Our Unit is led by a nine person Board of Directors, each of whom is elected for a two year term. This year we have four candidates for four vacant seats.
Every qualified Unit member is entitled to vote. All ballots will be secret and each candidate is entitled to have a witness at the vote tabulation.
Ballot boxes, ballots with the candidates” names and envelopes will be available at the Bridge Center, the Jewish Community Center and Unity Community Church.
Voting instructions are printed on the ballots as follows:
Dates: Monday, November 14, through Monday, November 29.
Locations: Bridge Center, Jewish Community Center and Unity Community Church
You may also vote by emailing Dan Claassen at dclaassen@gmail.com.
Carl Baeuerlen
Carl retired after a career in health care administration, with his last 12 years at Palo Alto Medical Foundation. There he served in managerial positions including Clinical Manager, Quality and Risk Management, and Project Manager. He is a Masters Degree prepared RN.
Along with his husband and bridge partner Jim Hulseman, Carl started playing bridge in earnest after they both retired about 4 years ago. They have been together going on for 32 years, playing “kitchen bridge” for that long. Retirement afforded the time to play duplicate bridge 2 to 3 times a week.
Carl has been involved at the Bridge Center since retirement, co-coordinating the Lecture Series, chairing Unit 503 Non-Life Master sectional tournaments, and co-chairing the Firecracker Sectional in 2018 and will again in 2019. If elected to the board he would like to continue assessing and enhancing Unit 503 members’ bridge experience.
Besides bridge, he spends his time on volunteering at the Humane Society of Silicon Valley, gardening, hiking and traveling.
Donald Cohn
John Schwartz
John is a familiar face at the bridge club, as director of the Monday Morning game and Thursday Bridge at the JCC. John learned the game as a teenager, but played little for many years. He studied physics as an undergrad at Cornell, before getting a law degree from Harvard. After practicing tax law, John returned to science, obtained his PhD, and then joined the physics faculty at Stanford. Soon, he left the classroom and became vice president and general counsel for Stanford for 20 years. A newspaper article referred to him as “Stanford’s Legal Eagle.”
After another 20 years in the corporate sector, John returned to bridge. In 2010, he purchased the Thursday JCC game and, then, saying at the time that he wanted to change the landscape for junior players, he started the Monday game which, within a year, became the area’s largest game.
To John, bridge club directing requires the real time analytical thought and problem solving he enjoys. Sure, there is a lot of work behind the scenes, he says, but the real challenge and aspiration is “getting things going well after things go wrong”, while treating everyone fairly and respectfully in the process.
John’s goal as a director is to make bridge a pleasant experience for all. He wants to attract more junior players and offer more limited sections in which they can compete. He sees serving on the board as an opportunity to give back to the game by helping discern ways to improve the bridge experience for all.
Susan Zhang
Susan’s dad introduced her to bridge when she was young, but she really didn’t start playing until college in Beijing. She spent almost all of her free time in college on it. Then, when she came to the US in 1986, her busy schedule (grad school, work and raising kids) put bridge on hold. She was able to start again a couple of years ago, thanks to the bridge community in Los Altos Golf and Country Club. She also joined the Palo Alto Bridge Club and plays as many games as possible, even though she is still working full-time.
“I find bridge to be both entertaining and intellectually stimulating. I feel happy and relaxed whenever I play. I love the endless, sometimes tough challenge of the game. And more than anything, I value the companionship and the lifelong friendships I’ve made through bridge.”
She earned a MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (where she met her husband, Charlie.) She been working for Cadence Design Systems as a software architect since 1990. Other interests are golf, traveling, classical music/opera/ballet, water sports, skiing, photography.
Susan wants to serve on the board because “the club provides an intellectual, yet relaxed, happy and social, almost familial, environment for us to meet, practice, and make more friends. It provides all levels of educations for bridge players to help improve our skills. The board has performed a valuable service to all of us members. I would like to do the same by helping out, and do my small part in giving back to a community that has welcomed me with open arms.”