Board of Directors

Stagebridge is currently recruiting qualified new members for its board. If you are interested in joining, please review the Board Information sheet, and fill out an Application form. Contact director@stagebridge.org with any questions.


“I’m so proud to be on the Stagebridge Board. We’re helping Stagebridge to live its values.

we’re bringing Community right into Stagebridge with new classes and instructors with deep expertise in their fields as well as diverse ethnicities and cultural backgrounds—across all of our performance genres!”

~Eleanor Clement glass
Board Member


Mel Terry, Chair



Mel Terry retired from UC Berkeley in 2007 after almost 30 years as a physical therapist, where he provided safety training and ergonomic assessments for various campus departments and participated in designing the PT department when the new health facility was created in 1991.  His specialty areas included performing arts PT and holistic health. Mel is active in the community, serving on the boards of the Oakland Gay Men’s Chorus and of Friends of the Montclair Railroad Trail, and volunteering with the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals (CCMP) for the last 42 years.

In 2000, he graduated from a four-year Feldenkrais ® (Awareness Through Movement) training, and he taught a Feldenkrais workshop at Stagebridge in 2017.

Joining Stagebridge in 2009, Mel’s studies have included French Cabaret, Commedia del Arte, and Musical Theatre, and he was in the 2013 Stagebridge play “Counter Attack.” He loves being a member of the Stagebridge community, is a supporter and donor and has served on the Development Committee helping to produce the 2018 Gala.


Prescott Cole, vice chair / secretary

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Prescott Cole has been Senior Staff attorney for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR) for the past twenty-six years. At CANHR, Mr. Cole counsels consumers and family members about elder abuse and long-term care issues. He assists in the development and implementation of CANHR’s various training programs and provides continuing education to law enforcement agencies, legal services programs, private-bar attorneys, ombudsman, and consumers.  Cole serves on the National Adult Protective Services Association Advisory Board, the U.S. Attorney General’s Elder Justice Task Force, and the Veterans Benefits Protection Project.  Prescott Cole has written many pieces of legislation that have become California law.  In 2010, he received the California Lawyer Magazine Elder Law Attorney of the Year Award, and in 2013 Governor Jerry Brown appointed Cole to the Professional Fiduciaries Advisory Committee. 


Eleanor Clement Glass

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Eleanor comes to Stagebridge with a 23-year background in Philanthropy, beginning at the San Francisco Foundation, where she was responsible for the regional grantmaking and community initiatives of the SF Foundation. An active member of Bay Area Blacks in Philanthropy and Asian and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, Eleanor brings commitment to creating a better and more just world, including a decade as Chief Giving Officer at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, where she helmed grantmaking and community initiatives programs and the donor education and engagement departments. Additionally, she led public policy initiatives and worked with members of the California State Assembly and Senate to pass bills blocking payday lending and other predatory lending.

She has also worked at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and has served as Vice President of The Foundation Incubator, which provided turn-key consultant services for new foundations in the South Bay and training programs for philanthropy professionals. Additionally, her experience also includes two decades in education, working as an instructor in the Education department at San Francisco State University, Early Childhood Education and Child Development and Parent Education, working in programs that supported migrant families in the Central Valley and poor families throughout California, among other things.

With her retirement comes a renewal of creativity, as Eleanor found Stagebridge through Summer Camp where she discovered storytelling. Since then, she has taken several acting classes and recently completed the two-year E.P.I.C. Storytelling Program at Stagebridge.


Nader Robert Shabahangi, Ph.D.



Ben Tucker


Stuart Kandell - Founder, Emeritus Executive Director & Board member (1978 -2013)