Directors

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Elaine Gerdine - President

Judi Holley

James Lister

Edward Novak

Nancy Rexford

Elaine Gerdine – President

Elaine Gerdine is a writer of marketing communications for a top technology company. For more than a decade she has planned and implemented marketing and other communications campaigns, written extensively on a variety of business and technology topics, and managed content for a web site that markets the company's services to the Federal government.

A classically-trained pianist, Ms. Gerdine has penned several librettos, including those for a set of short operas based on folk tales, which have received numerous productions. "Chicken Little," first in the set, was commissioned by Texas Opera Theater (the touring unit of Houston Grand Opera), which toured it extensively. The second, "The Ugly Duckling," premiered in New York City as part of Golden Fleece Ltd's Square One series. For many years, she taught piano and worked as a performing musician – vocal accompanist, church organist and rock-and-roll pianist.

Ms. Gerdine's involvement in the arts also includes several years as a consultant for the New York State Council on the Arts and the Brooklyn Arts Council, where she participated in the evaluation of grant applicants. Her articles on the arts and artists have appeared in New York and Texas publications, including Houston Business Journal, for which she wrote a column on classical music events. Ms. Gerdine holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Texas A & I at Corpus Christi and did graduate work at the University of Houston.

Ms. Gerdine has been involved in workplace giving for many years. In addition to her role in this federation, she is a founder of the Arts Federation, which is active at the national level of the Combined Federal Campaign.

Judi Holley

Judi Holley is president of the Latin America Fund which acts as a CFC federation for U.S. organizations active in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. For several years in the 1990s and early 2000s, she was a board members and the president of Do Unto Others (DUO) – another federation representing international emergency relief, development and humanitarian charities. 

A retired federal employee, Ms. Holley has been involved in the Combined Federal Campaign for nearly 30 years. In addition to her extensive work with CFC federations, she has been a CFC donor and a local CFC volunteer. During her tenure as DUO's president, she participated in the National CFC Committee as the designated representative of her federation.

Ms. Holley is a long-time participant in nonprofit organizations in her home state of Washington. These activities include: The Governor's Advisory Council for Vocational Rehabilitation, the Criminal Justice Training Commission, South Puget Sound Cultural Diversity Coalition, several local charities focusing on immigrant education, employment and housing, and the Pierce County Sheriffs Advisory Board. She is currently leading a Pierce County pilot program for community involvement originally sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

James Lister

James Lister is executive director of the Plummer Home for Boys, a not for profit organization which has been serving at risk boys in Massachusetts since the mid 1800s.

Mr. Lister has held a number of positions within the child welfare field: program director for a crisis stabilization unit and alternative “lock-up” program for adolescents, social worker at the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, and manager of an eleven bed co-ed residential facility. As CEO of the Plummer Home, he supervises over 30 staff, and has been responsible for expanding the organization’s traditional work as a group residence into various community based services.

Mr. Lister is active in the community, serving as a board member of the Massachusetts Children’s League and of Children and Youth Services, another CFC federation. He is an officer of the Salem Rotary and a member of the Salem Youth Commission. He holds both a bachelor and masters degree from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Edward Novak

A Federal employee for three decades, Edward Novak was actively involved in the Combined Federal Campaign - as donor, loaned executive, community campaign leader, and national volunteer. A member of the National CFC Committee, Mr. Novak was also a member of the campaign's National Advisory Council, which includes senior volunteers from around the nation.

For most of a decade, Mr. Novak helped to direct the Baltimore area campaign. (It is now called the Chesapeake Bay Area CFC, the fourth largest CFC zone in the country.) During this period, the Baltimore area zone experienced substantial growth in both the amount of money raised and the percent of the workforce participating.

During his federal career, Mr. Novak managed operations and policy staffs involved in the administration of a national labor management relations program. In addition, he was directly involved with the development and implementation of an alternative dispute resolution program aimed at addressing and resolving workplace conflict in non-adversarial ways.

An attorney in Maryland, Mr. Novak is a member of the American Bar Association, the Maryland State Bar association and the Association for Conflict Resolution. He is currently director of government affairs for the Baltimore County school system.

Nancy Rexford

Nancy Rexford is secretary-treasurer of Partners for a Better World. Since 2004 she has advised charities that wish to participate in the Combined Federal Campaign and has served on the boards of other organizations involved in workplace giving, including Animal Welfare Fund. She brings over thirty years experience in non-profit administration and governance and is currently the CFO of the Workplace Giving Alliance.

She holds degrees from Vassar College and the University of Iowa, where she studied music, English literature and creative writing. A well-known costume historian, Rexford wrote and illustrated Women's Shoes in America, 1795-1920 (Kent State University Press), which won the Costume Society of America's award as best costume book of the year 2000.She also provided the illustrations for Everyday Dress of Rural America, 1783-1800, by Merideth Wright (Dover Books).She has curated and designed several exhibitions, including All for One & One for All! Uniforms in Fact and Fantasy at the American Textile History Museum. As a consultant, she has dated and identified antique clothing, photographs and paintings in dozens of museums around the United States, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, Kansas City Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery.

Ms. Rexford is also a musician and writer and serves on the board of the New Opera and Musical Theater Initiative, a Boston-based writers' group. She has participated in NOMTI’s Advanced Writers Lab since its inception in 2007. She is currently finishing a set of 27 art songs about animals based on the poems of Carmen Bernos de Gasztold, Prayers from the Ark, as translated by Rumer Godden.

Her home has been the preferred long-term refuge for a sustained series of homeless but enterprising felines since 1970. The current resident, “Seven,” went to unusual lengths to get there, sacrificing two of her nine lives on a Pennsylvania highway in order to make a case for herself. When not visiting her colleagues at the Workplace Giving Alliance, Sevvie can typically be found napping in the filing box in the finance office.