronze casting.
Bex Workman
Regional Network Coordinator
Bex made an unexpected, long journey from Ohio, across the US, to Black Rock City in 1997. Unaware of what she was about to experience, she found herself completely at home only 20 minutes after arriving on the playa, and has been coming back for more ever since. She moved to San Francisco from Ohio right after the 2000 event and has been working for the Man ever since.
Bex's job has changed drastically over the years. She is currently the Regional Network Coordinator, providing year-round support to the ever growing Regional Network. She is the former Ticket Manger — having worked with the SF Ticket Team and the on playa Box Office for over 6 years. She has also managed the printed publications that are mailed out year-round as well as the materials passed out to participants upon arriving at BRC.
In her former life, Bex was a cook and baker. She holds a double Bachelor's in French and Russian languages. When she is not working for Burning Man, Bex spends her time clowning around, playing with her cat, bending up like a pretzle, and teaching herself new tricks she never thought she could do.
Chris Lewis
Dana Harrison is the BizBabe, a fitting "next phase" for her life after retiring from 18 years in various corner-office jobs in San Francisco's downtown palaces of commerce. She now devotes her time to a happy split between wilderness, international travel, and subverting the dominant paradigm. Since 1999, Dana has overseen the Center Camp Cafe, CampArctica (Ice Sales), the Commissary, and vendor relationships and contracts, and supports the project as a volunteer business consultant—and couldn't be more delighted to be doing it all NOT wearing a suit and pantyhose. In the rest of her "spare" time, she does humanitarian relief work with Planet Care/The Burmese Refugee Care Project, and hosts the Oakland Noodle Factory, a performing arts/live-work/community space in a former food-processing warehouse in West Oakland. Her mottoes are "Be clear about your intent, then align your action with your intent" and "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
As Nevada Properties Manager for Burning Man, Dave is responsible for the maintenance, development and acquisition of BRC's properties in Nevada, Black Rock Station, Gerlach Office, Gerlach Showers, Black Rock Social Club, Bruno's Trailer Park and the Reno Office. Working with the State and County officials he secures permits and licenses for facilities operation and any construction on the properties. Working with the BRC Board, Washoe County Planning Commission and our contractors, Dave helps to develop property improvements and coordinate new projects.
Overseeing routine maintenance and caretaking of the properties is a talent he learned when he took care of more than 400 apartment units while still in high school. A licensed contractor and Local 39 Chief Engineer, he has been involved in construction for more than 25 years. Working in various fields such as Scuba Diving Products, International Import/Export, Commercial Fishing, Specialty Printing as well as the various trades that go along with construction of commercial and residential properties.
He enjoys motorcycle riding and racing, photography, scuba diving, flying and putting roofs on water towers and bars in his spare time. If not off in some foreign country, Dave can often be found in the hills of Northern California relaxing on some piece of heavy equipment.
Dave Thornton (aka Thorny) came to the Burning Man office in January of 2000 to change a tire on the Lamplighter's golf cart and found himself working as the official Bean Counter. In his own words, he reads bank forms, fills in insurance applications, crunches budgets and other boring stuff like that.
Dave hails from Salt Lake City, where he worked for Novell in finance and operations for 10 years. He studied International Relations at Brigham Young University, and has occupied such lofty positions as U.S. Senate intern, janitor, fast food jockey, door-to-door sales, and fish slinger in the Alaskan fisheries. When he's not pinching pennies, he enjoys hiking, backpacking, and road tripping.
Flynn Mauthe
Director of Operations, DPW
Flynn Mauthe has spent most of his life organizing people, building homes, and constructing large flaming art. After growing up in East Texas, he did what all good Texas freaks do and moved to Austin. While working construction (building custom homes in Texas and the Virgin Islands), he numbered amongst his friends the cast of Richard Linklater's Slacker and members of the Butthole Surfers. He played guitar and accordion in several punk bands, including the Hickoids, Marching Plague and Butterscotch Tuna. Flynn's life next took a turn toward the normal, and he spent the next seven years selling real estate. In 1994 he saw his first Survival Research Labs show, quit his job, liquidated his possessions and moved into SRL's San Francisco warehouse, where he resided for the next six years. He first came to Burning Man in 1995, and has been a transportation manager, construction foreman and chief site foreman for the project. In 1999 he became the official Director of Operations for DPW. In his spare time, he studies flamenco guitar, hangs out on a private island in Texas with his friend Kalman and brother Brett, and is the CEO of two independent Militias.
Flynn currently lives on Main Street in Gerlach, Nevada, with "Ze Dragon Lady" (Lisa Nigro) and their daughter Timberline.
Holly Kreuter
Theme Camp Coordinatrix
Holly knew she was home the moment she stepped foot on the playa at Burning Man 1995. She successfully stayed as far away from the event organizers as possible for two years before destiny captured her to join the team in 1997. She began her service assisting Harley with Theme Camp Placement and her duties have grown to include working in the San Francisco office handling such exciting tasks as phone system maintenance, network coordinator, and purchaser of equipment. She also acts as staff liaison to several Technical Teams. Holly also continues to work with Harley to coordinate, map and physically place Theme Camps as they arrive on the playa.
Holly is originally from Wisconsin and came to California in 1991. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree by double majoring in Cultural Geography and Journalism. She loves her role as Theme Camp Coordinatrix, and thinks that mapping Theme Camps is a practical application of Cultural Geography. Through the Theme Camp Questionnaires they receive she and Harley use past project history, the present project proposal and bets on whether the project will be completed while deciding which groups will compliment each other (or at least get along OK!) Creating neighborhoods in Black Rock City is her and Harley's game. When not placing Theme Camps, you can often find her with a tripod shooting photographs of Burning Man at Night.
Jeph Ward
Jess Bobier
Office Efficiency Nurse
The nurse is a meta-node in an environment that depends on her ability to rapidly determine the best direction for anyone at anytime in terms of their needs in relation to personnel and resources. Rapid-fire she will send you and the line of people behind you on your way to the destination you need.
She believes she is genetically wired to Burning Man. On her days off she usually dons only a crop & a satchel of sass from which she dispenses readily & indiscriminately.
Joseph F. Fenton (a.k.a. Boggmann)
Sr. Staff Member: 2000-2002
12 year Burning Man participant, leads the Black Rock Ranger's Operations Department. Coming to Burning Man as an Anthropological researcher in 1991, Boggmann has worked in almost all aspects of the organization. In 1993 he created the first of two Burning Man Tarot decks (the second, in color, was produced in 1996), along with T-shirt designs and graphic art pieces. As a participant he produced such events as 'Golf-Skeet' and the 'Drive-by Shooting Range' in the early years of the Burning Man event. Landing finally in the Rangers in 1994, Boggmann worked on deep desert rescues and general Ranger activities. Returning after a one year hiatus in 1997, Boggmann developed a Ranger Operations Department, worked to build the Department of Mutant Vehicles and serves on the Burning Man and Ranger Senior Staffs. He currently lives noisily in the East Bay with his cat.
LadyBee, aka Christine Kristen, dealt with all things visual and aesthetic, including managing the theme art and the grant program, photo-editing the Image Gallery, writing art content for burningman.com, working with the Artery and Image volunteers, managing the Archives and lecturing and writing about the art of Burning Man.
After earning an MFA in sculpture from the Art Institute of Chicago, she spent four years in Africa and Jamaica as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching art and working with woodcarvers. Always interested in popular culture, she began photographing hand-painted signs while hitchhiking across West Africa, and later published articles and lectured about them. She has also written several articles about visual culture in Jamaica. After struggling as a sculptor in New York for a decade she moved to San Francisco and started a jewelry business. In 1995 she found Burning Man, and proceeded to get deeply involved in the community, performing in the Court of Gaia at Mysteria (1997), creating the Shrine of the Dessicated Rats (Burning Man 1997 and 1999) and throwing the Ageing Hipsters Cocktail Party (Burning Man 1998). After helping to curate the first Art of Burning Man exhibit at the SF Arts Commission Gallery in 1998, she realized that she found greater satisfaction in curating art than in making it, and started her work at Burning Man. As a former sculptor and painter, she has an empathy with artists that serves her well in this work. She is known for her outgoing nature, her wit and style, her devotion to the arts, her photographs and her amusing costumes.
Mark "Bucky" Evan Oliver II
Spiderman
Bucky has been operating incognito at Burning Man for going on his 7th year. After being invited to volunteer at the mysterious northern Nevada festival back in 1998 by a previous Gate Leader and his "real world" foreman, Bucky finds himself bringing his crew back year after year to save the day when conditions take a turn for the worst, ensuring that everyone who enters Black Rock City is entitled to be there.
Growing up in a meager agricultural community in the middle of California, Bucky knew that the small-town was not for him, and quickly moved at the age of 18, to the the East Bay, where he now lives in Oakland. When he's not wrangling the Gate/Perimeter staff, Bucky is a Journeyman Electrician with IBEW Local 595. With what little spare time he has, he enjoys spending time in the Studio playing guitar, Long-Range Shooting, and building strange contraptions, the latest of which is a Bathtub-on-wheels.
Molly Tirpak
Volunteer Department
Molly, aka Safetygirl, manages the volunteer program at Burning Man. She coordinates a volunteer team that work on organization-wide volunteer issues. Together with the volunteer team, Molly helps the city's many volunteer coordinators find, place, train, schedule, and work with volunteers. Each year, over 2,500 people build, run, and clean up Black Rock City. The organization's volunteer needs are most pronounced on the playa, but the off-playa needs (like the volunteers for this website) and the pre-playa needs (including planning in every department) make the volunteer department a year-round operation. Molly has a background in organizational development and public policy. She holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Georgetown and Harvard Universities, respectively. Molly's non-Burning Man work is spent focusing on energy policy, especially the promotion of renewable energy and energy efficiency. She has founded two non-profit organizations that work on clean energy issues; most recently she started a public-private partnership on climate change. She serves on the board of director's for the San Francisco Children's Council, and is looking forward to getting more involved in city politics.
Rob Miller
Rob Miller first attended Burning Man in the year 2000. While he was there, somebody handed him a glass of kool-aid, and he hasn't been quite the same since. He started volunteering for the Technology Team in early 2001, and joined the Project full time as Tech Team lead in November of that year. Since then, he has built servers, kept email, web, database, and myriad other services running, overseen an office move, watched the organization (and the network!) quadruple in size, built web applications, produced webcasts, supported on-playa operations, given trainings, managed budgets, helped cultivate a growing community of volunteers and staff, attended retreats, spoken at conferences, made funny faces, and met and worked with hundreds of talented, fascinating, beautiful people.
Rob became involved with computers at age 12 when he first sat down in front of a TRS-80 Model II. He studied fractal geometry and chaos theory while attending University of California at Riverside because he liked to look at the pretty pictures. He tries to appease his growing sense of unease with world affairs by calling his political representatives from time to time, and by engaging in such radical activities as hosting a website for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile (http://hhdl.org/xz/index.html), reading books, and hanging out with his daughter. Despite all appearances of a healthy social life, he is really an hopeless geek who can often be found up in the middle of the night hacking python code for fun. In particular, you'll usually find him working on Plone (http://www.plone.org/) and Plone-related projects; he and some other Burning Man Tech Team members have become Plone developers and members of the Plone Foundation over the course of using the platform for a number of Burning Man web applications.
Timothy Foster (a.k.a. Meanbean)
Born in Honolulu, HI, and raised in St. Louis, MO, Tim came to Burning Man in January 2002, because he is very enthusiastic about art and how it applies to day-to-day life. He believes in the importance of aesthetics and living life as art.
In his spare time he likes painting on canvas, drawing on paper, reading classic authors, watching good and bad movies, taking pictures of people and places, taking long walks through the city and just goofing off. His ideal day would involve a couple of these things, a really really good dinner, drinks at the Hyde Out, a good or bad movie, and watching "The Simpsons" at least once. 
