Secretary
Christine Hughes currently serves as Secretary of the Kansas City International Visitors Council Board of Directors.  She is a Certified Paralegal and Certified Professional Legal Secretary and received her Paralegal Certificate from William Jewell College. She is a columnist for The Daily Record, Editorial Chair of the @Law Magazine, on the Board of Ethics for the City of Independence, Missouri, and an officer of the Fort Osage Daughters of the American Revolution.  She has been active in KCIVC for over ten years, both as a home hospitality volunteer and a Board member.

Treasurer
Michael B. Wood has been involved in international activities since the early 1960s. He has been involved with the IVC for several years and has been on the Board of several other local and international non-profits. He is retired from the health administration faculty at UMKC's Bloch School of Business and Public Administration.

Directors

Judith Grimes, Ph.D.  is currently the Dean of Student Affairs at Missouri Western State University.  In this capacity she oversees a variety of units including international student services.  She attended the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Missouri- Columbia.  She was previously the Director of The Applied Language Institute at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Metropolitan Community Colleges.  She has traveled widely recruiting international students and has hosted numerous international groups on her farm in Northwest Missouri. She helped establish the Intensive English program at the Mazoon College for Management and Applied Sciences in Muscat, Oman. She is a former President of the Board of Directors of the Greater Kansas City International Visitors Council.

John Moran served in the U.S. Army 1946-1948, and again from 1950-1952 stationed at various posts in China, Japan and Korea.  He received a B.S. in history from Rockhurst College and JD in law from University of Missouri Kansas City.  Appointed to serve as Jackson County Missouri Circuit Judge in 1988, he is still serving as Senior Circuit Judge in the Criminal Division.

Ahmed El-Sherif is a scientist in medicinal chemistry, and president of BetaChem Inc., a life science laboratory, which he began in 1993. He is founder of the American Muslim Council of Greater Kansas City and is a humanitarian and a citizen diplomat. He is also a professor of science at Metropolitan Community College. Ahmed believes in building bridges through common understanding of each other.

Allan Abrams is a semi-retired tax attorney, investment adviser, and a professional arbitrator/mediator now also working as a volunteer in the non-profit sector. Allan was the co-founder of the Greater Kansas City Diversity Coalition (KCDC) and is now a national board member and Kansas City chapter leader of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, whose mission is to work with U.S. politicians and diplomats to be more pro-active in promoting peace between Israel and Palestine and all neighboring states.

Stan Warner is President of Jemor Farms Inc. producing grain crops and beef cattle, and has provided business consulting for the past 16 years, most recently in Afghanistan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, United Arab Emirates and Russia. He is President of Global Community Outreach, a relief organization currently working in Mexico and Guatemala, and  has worked and/or visited in 27 countries and 49 of the United States. Stan is a past president of the International Visitors Council.

Dr. Judith K. Vogelsang:   Physician, Medical Consultant, Internal Medicine; Honorary Consul, Republic of Croatia, Kansas and Missouri; Member of the Greater Kansas City Consular Corps;  Greater Kansas City  Chamber of Commerce; Commissioner for Croatia, Ethnic Enrichment Commission Kansas City Missouri; Member International Relations Council Kansas City; Board member of National Federation of Croatian Americans; Greater Kansas City Area Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.  Service on past boards include  University of St. Mary, Leavenworth, Kansas, and Research Hospital, Kansas City Missouri. 

Deborah Bollman holds the position of Assistant Vice President of Marketing with the Kansas City Board of Trade and has been employed with the exchange since 1996. She holds bachelor degrees in Marketing and International Studies from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and enjoys introducing international visitors to the Kansas City Board of Trade upon their visits to Kansas City.

Bob Sigman is Opinion Page editor of the Sun Newspapers in Johnson County, Kansas. He is a former member of the Editorial Board of The Kansas City Star. Bob is a board member of the William Allen White Foundation at the University of Kansas for the School of Journalism and Mass Communications; he serves as secretary of the board of the Missouri Institute for Justice and is a board member of the Kansas City Press Club.

Tom Mitchell, MBA, is the Director of Plant Operations at Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center, the second largest Federally Qualified Health Center in the Kansas City area. The health center is the provider of choice for most of the city's ethnic minority and immigrant populations.  The center provides adult medicine, pediatric, women's health, dental and behavioral heath services, employing 15 full time interpreters speaking 11 different languages. Prior to joining Samuel Rodgers, Tom worked for 15 years at Truman Medical Center - Lakewood, one of the "Top 100" public hospital/health centers in the country.  

Robert Evans, Jr. is the Honorary Consul of Chile for Missouri and Kansas and is employed as  Vice President of Allied Mortgage Group,  Kansas City, MO. He holds a EMBA from Rockhurst University and received  BA in Foreign Languages form UMKC.  He has extensive undergraduate studies in Spain and France. Robert was the host of community-based  Spanish Talk Radio program “En Tu Casa” for over two years.  Robert serves as Honorary Consul of The Republic of Chile and is a member of the Diplomatic Consular Corps of Greater Kansas City.

Dotty Hamilton, Ph.D. is the Dean of the School of Visual & Communication Arts at Avila University and a Visiting Professor at the University of Pecs in Pecs, Hungary for the last 8 years. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in film studies, a master’s from Webster University in media communication, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Dixie Henderson, President, Shabobba7 International, LLC joined in partnership, 2004, with Donald Greenhaus Inc., & GFP. The NYC-based enterprise, a global art business, has existed for more than 50 years  exporting prints & fine art photography to private, corporate, & museum collectors; film, TV, digital media and publishing companies.  Henderson is on the Board of Directors of the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists (AFTRA), the Board of Directors of the Greater Kansas City International Trade Council (ITC) serving as Chairperson of Grant Writing and has served on the Board of Directors, Academy of Finance (AOF) - KC Chapter, for 15 years. Shabobba® conducts youth workshops for ITC, AOF, and 4-H career development initiatives.

Bernard Brown, immediate past President of the Board, is an attorney in a private practice dedicated exclusively to handling consumer protection cases.  He has traveled extensively and lived in other countries, has served as an international election observer, and has been deeply moved by all of those experiences. He delights in the down-to-earth and one-on-one visits that the State Department’s IVC program promotes, and believes that the Kansas City area offers some of the best of American character for our visitors.