Our Board of Directors

Rusty Zimmerman, Executive Director

Rusty Zimmerman is the Executive Director of Community Arts Brooklyn, Inc., and Founder/Artist of the Free Portrait Project. His 200 portraits from life and recorded oral histories of Crown Heights exhibited at Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Children's Museum, and Brooklyn Borough Hall, and the permanent collection of Poster House NYC. Zimmerman’s work has been featured in the New York Times, CityLab, and Saatchi Gallery Magazine in London. He has lectured at NYU, Wellesley, and Long Island University, and was offered an Ellson grant at Harvard. Zimmerman lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Photo credit: Joseph Mintz

Jan Rosenberg, Board Chair

Jan is a retired Sociology professor and a local Business owner (Brooklyn Hearth Realty). Jan founded Friends of Cortelyou in 2001 (during sabbatical, teaching at LIU), pivoting from a research project on neighborhood development to an action project to develop the neighborhood. Friends of Cortelyou recruited the Farmers Market and helped many Cortelyou Ave businesses get established, including The Farm on Adderley, Sycamore, Brooklyn Artery, and more.

Dr. René Alexander Orquiza, Secretary

Alex Orquiza is a historian of 20th-century American race, empire, and popular culture. His work focuses on immigrants, racial and ethnic minority activists, and anti-imperialists pushed back against who could be called “American.” He has contributed essays to Oxford University Press in Savoring Gotham: A Food Lover's Companion to New York City (2015) . His work has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the W.M. Keck Foundation.

IG: @RAOrquiza

Dan Ogorzalek, Treasurer

Dan is a film and television professional residing in Brooklyn, NY. When he is not on set, he can often be found walking his dog, Abbott, around the neighborhood.