Thomas Benke has served as Secretary, Treasurer and Director of Environmental Programs.
He has been a PKSCA board member since 1998. He is Managing Member of The Environmental Compliance Organization LLC, an environmental law firm, and Executive Director of ECO International, a nonprofit social justice organization.
Shireen Farrahi has been a PKSCA friend and board member since 2012. She has coordinated past Bridge to Russia silent auctions, which, through books and memorabilia, has been a unique “hands on” way for her to learn about Khabarovsk.
Martha Hickey is Professor of Russian, Emerita, in the Department of World Languages and Literatures of Portland State University. At PSU she was active in University governance and, for seven years, director of the International Studies Program. She is the author of The Writer in Petrograd and the House of Arts (2009).
Patti Pulliam is past PKSCA Treasurer. She visited Khabarovsk in May, 2012, as a delegate to Day of the City, and has been a member of the board since shortly after her return. She is a retired Oncology Nurse Practitioner.
Alan Ellis has served on the Board since the organization’s inception, serving as Vice President, Treasurer, and as President. A retired high-school teacher, he taught Russian for over 30 years in the Portland Public Schools and coordinated an academic homestay exchange program during the 1990s involving Russian language students from Portland’s Lincoln High School and English language students from Khabarovsk’s School #5 (now “Gymnasium #5).
Including the Lincoln H.S. exchanges, Alan has traveled to the Soviet Union and Russian Federation more than a dozen times over a span of six decades–first as a college student, then subsequently as teacher, documentary film consultant, tourist (accompanied by family and friends), and in his capacity as PKSCA President.