Inaugural Volunteer of the Year Award: 2018's Star Volunteers

Celebrating our first Volunteer of the Year Awardees: Jennifer Capella and Rebecca MacGowan

Many organizations hold awards for volunteers who go that extra mile. In December, SCB decided to start officially recognizing some our “Star Volunteers” for their unbelievable dedication.

In our inaugural year of this award, we could not decide between two very special women who support SCB to an extreme, and who have helped us so much that we couldn’t imagine running the organization without them.

So, in 2018 we decided to award our inaugural Volunteer of the Year Award to both Jennifer Capella (SCB Board Treasurer) & Rebecca MacGowan (Volunteer Coordinator) for their generous spirit and support.

Jennifer Capella

Jennifer has been SCB Board Treasurer since 2015, and has done an exemplary job overseeing organizational finances. She has gone so far above and beyond what is required that she has truly become irreplaceable. When Toby and Martha first arrived at SCB, she patiently explained the financial health of the organization and still gives hours and hours of her time making spreadsheets, graphs, and reports on a regular basis to keep the SCB team up-to-date with how everything is going.

Jennifer's work creates the peace of mind that allows us to take the organization to new heights without becoming "overdrawn!" She has an incredible mind, thorough attention to detail, a deep understanding of the organization, and a magical way of analyzing and summarizing SCB's finances so that we can concentrate on making our students the best dancers that they can be. Jennifer is constantly brainstorming new financial reports that shed light onto organizational strengths and weaknesses, and we refer back to her work all the time. She volunteers for this very involved role on top of managing her actual job, and her family and children—we are so grateful for her!

Rebecca MacGowan

Rebecca has been volunteering for many years, running the backstage and the extremely essential volunteer program since 2015. When Toby and Martha first arrived here, Rebecca was asked to be SCB's official volunteer coordinator, and since then has taken her role to such a point that if she ever leaves we may need to hire someone to replace her!

Her work is awe-inspiring: her attention to detail is impeccable and her work ethic relentless. She is someone who not only has two children, but also a full time job, volunteer commitments for band, and also what has actually become a seemingly full time job commitment here at SCB, organizing almost 70 volunteers involved in The Nutcracker alone, and then also the Spring Repertoire performance and September Academy Performance.

Rebecca has been a huge support to us and to all who know her, always ready to solve ANY and ALL problems.

Thank you both Jennifer and Rebecca, on behalf of all of Southern California Ballet. You are our star volunteers and we couldn't do it without you!

Volunteer of the Year Award 2018 - Jennifer Capella

Volunteer of the Year Award 2018 - Rebecca MacGowan