Our Board

Sarah Shirk, President
Nadine Peacock, Vice President
Sue Bridge, Secretary
Paul Sikes, Treasurer
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Donna Callender

Donna lives in Oak Park and is Artistic Director of Kuumba Kids, an educational enrichment program teaching Oak Park students about the African diaspora through traditional West African and Caribbean dance and music. She is serving on the PING! board as a parent liaison and has several family members who participated in PING! enrichment programs. Her profession is teaching dance and performing.

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Jennifer Ierardi

Jennifer Ierardi lives in River Forest (previously Oak Park) with her husband, Drew, and two sons. Her
volunteer activities include PTO and PIMA, and she still dabbles on the piano and clarinet. In addition to
her undergraduate degree, she also received her JD and Master of Public Health Degree from the
University of North Carolina. She has been with Northwestern Medicine since 2007 and currently serves as
the Vice President, Integrity for the 11- hospital health system. In that capacity, she oversees the
enterprise risk, compliance, ethics and data privacy program for the organization. Prior to this role, she
served as Corporate Governance Director from January 2010-August 2012, and Senior Staff to the
President and CEO from 2007-2010. Having played the clarinet in middle school and high school, she very
much appreciates the financial resources and support necessary to make such things available, and is very
excited to be a part of making that a reality for our local students.
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Gail Kalmerton
Gail is a long time River Forest resident and has a solid history of community involvement. She has one daughter who participated in music and the arts during her school years. Gail started working at OPRFHS in 1993 in the Special Education Department and then spent 25 years as the D200 Board of Education as the Executive Assistant/Clerk of the Board serving under six superintendents. She runs a business that hosts adult international students who come to Chicago to improve their English skills. She has been a member of the League of the Chicago Symphony and truly loves being around young people.
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Adam Miller
Adam has lived in Oak Park since 1995 with his wife and two daughters. Both of them played instruments in band and also participated as Mentors in PING!. Adam is a certified supply chain professional who started his 35-year corporate career with Quaker Oats, which was later acquired by PepsiCo. He has worked in all aspects of supply chain including operations, planning, customer service, process improvement, and systems implementation. He also led a mentoring circle program to support the development of young professionals. As a member of the Pride Parade and Ally Day committees he helped plan and execute annual events as well as leveraged his photography skills to capture 13 Pride Parades and numerous other events to support the communications and outreach efforts. Currently, Adam volunteers as a tutor with the Learning Edge tutoring program (formerly Cluster Tutoring) and has been supporting PING!‘s communication team by photographing a number of PING! events. In his free time he enjoys learning the guitar, playing disc golf, cooking, and working out.
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Steve Miller
Steve has lived in Oak Park for more than ten years. He has two daughters who participate in the D97 instrumental music program. He and his wife, Sarah Staszak Miller (who grew up in Oak Park), highly value public service. With a background in accounting in finance he is currently a CPA and has worked with school districts for his entire career. He is now the Executive Director for Business Operations at Schaumburg SD 54. He served for eight years on the Oak Park Education Foundation board as a member of the finance committee, treasurer, and as president. He’s been involved with the Beye School PTO and serves as the treasurer of his daughter’s Girl Scout troop. Throughout his career, he has valued the chance to improve opportunities for students and is hoping to bring his data and finance background to PING!.
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Bob Spatz
A longtime Oak Park resident, Bob has been an advocate for education and equity for nearly 30 years. He has served on two non-profit boards: Project Unity and the Oak Park Education Foundation. He helped establish the Collaboration for Early Childhood and served on the board for several years. Bob has spent nearly three decades volunteering for Oak Park School District 97 including three terms as an elected board member where he served as both vice president and president. He has also been involved in regional and state education issues as an active member of the Illinois Early Learning Council’s Data Research and Evaluation Sub-Committee, the executive board of the West Cook Division of the Illinois Association of School Boards, and the executive board of ED-RED, a suburban school advocacy organization. In 2019, he helped form the OPRF Youth Ultimate (Frisbee) Organization. Professionally, Bob has worked for 38 years in various IT and data analysis positions at the Center for Research in Security Prices, an affiliate of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and currently does part-time consulting in the areas of early childhood and K-12 public policy and funding. He has a BA in Computer Science from the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois in Champaign.