The Team

Linda Nystrom

Linda received her MBA (Thunderbird, The American School of International Management, Phoenix, AZ), MPH (University of Pittsburgh, School of Public Health, Pittsburg, PA), and BS (University of Illinois, Champaign, IL). She retired in 2017 after various serving in various capacities as Project Manager and Sales Account Manager for IBM, Digital Equipment, and Sprint.

Linda Nystrom has served on the Board of Directors for Arts Rolla (Rolla, Missouri) for 5 years, 2 as President, during which she led the team to apply and manage grants from the Missouri Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts. The Board sponsored 4-5 events per year, bringing the arts to the community and a local underserved population. She also served as panelist for the Community Arts and Minority Arts Programs with the State of Missouri and was the President of the local Homeowners Association for three years. Linda joined the SVVA/SVOS board in 2024.

After retiring, her passion is painting in watercolor. She participates in local exhibits, including the Silicon Valley Open Studios and local Arts and Wine Festivals.

Linda Toll

Linda Toll has her own firm providing general accounting services to small and medium-sized organizations. She received her MBA from San Jose State University in 1980 with a concentration in finance and accounting. A former Controller for an electronics firm, she was a Founding Member of the Montclaire Educational Foundation and was active on local school PTA boards. Linda joined the Silicon Valley Visual Arts, Inc. Advisory Council in May 2015. Her interests include reading, outdoor activity, and needlework. Linda and her husband, a landscape and nature photographer, enjoy travel. She enjoys visiting and working with the many artists in the area.

Barbara Pease

I was born in Seattle Washington in 1951, and moved to Colorado in 1969. I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1977. I’m married with grown children and wonderful grand kids.

After graduating in jewelry design, a cramped apartment and a stint in jewelry manufacturing changed my mind about working in metal, so I’ve worked in other media for most of my career. I’ve painted in watercolor since 1992. In 2008 I had a chance encounter with silk painting and was immediately drawn to the vibrancy of that medium, and have largely been working with silk in the last few years.

In my nursing career, I worked in oncology from 1990 to 2012. I worked in Hospice from 2012 until 2017. I currently work part time in a small infusion clinic specializing in women with immunologically threatened pregnancies.

Stephen Toll

Stephen Toll joined the SVVA/SVOS board in 2019 following the retirement of Mel Thomsen. Steve is a landscape and nature photographer who has exhibited with SVOS since 2014 after a career as a tech company executive and management consultant. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Ida Gamban

Ida Gamban is the owner of Brand World Creative, an marketing and advertising agency in the SF Bay Area. Previous to starting the agency, she worked for more than twenty years as a creative director, strategist and copywriter at global ad agencies including Ogilvy, Young & Rubicam, J Walter Thompson and Deutsch LA. She has also worked in corporate marketing at Fortune 500 firms such as Oracle, eBay and Charles Schwab.

Ida joined the SVVA board as Marketing Director in 2020 to share her marketing expertise and help the organization thrive. She has focused on raising awareness and participation in SVOS through targeted social media and ad campaigns, and social miixers. Her contributions to the brand strategy work has also helped elevate the SVVA/SVOS brand.

When Ida isn’t working, she is busy photographing the scenery around us. She is a landscape photographer and Silicon Valley Open Studios artist.

Teresa Hardy

Teresa Hardy is the Founder of New Media-Designs, a marketing agency that focuses on customized online marketing strategies for small and medium technology businesses. She holds an Engineering degree from The College of NJ, a certification in Program Management, and a Masters in Multimedia Art from CSUEB and has taught Web Design and Development at Art Institute, CSUEB, and UCSC Extension.

Teresa is an acrylic artist, a member and past Gallery Director of the Fremont Art Association, current President of an HOA, and former board member of Niles Main Street Association. She is a longtime member SIGGRAPH and former web support volunteer for both SIGGRAPH and Web3D.

She joined the SVOS team in 2016 to bring the online registration system into production and continues to support it as well as all infrastructure within the organization as the Information Services Director for Silicon Valley Visual Arts.

Nancy Woods

Nancy Woods, after graduating from The California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland California in 1972, started a Graphics and Sign company in 1978 specializing in small business brand identity through logo design, collateral materials and complete signage.

Nancy served on the Civil Grand Jury in San Mateo County in 1993 for the term of one year heading up the group that inspected the Board of Education and the Board of Human Resources.

In the recent past 8 years, Nancy had an artist studio at the Peninsula Museum of Art in Burlingame California. She did all the signage for the Museum and studios inside and out and did all the signage for incoming shows on an ongoing basis. Since its closing in 2020, she now works on her art at her “in-home”

She joined the Silicon Valley Visual Arts group board in 2014 and works in various capacities. Her interests here include educating emerging artists to the various opportunities provided by the Silicon Valley Open Studios organization for them to sell their works and grow as professional artists. She is also working to help “grow” the SVVA’s audience of Art Lovers and introduce more artists to the benefits that SVVA offers to them through the Open Studios programs.

Carol Woodard

Carol Woodard, ASID is president and award-winning principal designer for Woodard & Associates, Inc., an Interior Design firm in Saratoga, CA. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the International Association of Color Consultants of North America (IACC-NA) where she did extensive study on the hard science of color.

During Covid, she found the time to pursue, what was previously a hobby, her passion for art. Throughout the years, she has played with all types of art, but now discovered Alcohol Ink as her media. It allows her to be truly expressive with her art. It is abstract, colorful and often three dimensional. It is also complex, emotional and interesting. Like a well designed house, there is always something new to see and enjoy.

David Ebner

David Ebner has designed and created memorable art for Television and Cinema since he was 18 years of age. Listed by Wired Magazine as one of Hollywood’s most creative individuals, Ebner has contributed to over 70 feature films and has worked with notable auteurs such as Steven Spielberg, Guillermo Del Toro, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher, Frank Darabont, among others.

While only 22 years of age, Ebner and his team created the opening title graphics for the two leading cable programs Dateline NBC and Entertainment Tonight. On top of that, Ebner oversaw the graphics for HBO, Nat Geo Channel, ESPN, Skybox, among others, winning many BDA and Promaxx awards.

Ebner joined director Guillermo Del Toro for Hellboy, then as a producer and production partner for Pan’s Labyrinth, in which his team created the visual effects. They won over 100 film festival awards and won best in show at SIGGRAPH’s Electronic Theater, representing the very best in Visual Effects that year.

As the Creative Director and Senior Supervisor of Cafefx, Ebner and his team helped create the ride for Universal Studio’s “Wizarding World of Harry Potter”, still considered as one of the most successful theme park additions in history.

At various galleries and art festivals, Ebner is pleased to introduce his fine art. His paintings reflect the emotion, passion, and feelings which percolate his creative mind. Just as he has for many film directors, Ebner often reaches within for new possibilities and exploration to delight people, often the case with groundbreaking visuals that have never been seen before.

Ebner is proud to be a board member of the Silicon Valley Visual Arts and is lending his talents to the organization, helping to expand it into one of the region’s best art associations.