Board of Directors

Larry Harvey founded the Burning Man event in 1986 and has overseen its operation ever since. His duties include the design of Burning Man and Black Rock City and the conception and production of the Project's themed art pageants. In May 1998 Larry was invited to Harvard's Second International Conference on the Internet and Society as a panelist for Charles Nesson's discussion "The Internet and Education." Larry has been a guest lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute, the School of the Chicago Art Institute, the Forum at Grace Cathedral and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

A founding member of the Burning Man board and the Black Rock Arts Foundation, Harley has over 18 years in project management, art and city planning experience.  In Black Rock City she is the City Manager, keeping it's citizens happy and safe. For the Black Rock Arts Foundation she is the liaison between both organizations and chairs the grants committee.

Marian Goodell is the Manager of Communications and Business for Burning Man. In addition to overseeing government and media relations, she oversees the financial and legal aspects of the event. Marian holds a BA from Goucher College and an MFA in photography from The Academy of Art in San Francisco. Before joining the Burning Man team, she was a project manager for a software-cum-web-development firm producing Ford.com.

Rae Richman has more than twelve years experience providing services to organizations of all sizes, from local nonprofits to Fortune 500 global corporations. Before joining Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors as their West Coast Manager of Donor Services, she was a consultant with expertise in meeting facilitation, corporate social responsibility, and project management for values-based organizations. Prior to starting her own consultancy, Rae was Senior Manager of Consulting Services at Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), working with Fortune 500 companies to facilitate their stakeholder engagement efforts and assist them in implementing more socially responsible policies and practices. Rae brings to her work a decade of marketing and production experience at entertainment, multimedia and high-tech companies. She received her BA from the University of Virginia.

John Mueller is an attorney who has been based in the Bay Area for over 30 years. He is a former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bread & Roses and has supported the arts and entertainment and their healing powers for many, many years. John graduated from Occidental College and UCLA Law School. He is also a member of the local Board of Directors of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

David Best, a native of San Francisco, began going to the SF Art Institute at the age of six, and has been driven to create ever since. His work walks the fine line of the human experience: accumulated details, an assemblage, parts rendered whole. His work spans many mediums; consistently the ordinary is rendered fantasy. Recognized for the amount of his own energy he invests in his work, David is well-known for the series of Temples he and his crew have built as a part of the Burning Man Project – the intense and varied energy required for their manifestation and the subsequent incendiary release. His pieces can be found in the collections of the SFMOMA, Oakland Museum, and the San Jose Museum of Art.

Rachel Carpenter is Co-Founder and CEO of Cinematrix Interactive Entertainment Systems™ utilizing patented technologies invented by her husband Loren Carpenter.  As first anthropologist on the scene, Rachel wrote her Master of Arts thesis on the human experience of this new communications technology, Techno Tribe: The Collaborative Experience of an Interactive Audience Participation Technology, An Ethnography. This builds on her earlier work in education supporting a variety of learning methodologies, including her book, Visual Arts in Education for Teachers, a series of lesson plans integrated to support student learning objectives, commissioned by the State of Washington Superintendant of Public Instruction. As a Black Rock Arts Foundation Board Member, Rachel continues to pursue ways to encourage community projects with arts and education.

Freddy is known as Are We Really? around San Francisco, Cyberspace and Merry Prankster circles. Are We Really? and the Krewe of Art Police created large works of art over the past few decades for many Bill Graham Presents shows including the Grateful Dead's Mardi Gras, Chinese New Years and New Years extravaganzas. With a background in Industrial Design, Freddy has represented Cenveo SF/Waller in the Bay Area for over twenty-five years producing advertising, design and marketing print collateral. He attended the first Burning Man at Baker Beach spraining his neck staring up in awe at the Man for a few hours! He has never been the same since. Freddy also serves on the board of the Rex Foundation and the Eyes & Ears Foundation, and is on the advisory board for Craigslist Foundation. You will find him with the Mind Shaft Society on the Playa.

Mark Higbie, a native of Detroit, Michigan, is the principal of Higbie Visual Partners, a strategic communications firm working with private equity and industrial clients nationally. Mark’s current business focus is communicating the climate crisis. Prior to arriving in California in 1994, Mark worked as a political operative in four national presidential campaigns, and served in two presidential administrations. Since developing his first roll of film in a make-shift darkroom at age eight, Mark has had a passion for image-making that’s led to a series of productions that present the transformative ethos of Burning Man. Mark attended his 11th event in 2006.

Phil was born in Visalia, California in 1939. He then embarked on a distinguished academic and curatorial career: California College of Arts and Crafts, BFA 1961, MFA 1963, Museum Management Institute, UC Berkeley/Getty Fellow, 1988; Director of Exhibitions, San Francisco Art Institute, 1967-1977; Director, Mills College Art Gallery, 1978 - 1990; Chief Curator of Art, The Oakland Museum of California, 1990 to present. Charter Member, Early Ford V-8 Club of America; Member of the Board: American Hot Rod Foundation, Claire Falkenstein Foundation. Resident of Oakland with wife, Sharon, and daughters Regine (17) Celeste & Gabrielle (14), 2 cats and a rabbit and two old Fords.

Will Roger Peterson is from Rochester, New York, where he received a BFA and MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Will later taught photography at the same institution, and as a teacher he attracted a group of devoted students. The title of his course, "In Search Of the Mystical Image," expresses the character of his work. Will is working with Nevada Relations and Properties for Black Rock City LLC. He is currently the President of Friends of the Black Rock/High Rock, is an appointee to the Sierra Front/Western Great Basin Resource Advisory Council (RAC) representing dispersed recreation, and is the chairman of the RAC subcommittee for the Black Rock/High Rock/Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area.

Crimson’s honor and love of fire happened long before she met the Burning Man. When she attended her first event in 1991, she set the man on fire and has been producing the release of the Man ever since.

The sculpture of the Burning Man brought her to the Black Rock Desert, but it is the limitless possibilities of facilitating art in the desert that brings her back year after year. Like a gift to a wide-eyed child, pushing the limits of creating art in one of the harshest, relentless environments produces amazing art and in turn facilitate interactive. She is fascinated with the way interactivity and art mesh at Burning Man, and feels it has changed the art arena. "When art provokes one to interact without thinking, art has taken a giant leap in evolution."

As one of the founding Directors of both Black Rock City LLC and the Black Rock Arts Foundation her focus is on art management. Art Curator, Performance Safety Director for Open Fire, Flame Effects and Pyrotechnics and Creative Director of the Fire Conclave, the largest gathering of fire performers in one place at one time in the world.

Prior to finding her way into this tailor-made position, Crimson has always been involved in the arts. In school, she majored in theater, and has worked as a fine art model, fire dancer and performance artist for 27 years.