Staff & Board :: National Steinbeck Center

National Steinbeck Center Staff

Colleen Finegan Bailey, Executive Director

Colleen Small Image Colleen Finegan Bailey joined the National Steinbeck Center in April 2008 as the Director of Community Engagement and Learning and has served the organization as its Executive Director since October 2009. Her accomplishments at the Center earned her the distinction as the 2010 Newsmaker of the Year from the Salinas Californian. Before working at the Center, Colleen was an arts educator and administrator in schools in Central and Southern California and Colorado. She has won numerous awards for her teaching, including Who's Who Among American Teachers (2000) and the National Society of High School Scholars Class Novel Educator of Distinction (2007). She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California, a graduate degree from Northwestern University and has completed the Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders at the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Colleen is a member of the Rotary Club of Salinas and The Alternative Board (TAB) and serves on the boards of the Oldtown Salinas Association, the Rancho San Carlos Education Foundation, the Youth Orchestra of Salinas, Sacred Heart School, Non Profit Alliance of Monterey County (core leader), and the Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau. Colleen is a proud native and current resident of Salinas.

Deborah Silguero-Stahl, Curator of Exhibitions & Collections

Deborah Silguero For more than 30 years, Deborah has served in the museum field as a curator and manager of exhibitions and collections, senior art preparator and conservation technician for a number of museums. She has worked for such notable institutions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where she created key exhibitions, the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Decorative and Antiquities Conservation departments, and in the permanent reinstallation of the Henry E. Huntington Art Galleries & Library in San Marino, to name only a few.

Upon moving to the Central Coast, Deborah served for eight years as manager of collections and exhibition for the Monterey History & Art Association. She brings her wide-ranging expertise of exhibition design, development and conservation to the Center, where she began working in a full-time capacity in 2008. She is also a part time lecturer at California State University, Monterey Bay, teaching museum studies in the Visual & Public Art Department, and she manages the museum studies internship program for the university within the Center. Deborah completed her B.A. in Visual and Public Art and earned an M.A. in Education from CSU Monterey Bay.

Diane Arellano, Volunteer Coordinator