By Sharice Bryant | HDD Marketing Director
Heidi Duckler Dance is pleased to announce the 2024 lineup of honorees for this year’s anniversary celebration, Dance in the Light of the Harvest Moon. On this commemorative night, we will honor three, trailblazing leaders in Los Angeles: Marla Bleavins, Alex Johnson, and Therese H. Maynard.
Marla Bleavins will receive the Civic Engagement Award for her contributions as Deputy Executive Director & Chief Financial Officer at the Port of Los Angeles. Alex Johnson will receive the Human Impact Award for his impactful work as the Vice President of Public Affairs at The California Wellness Foundation. Therese H. Maynard will receive the Education & Learning Award for her work in the community and as Professor of Law Leonard Cohen Chair for Law and Business at Loyola Marymount University.
Join us on Saturday, September 21, 2024, as we Dance in the Light of the Harvest Moon to celebrate 39 years of innovative site-specific work.
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Loyola Law School was designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry.
The 1978 commission was Gehry’s start in institutional work, where he reimagined Loyola’s downtown Los Angeles site as a neo-traditional campus. He then seamlessly arranged a stylistically diverse set of buildings and surrounded them with a knoll-like landscape. The expansion of the campus was done in several phases, much like the many phases of the moon, and was completed in 2003.
About the Honorees
Marla Bleavins is a proud native of Los Angeles, having grown up in the greater Crenshaw area where she still resides. She was raised by two dedicated public servants –a retired educator and a retired Lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. She attended local schools, graduating from St. Bernard High School and from there she went on to earn her degree in Public Policy at Stanford University. Upon returning to Los Angeles after graduation, she soon continued her family’s proud legacy of public service by starting her 25-year career with the City of Los Angeles. She also earned a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School.
Marla takes great pride in having “grown up in the City” professionally, having started her career as a management assistant in the Office of the City Administrative Officer and eventually taking on key roles in other departments such as Debt & Treasury Manager at LAX, Assistant General Manager at the Los Angeles Convention Center and most recently Deputy Executive Director & Chief Financial Officer at the Port of Los Angeles. She also served as Executive Officer, serving the second in command at the nation’s busiest container port.
In May, Marla returned to Los Angeles World Airports, the City agency that runs LAX, to serve as Chief Airports Administrative Officer where she will lead human resources, procurement, supplier diversity, risk management, and commercial development.
Outside of work, Marla represents policy holders on the Board of Governors for Farmers Insurance and is on the board for Coro Southern California whose mission is to strengthen the democratic process by preparing individuals for effective and ethical leadership. She also performs with the Leigh Purtill Ballet Company, which is dedicated to bringing ballet to a wider audience by promoting inclusion within the classical ballet art form.
Alex M. Johnson is Vice President of Public Affairs at The California Wellness Foundation where he brings nearly twenty years of successful cross-sector experience working with policymakers, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and the philanthropic sector to solve problems and advance change. Johnson returned to Cal Wellness in January 2024 after serving as vice president at Bryson Gillette, a strategic communications and public affairs firm where he led efforts to support clients working to create change across multiple sectors, including education, government, philanthropy, and nonprofits. Before his time at Bryson Gillette, Johnson served as a senior leader at Cal Wellness for nearly five years in various grantmaking roles, including as Chief of Staff and Program Director. Alex led efforts to address gun violence as a preventable public health issue, reimagine the youth justice system, and address issues ranging from health equity, environmental justice, and immigration.
Alex serves on the boards of Southern California Grantmakers, Urban Peace Institute, Trust for Public Land, Wiley Center for Speech and Language Therapy, and the UCLA Luskin School Board of Advisors. He previously served two terms on the Los Angeles County Board of Education, including time as President, working to effectively shape policies and programs in the best interests of students and families. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Alex is a graduate of Morehouse College and American University, Washington College of Law. His writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Guardian, Los Angeles Daily News, San Jose Mercury News, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, California Health Report, and the Sacramento Bee.
Therese H. Maynard is the Leonard Cohen Chair for Law and Business at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where she teaches Business Associations and Mergers & Acquisitions, as well as advanced courses focusing on venture capital financing and the role of in-house lawyers. Maynard is a nationally recognized business law scholar having written numerous law review articles and is also the author of two widely-adopted casebooks: Mergers & Acquisitions: Cases, Materials and Problems (now in its 5th Edition); and Business Planning: Financing the Start-Up and Venture Capital Financing (now in its 4th Edition with her co-author Shannon Trevino). Both casebooks are well known for providing a thoughtful approach to educating law students so that they are well-prepared to practice corporate law. In addition, as Founder of Loyola’s Transactional Lawyering Institute, Maynard has developed a new and innovative curriculum for educating Loyola’s students so that they are ready “to hit the ground running” when they graduate and start practicing business law in a transactional setting.
Professor Maynard received her J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where she was Order of the Coif, and her B.A., Summa Cum Laude, from the University of California, Irvine. After graduating law school, Maynard practiced with the law firm of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.
While she very much enjoyed practicing law, Maynard made the decision to join Loyola’s faculty to pursue her passion for teaching and scholarship. As Maynard is fond of saying, “The joys of teaching – and learning – from Loyola’s students are truly unparalleled! The seeds of learning that are planted in my classroom today, together with my emphasis on Loyola’s commitment to social justice, yield tomorrow’s lawyers who will devote their law careers to building a better world for all people. Like other areas of the law, we corporate lawyers cannot approach the law separate from the people it impacts. I try to instill in my students the importance of understanding the public policies and the core values that corporate law is intended to serve. In this way, corporate lawyers can make a meaningful and lasting difference in our world!”
