Staff

Black Rock Arts Foundation employs three full time staff members, the Executive Director, the Program and Development Assistant, and the Administrative Assistant/Office Manager.

Tomas McCabe, Executive Director

As Executive Director of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, Tomas McCabe leverages his background in the visual arts and environmental sustainability to further BRAF’s mission to support and promote community-based and civic-engaging art.

Tomas has long been a member of the San Francisco creative community, working as a freelance film editor since 1991.  He is also an accomplished documentary filmmaker.  In 1999, he began a three year journey which resulted in an award-winning documentary called "Bums' Paradise," which tells the stories and shows the extraordinary creativity of a group of homeless men and women, before and after their eviction from the community they built on the Albany Landfill in the San Francisco Bay.  He also developed the concept for and scripted "Gang of Souls," an hour-long documentary featuring poets from the Beat Generation.

His commitment to environmental and social sustainability is apparent in his career choices.  A former Executive Director of the Berkeley Conservation and Energy Program, Tomas managed a collaborative project between The City of Berkeley and The Ecology Center created to assist ethnically diverse and underserved residents to conserve energy and reduce utility bills.  As a member of the Peace Corps from 1988-1991, he was posted to Rabinal, Guatemala, as an Appropriate Technology specialist where, in addition to providing technical environmental consulting, he scheduled educational and cultural programming for local television and created videos on environmental and health issues. Tomas remained in Guatemala for an additional year at the conclusion of his volunteer work and made a 30-minute ethnographic documentary on a Mayan ritual, "La Cofradia".

In 2007, Tomas joined the Burning Man Project as Environmental Education Coordinator for the Green Man Pavilion Expo, a project that provided an interactive, entertaining environment for Burning Man participants to learn about how green/clean technologies could be applied to their lives.

Josie Schimke, Program and Development Assistant

Eli Peterson, Office Manager and Administrative Assistant

Eli Peterson joined the Black Rock Arts Foundation in July of 2010. As office manager and administrative assistant he is responsible or keeping the chaos at bay in many small ways. He has worked as a paralegal, a teacher, and the administrator of a small artist-run publishing collective. In college, Eli studied Theater and Anthropology, culminating his education by co- producing, directing, designing, and starring in a piece of devised theater entitled ". . . and There's Nothing You Can Do About It."  He has attended Burning Man every year since 2005.

Uber volunteer Affinity, Tomas McCabe and Josie Schimke