About

Dinna Davis joined MycoMarin’s Board in 2017. She brings a passion for mushroom cultivation to the group. She was responsible for fundraising and the auction for MycoMarin’s 2019 and 2020 Fungus Festivals. Dinna has more than 20 years experience hiring and developing talent for tech startups. Her home is Corte Madera and she enjoys hiking, sailing, cooking, and adventure activities.

Kevin Sadlier founded MycoMarin in 2015 and has served as President and Vice President. His passion for mycology and forming a close-knit community to expand the benefits of mycology on several levels is what fuels the organization today. An avid teacher, horticulturist and forager, Kevin resides in Mill Valley and enjoys everything the Bay Area, especially Marin County, has to offer.

Xander Wessells, co-founder of MycoMarin, is a naturalist and avid forager. Her love of the outdoors and cooking made mushroom hunting a natural path. The result has been a widening knowledge of the important relationship between people and fungi. A landscape designer and horticulturist, Xander brightens the lives of numerous residents of Marin County.

Cherry Allen-Driscoll joined MycoMarin in 2018. Hunting for mushrooms in the wilds is a growing passion for her. Cherry brings deep experience in business finance, expertise in capital raising and the associated management. She is a recent transplant from Texas, and now lives in Mill Valley. She is enamored of foraging in general, and exploring the wilds of Marin is an activity that brings her great satisfaction.

Edmond Allmond joined MycoMarin in 2018, and is passionate about fungi as food and medicine. He is equally enamored of Marin’s open spaces.  A successful  communications and marketing maven, he is recently of  UC Berkeley.  Edmond also has a successful career on concert stage and television as a pianist, composer and conductor. He has more than 35 years giving back as a mentor, educator and activist.

Jay Berger joined the MycoMarin Board in 2019. He loves his time in both the woods and the kitchen. Jay loves foraging and creating tasty delights and enjoys sharing the fruits of these passions with the many mushroom lovers he encounters. He considers himself fortunate to live in and explore the wilds of West Marin. Jay helped provide the wonderful food presented at our first two Fungus Festivals.

Finola Diaz joined the Mycological Society of Marin County and quickly became the membership Chair. She was a culinary judge for seven years for the competitive Dominican Gastronomic Festival, where her passion for food creation and presentation were showcased. Finola is a retiree of both American Airlines Dominican Republic and PG&E’s Solar Department.  She loves mushroom foraging and cooking as well as reading, entertaining and camping.

Else Vellinga, mycologist, has described 22 new mushroom species in California. Her most recent work is at the UC Berkeley University and Jepson Herbaria and at UCSF on the Microfungi Collections Digitization project. She received her training at the National Herbarium of the Netherlands, and earned her PhD at the University of Leiden.  Addtionally, Else is a researcher and professor with the Bruns Laboratory at UC Berkeley.

The main motivation for her taxonomic work is that it lays the basis for efforts to include mushroom species in nature management and conservation plans.  She has proposed several species for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global database of endangered species. She concentrates especially on Macrolepiota procera, or Parasol mushrooms.  Else is an avid knitter and uses mushroom dyed yarn for her creations.