Terry L. Fairfield

Terry L. Fairfield is currently Vice Chairman of the University of Nebraska Foundation. He previously served as CEO of the University of Nebraska Foundation from 1987-2008. He is a graduate of Kearney High School and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he has completed post-graduate work at UNL and The George Washington University.

Fairfield recently led the Foundation's largest and most successful fund-raising campaign ever. Campaign Nebraska raised more than $727 million dollars to benefit the four campuses of the University of Nebraska. During the campaign 95 endowed faculty positions and nearly 1,000 new scholarships were established.

Under his leadership, Foundation assets have grown from approximately $166 million to more than $1 billion, and benefits transferred annually to the university have increased from over $17 million in 1987 to more than $69 million in 2001.

Fairfield has additional fund-raising and alumni programming experience from his previous positions at Northwestern University and the Council of Advancement and Support of Education.

Christina M. Hixson

Christina M. Hixson graduated from Clarinda High School in Iowa in 1944. She borrowed $600 from an Uncle and moved to Omaha, Nebraska, to attend business school. After seven months, she went to work for Mr. Lied's car dealership as a switchboard operator and took dictation since his secretary could not. After the war, Miss Hixson became his secretary and also took on the accounting duties. Miss Hixson joined Mr. Lied in Las Vegas in 1960 and became his assistant. She attended all business meetings with him as he relied on her instinctive judgment of people to guide him in his transactions.

After his death in 1980, Miss Hixson became the sole trustee of the Lied Foundation Trust. As such, she has turned the Lied Foundation Trust into one of the largest Foundations in the state of Nevada. Miss Hixson has tried to keep in mind the types of grants Mr. Lied would want her to make. She has made contributions to projects in California, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah and Washington. Miss Hixson has a special fondness for young people who, like her, come from a challenging family background and are willing to work hard. Therefore, she has set up a scholarship fund at Iowa State University for students academically capable of college work but with no hope of attending without a financial boost. As Trustee of Lied Foundation Trust, she has demonstrated a keen insight in selecting for funding those projects that could only become a reality with a pacesetting gift that would, in turn, elevate the sights of other donors.

Heather Jones

Heather Jones received her Bachelors' degree at the College of Saint Mary in Omaha in early childhood and elementary education. She is currently attending the University of Nevada Las Vegas to receive a Master's of Education in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Literacy.

The Angles have endowed two professorships at the University of Nebraska: The J.L. Sellers Professorship in History and the Angle Professorship in the Humanities.

Giacomo M. Oliva

Giacomo M. Oliva, Professor of Music and Dean of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has also served as Director of the School of Music at the University of Florida, as Head of the Department of Music at Mississippi State University, as Director of Music for the Leonia, New Jersey Public Schools, and as an instrumental and vocal music teacher at all levels in several New Jersey school districts. He has presented papers and lecture recitals for more than a dozen national and international professional organizations, and has also served as a reviewer for the Music Education research Journal UPDATE, for the Southeastern Journal of Music Education, and for the second volume of the Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning.

He maintains a special interest in Ragtime and other forms of American popular music, and presents recitals and lectures on piano rags on a regular basis. His activities as a pianist and conductor also include several years as musical director and accompanist for singer Connie Francis. Oliva has held a variety of leadership positions in professional organizations, and was recently named President-elect of the International Society for Music Education.

Harvey S. Perlman

Harvey Perlman was named the 19th Chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on April 1, 2001. He had served as Interim Chancellor since July 16, 2000. A former dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law (1983-1998), Perlman has also served as interim senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at UNL (1995-96).

Perlman, a Nebraska native, was raised in York, Neb., and earned a bachelor of arts in history and a juris doctorate from the University of Nebraska. He joined the NU law faculty in 1967 and served until 1974 when he joined the faculty at the University of Virginia Law School. He returned to Nebraska in 1983 when he accepted the deanship of the Nebraska Law College.

Jeff Sotzing

Jeff Sotzing is the President of Carson Entertainment Group. He was born in Bethlehem, Pa., and spent all of his youth growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Sotzing said the best thing about Philadelphia was that it was an hour and a half by train from New York where his uncle Dick Carson had just become the director of the Tonight Show and his uncle John Carson became the host. He sat in the control room watching Johnny and Dick work with some of the greatest talent in America.

After a 3-year stint in the armed forces he moved to California to pursue an extremely short-lived career as a musician. He headed back to school at Pasadena City College where a course in video tape editing was being offered.

A summer job at The Tonight Show turned into filling in for the show's commercial production assistant. The producer that he worked for was responsible for making all the live commercials done during the show. His editing background led to becoming the Associate Producer of the Anniversary Show specials and then on to other projects at Carson Productions. He participated in the creation of the segments used in all the montages seen in the final show of May 22, 1992, and received an Emmy as Producer of the Tonight Show of May 21, 1992.

Sotzing now owns a company that controls the rights to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

James W. Strand

James W. (Jim) Strand is a native Nebraskan and graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with Bachelors and Masters degrees in Psychology, as well as a Masters in Business Administration.

His business career of 27 years was with the Lincoln Telephone Company/Aliant/ALLTEL, retiring in 2001 as Executive Vice President and Director. He also served on the boards of Illuminet, a Seattle-based telecommunications company, and the Cellular Telephone Industry Association in Washington, D.C.

His community activities include past president of the Lincoln Symphony and the Lincoln United Way. He currently serves as director of the University Place Art Center, the Lincoln Library Foundation, and Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital. He is a member of the Board of Governors of Nebraska Wesleyan, a Councillor for the Knights of AKSARBEN, and a member of the Advisory Boards for the Lied Center for Performing Arts and Peter Kiewit Institute for Information Sciences.

Frank Tirro

Frank Tirro (B.M.E. 1960) is professor of music and former dean of the Yale University School of Music. A specialist in both the history of jazz and music of the Renaissance, he is the author of Jazz: A History, Living With Jazz, Renaissance Musical Sources . . . In Bologna, and co-author of The Humanities: Cultural Roots And Continuities, and editor of Medieval And Renaissance Studies. Before coming to Yale, Tirro served as Chairman of the Department of Music at Duke University. In addition to many scholarly articles and reviews, he also wrote, for young students, the entry on "Jazz" for The World Book Encyclopedia and many of the individual biographical entries for jazz musicians. He has served as an associate editor for the new American National Biography, sponsored jointly by Oxford University Press and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Tirro received his B.M.E. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, his master's degree from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He was a Fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, and he has also served as Director of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He lectures on jazz and Renaissance subjects, and his professional responsibilities have taken him across the United States, to Europe, China, and South America.

Susan Varner Wilkins

Susan Varner Wilkins is a registered nurse. She has previously worked as a hospice nurse with Hospice Care of Nebraska and as a registered nurse at the Lincoln Community Blood Bank.

Wilkins has served on the Lied Center for Performing Arts Advisory Board since 2000 and is currently chair of the programming committee. She served on the Friends of Lied Board of Directors from 1991-1997.

She is a member of the Lincoln Community Foundation Board of Directors and is co-founder and treasurer of the Barth Syndrome Foundation. She serves as a Stephen Minister at Westminster Presbyterian Church. Wilkins is also a Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital Angel Dog Volunteer (pet-assisted therapy).

Wilkins was co-founder and president of the Lincoln Candlelighters and a member of Junior League of Lincoln and the Folsom Children's Zoo Board of Directors.