Maclovia Quintana on Board Service and Connecting

Maclovia Quintana rotated off the EEFC board last January after serving from 2018 to 2023—during the last year, as president. Technically, her term ended in October 2023 but she stayed on until January to help current Board President Anna Goldberg settle into her new role.

I recently caught up with her to chat about her board service.

Becoming involved with the EEFC
Maclovia grew up in New Mexico, surrounded by music. During college and grad school at Yale, she sang with the Yale Slavic Chorus. She began attending Balkan Camp in 2011 and, with friends in New Haven, eventually started a Balkan band (Orkestar BAM) in which she played percussion and sang. Together with her husband, Adam Waite, also a musician, she moved to the Bay Area in 2017. These days she sings with Kitka; she has also taught beginning doumbek at EEFC’s Mendocino workshop (2018 and 2019). Professionally, she works as Director of People and Culture at Kitchen Table Advisors, business advisors to sustainable small farms and ranches.

Path to serving on the board
Maclovia joined the program committee as a volunteer in 2017 and by fall 2018 had joined the board. In 2021, when Alex Marković retired from the board, Kristina Vaškýs assumed the president’s position and Maclovia stepped into the position of vice president—part of a new board leadership succession plan that they worked together to develop. (Read more about that here.)

Challenges of board service
Following the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020, Maclovia said, the board spent countless hours trying to figure out what to do about camp. “It became clear pretty quickly after mid-March 2020 that we would need to cancel camp,” she said. “But then figuring out how to continue to maintain some sense of connectivity. . . . It was really challenging. The push to create virtual camp 2020 was a huge thing.”

In some ways, the following year was even harder, as the board faced the question: is it safe enough yet to hold camp? The board was tasked with making decisions not only about health and safety but also about maintaining connection and continuity in the community.

“I am so grateful to all my fellow board members from that period for the way that we handled those conversations,” Maclovia said. “It was really hard, and not everybody agreed, of course, on what was the best path forward, but I think we managed it in the best way we could.” The EEFC created and presented weekend virtual camps in 2020 and 2021 and, in 2022, weekend in-person gatherings on the West and East coasts.

“It was such a relief to get to 2023, when in-person camps resumed, and say okay, we’re back, we’ve emerged,” Maclovia said. “I think some really great innovations came out of all this, like the continuation of online programming throughout the year, which has helped to really increase our reach and our accessibility.” Over many years, she pointed out, the board had received suggestions to do online programming or produce weekend gatherings; Covid gave the organization a reason to try those things out, experience their benefits and drawbacks, and gain a better understanding for future undertakings.

Most rewarding aspects of serving
“Finally getting to plan in-person camps in 2023 was such a delight!,” Maclovia said. “And just the feeling of coming back to camp in 2023, which is not specific to me as a board member; I think many of us felt that way. I think especially having been part of all those conversations through 2020-2022, it was just the palpable sense of joy and relief of having made it to the other side.”

Another thing she really enjoyed was the process of doing online quarterly office hours with the board. “For me, those were wonderful opportunities to be in direct conversation with community members throughout the year. I found those to be really powerful, and I really enjoyed holding those and having that space.”

Connecting
“One of the really wonderful things for me about serving on the board was the opportunity to work closely with members of our community, including some folks I hadn’t ever met in person,” she added. “Getting to collaborate with folks from across the country and from across our community was a really wonderful experience.”

Recently Maclovia attended a Yale Slavic Chorus reunion where Niva, Kristina Vaškýs’s band, had been engaged to perform. Over the years of board service together, she and Kristina had been seeing each other only over Zoom.

“She and I had met in person just once many years ago, maybe in 2017,” Maclovia said. “It was so powerful to see her in person and be able to give her a big hug. We’ve been through so much together; what an incredible delight it was to actually connect in person. The relationships that I have had the opportunity to build through serving on the board are really a wonderful thing.”

All in all, she said, it was a great honor to get to serve on the board and to be part of the organizational aspect of the EEFC.

“I’m excited to see how EEFC and the programming that we offer will continue to evolve,” she added. “The EEFC has been one of the most important communities for me in my adult life.”

On behalf of the entire organization, thank you, Maclovia, for the energy and creativity you poured into the EEFC during your official board service.

—Interview by Julie Lancaster