Orinda native and Executive Director of the Lamorinda Arts Council Ali Kozoll believes the well-being of the arts in a community speaks to the well-being of the community.
Ali Kozoll grew up in Orinda, attending Sleepy Hollow and OIS and graduating from Miramonte. She went off to college at Willamette University in Oregon and graduate school at the legendary American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San Francisco, eventually moving to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of acting. In 2021, Kozoll returned to Orinda with her husband, Rory, and son, Jack. In January she took the helm of the Lamorinda Arts Council (LAC) as Executive Director.
You spent your childhood in Orinda. What brought you back?
My husband and I knew we wanted to leave L.A., but we also wanted to stay in California since we’re both natives. During Covid we were living in Burbank and it was a really hot market. I thought, for these prices, we could move to the Bay Area.
On a whim, we jumped in the car with our son and dog and we found what we call our “tree house” in Orinda. I didn’t plan to move back, it just happened.
What do you like most about living here?
I love all the oak trees and the access to nature. I love the fog. And I love the small-town feel and how it’s a really good place to find community.
It’s very easy to take Orinda for granted. I certainly did, growing up here. It’s so interesting to have been a young person here, and then to have gone out and lived my life, and then come back here. We are so lucky to live in a place that’s so beautiful and has so much going on – not only in Lamorinda, but we’re so close to the city and Berkeley. Orinda is a really special place.
You earned a Master of Fine Arts from the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco. Were you always interested in acting?
I started acting in elementary school and acted all the way through high school. I did a lot of regional community theater.
I got a scholarship to study theater at Willamette. After I graduated, I spent a year in San Francisco in my 20s, trying to figure life out and doing some small theater there. I applied to a number of graduate programs and was very lucky to get into ACT because it’s such an institution.
What did you do after graduation?
After I graduated from ACT, I did regional theater throughout California for a couple of years. Then I moved to Los Angeles and found agents.
Their money-makers are film and television, so they sent me out on those auditions and I found that I didn’t really like film and television very much. I really prefer live theater as an artistic, creative pursuit.
What did you do next?
I sort of fell into my longtime job working for a women’s fitness and empowerment company. I was a teacher and then ran their teacher training program for 15 years.
The program was based on a specialized form of sensual movement and dance that is meant to enhance a woman’s comfort in her own body, her own skin and her expression. It was a really rewarding thing for me to teach and I used a lot of my skills as an actor, using my voice and being in front of people. I also found that I really love teaching.
I did that up until 2020, when anything that was in a studio had a hard time because of Covid. I taught online for a while and then I just got really burnt out of teaching online. It’s a very different experience. You don’t have that energetic exchange of responding to the people in the room. We moved to Orinda and it was a natural transition out of that position.
What drew you to the job of executive director of the Lamorinda Arts Council?
I was walking through Theatre Square with my family in 2022 and they were holding their annual fundraising event, The Art of Mixology. That’s how I heard about the Lamorinda Arts Council (LAC) and I thought that would be a great place to connect to the local arts community.
I signed up for their newsletter and I saw they were looking for an executive director, and the job description really felt like a fit. I found that a lot of my skills matched what they were looking for and I was excited about stepping further into the arts community within Lamorinda. I love the variety of the programming and how it appeals to all ages.
What do you hope to accomplish during your tenure?
Two things: Visibility and Community Involvement.
I want to gain more visibility for the organization. We put on such great programming and very often I find that people don’t always know that we exist or that we’re behind the programming. I would really love to expand our visibility and our brand.
The second thing is to engage more of our community in getting involved directly – whether that’s as board members or volunteers. We have so many opportunities for any desired time commitment.
What would you like people to know about the LAC?
I think the well-being of the arts in a community speaks to the well-being of the community. I would like people to know that the arts are so vital to our sense of culture and sense of belonging. They give us the sense that we’re not alone in this lived experience.
I think that’s especially important in a community like Lamorinda, where we’re so busy, and we can forget there are all these other people having very similar experiences. Art can really bring us together.
