OFFICE STAFF
Burning Man Office Staff
Many people are surprised to learn that the Burning Man Project is, in fact, a year round operation. An incredibly dedicated team works throughout the year in our San Francisco and Gerlach offices to support -- in coordination with the Black Rock City LLC Board and the Senior Staff -- the day-to-day operations of the ambitious undertaking that is Burning Man.
Calliope Gazetas - Cat Fougere - Chris Petrell - Ian Starr - Frog Gilmore - Frolic - Joy Orabella - Kat Steinmetz - Logan Mirto - Ludwig Klopfer - Paul Shreer - Rebecca Throne - Robin Ryan - Termeh Yeghiazarian - Will Chase
Loopy from the North was introduced to Burning Man in 2004 by her dear friends in the Web of Destiny and never looked back. After volunteering for the Burning Man Web Team for a year remotely from the rain forests of BC, she decided attending web meetings would be way, way more fun in person. Packing up her typography books, her inherent love of artisan tequila and her geeky self, she moved to SF in 2007 and has been working for The Man ever since.
Calliope spends her days educating people on the finer points of techno, wrastlin' buggy code to the ground, building interfaces for websites and skins for blogs and content management systems. She also paints, sews and creates many different kinds of things and stuff. A staunch believer in the abilities of technology to empower and unite communities, Calliope works to have everyone's experience of this burning corner of the internet highly functional as well as beautiful.
Cat Fougere
Systems Administrator
Cat attended her first Burning Man in 2000. Cat was immediately drawn to the event and being part of it, and she joined the Burning Man crew as lead Sysadmin in May 2006, and has since been running the growing server and network infrastructure. She gets the call when things geeky go wrong, and makes operating systems, network, email and websites run smoothly. She loves to get involved in art projects, such as the Crude Awakening project in 2007. She also runs the online box office for SF IndieFest, loves to hit the slopes of Tahoe in winter, and enjoys visiting the Black Rock area for shooting and other desert adventures, unless she decides to chill with her two felonious cats or play her lvl 70 Undead Warlock.
Chris (aka Taz) lives year-round in Gerlach, Nevada, and is responsible for building out, managing and providing support for all the technologies located on Burning Man's Nevada Properties. Born and raised in Half Moon Bay, CA, Chris attended his first Burning Man in 1997, volunteered with DPW and highway cleanup from 1999-2003, and joined the Burning Man staff in 2003. Chris is also the Chairman of the Gerlach General Improvement District (GGID) board.
Ian Starr aka bliss
Project Manager
Ian, whose name rhymes with 'Brian', finally made it to Black Rock City in 1999. She was born and raised in a small mountain town in Northern California, spent some time at UC Davis where she obtained a BS in Environmental Design and moved to San Francisco in 1995, applying her design skills to the dot.com madness.
In 2000, Ian joined Playa Info, where she invented the small BRC maps, coordinated volunteers and gave PI its signature red color through the 'red party' and red fabric that remains hanging from its ceiling. Finding herself with spare time to share as a result of the dot.bomb, Ian began volunteering at HQ for the ticket team while she was completing a program in project management (PM). She became a Burning Man employee in 2002, doing project management for the Tech Department and Community Services. In 2005, she took a hiatus from the employee realm of things, but remained involved with Burning Man, volunteering for Perimeter with her husband, whom she met at BRC in 2002.
In 2007, Ian returned to the office in a project manager role for the Tech Department with an emphasis on tech support (IT) and database administration. She loves to organize, develop infrastructure, improve quality and enable people to be happier and more productive at their jobs.
Frog Gilmore
Participant questions support, Ticket Schlepping, Memorabilia Shipping
Frog spends working hours at the Burning Man office answering participant inquiries, processing ticket orders, heading up the scholarship ticket program and shipping memorabilia to participants. On playa she is on the Gate Crew, serves as human-animal liaison (lost, found or injured animals), and has worked in the box office in years past.
Frog is originally from Texas, where she was a vet assistant, puppeteer and a proponent of animal welfare. Since the South is no place for vegans she escaped to San Francisco in 1999 with her four legged best friend Puppy and her Donkey Kong arcade game. (In 2002 Puppy passed on to the place where chew bones grow on trees.) Traveling and sarcasm are favorite hobbies of Frog's, and she boasts of an international collection of fake poo.
Frolic joined the Bean Counting Crew in January 2006. He stands at your prompt beck and call for all accounting needs!
From 2001-2005, Frolic devotedly trekked to BM in annual succession from Los Angeles and San Diego areas. From 2006-2008, he worked with the Box Office Crew. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free -- but not without paying for your BM ticket first! Um... the $185s are all gone. Yep, it's full price now! I hear the music from yonder distance. Can you hear the music? I hear the music. Let's play.
Born on an island in the San Francisco Bay - a true California girl - Joy finds the mirage-like island of Black Rock City that magically appears in Nevada another kind of home, courting her rebellious nature. Her introduction to the community of Burning Man began in San Francisco in 1996 (the year of HELCO), attending the SOMARTS fundraiser.
"What attracted me was the metal and fire, the dancers hanging from the ceiling in midaire inside a black rope cobweb. Coming from a classical theatre background I wanted to be near the creators of this risk-taking theatrical performance." She began working for Harley, selling tickets and managing peoples' needs.
Seven years later her role is likened to the "hub of the wheel" that the San Francisco office spins around. She is the receptionist, direct assistant to Crimson Rose, and administrative support of the office senior staff. She directs all outgoing and incoming mail and answers the telephone, lasso's answers to the myriad of questions, problem-solves, and supports the citizens of Black Rock City. She is involved in production for the Black Rock Arts Foundation and Flambé Lounge events. In August, she continues the work in the Burning Man Museum/Black Rock City Office in Gerlach, where she can be found right through the event.
Joy comes from a background of landscaping, garden restoration, classical theater, Celtic radio dj-storytelling, passionate love of poetry, film, heavy metal, and ancient arts that heal, with a rich background in creation and direction of ritual theater. With "Ze Dragon Lady" she co-creates the myth behind Lisa Nigro's sculptures, writing the deeper story behind the enfoldment of her creations. She resounds delightfully in being able to provide a place for the human spirit to soar... and be changed by its flight.
Kat is the Human Resources Consultant for Black Rock City, LLC. She has worked with all things "Human" and pertaining to employment at BRC since 2005. Kat maintains her consultant role "on-playa" and also volunteers with the xRT (External Relations Team) by giving tours of the playa. A true "Costume Bitch," she was lured to Burning Man in 2003 with the promise of "as many costume changes as her heart desired." Burning Man delivered on that promise and she has been attending ever since.
Living in the cultural Mecca that is San Francisco, Kat has fully realized the many other facets of her dynamic personality; as a singer and performer with the award winning "Kepi and Kat" (www.kepiandkat.com), voted "Best of the Bay" for the past two years, as well as working as a professional make-up artist/stylist for photo and video shoots.
Logan Mirto
DPW Crewmaster and Overlord
Logan is a writer and artist from Austin, Texas. His first Burning Man festival was in 1998, where he hitchhiked in with a circus troupe, worked off the cost of his ticket shoveling burnt hay, and spent his year rustling bicycles with the Cataclysmic Megashear Ranch. He's been back every year since, eventually accepting his fate as a member of Black Rock City's Department of Public Works in 2004. In 2005 he collaborated with artist Christian Davies to create The Dicky Box - arguably the playa's most interactive art installation, and the only one that involved locking someone in a large solar oven. Logan prefers Glenfiddich over ice.
6'2.5"
190 lbs
Eyes: Brown
Sign: Scorpio
Hometown: New York City
Throws: Right
Bats: Right
Paul Shreer aka Blue
Facilities Manager - Project Manager - Environment Guru
Hailing from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Paul has always been a multi-tasking fool. In college, he worked as a DJ/Producer at nightclubs and production companies, and at Office of Development at the University of Michigan. He moved to San Francisco in 2004, working for and then purchasing a small lighting design firm.
Paul made his first trek Black Rock City in 2001 and immediately felt at home. Infected with the bug, he jumped right in with Recycle Camp... eventually taking over its management. In 2004, he filled in for the BMHQ receptionist and never left. Currently, Blue wears a variety of hats for the Burning Man Project, including SF Office Facilities Manager, Environment Guru, Project Manager for Recycle Camp and Black Rock City Recycling, and Lighting & Electrical Manager for the Man Platform.
Rebecca says "I'm a Libra with my moon in Pisces, a Wood Tiger, and a Red Radiant Skywalker and I like romantic walks at sunset along the trash fence...Oh, and I'm a total smart ass." She works year-round in the exciting world of tickets administration and also helps with a handful of print production projects. She is actually a San Francisco native, even though nobody believes you when you say you're from San Francisco.
Before working full time for the Man she spent her days traveling, rearing cats, producing her own jewelry line, running a jewelry boutique, doing print production and creative direction at a marketing and design firm, painting houses, and operating an art gallery out of her flat... in addition to about a million other miscellaneous jobs. She wound up at Burning Man for the first time in 1999, nearly by accident. She's returned every year since by her own volition. She likes spirals, clouds, the colors chartreuse and grass green, gingko leaves, shiny silver things, making stuff, and sharing an office with Frog, her "little ray of vegan sunshine".
Robin Ryan aka RedRobin
Bookkeeper / HR Administrator
Raised in Louisiana swampland, Robin forged her way to San Francisco in 1992, via NYC, and has been here ever since. Before beginning her career as a freelance bookkeeper, she worked hard as a punk rock groupie, a stained glass jewelry designer, a professional picture framer and an office manager at a commercial art studio. In 1999, four years into motherhood, she finally made it to Burning Man. By 2000, she was able to put her number crunching skills to use for the BRC Accounting Department, while still serving as a freelance bookkeeper for a myriad of small businesses and artists. She's recently added Human Resources administration to her role, and volunteers with the Box Office staff on playa each year. Most of Robin's free time is spent with her family aka The Loveasaurus, who are also veteran Burners. Yoga, permaculture, and exploring Bay Area trails are also high on her lists of interests.
Termeh Yeghiazarian
Volunteer Coordinator Liaison
Termeh is a Mixed Media/conceptual artist who added Burning Man to her list of artistic mediums in 2002. ?After volunteering for an insane amount of projects, within and without Burning Man Project, she has settled down as the Volunteer Coordinator Liaison which gives her an opportunity to expand the palette by training a wide range of colorful characters who train others who then, train others and, others and, so on and so forth! ?When not overseeing the infrastructure that supports the Volunteer Coordinators and oiling the nuts and bolts, Termeh brings art to the artless masses by scheming in her studio and teaching in various colleges.
Playaquest (or "PQ") rediscovered joy at his first Burning Man in 2001, and never turned back. He decided to use technical project management-fu for good rather than evil, and joined the Burning Man Project in 2004 as Web Team Project Manager and Webmaster. He splits his time between that, sitting on the Burning Man Art Council as Operations Manager, and writing the for the Jack Rabbit Speaks newsletter. He's a writer, a spiritual chameleon, a closeted raver, an adventure sports nut, and a self-proclaimed experience junkie. Tales of his assorted sordid adventures can be found on his website. 
