Donna Dambach

Government Liaison

Donna has lived in the Sonoma Valley for 14 years with her partner, Chris Argenziano, beginning in Glen Ellen and then in the City of Sonoma in 2013. It was a dream of hers to live in Sonoma beginning the first time she set foot on the Plaza in 1986 when she immediately fell in love by just walking around the town and feeling the energy of this special place. Now after living in Sonoma, she have a deeper appreciation not only of the beauty, but also the way of life. For Donna, this includes the pace, a.k.a. ‘slownoma’, the focus on living well, and the amazing volunteerism of the community. She has many favorite places in the County, Valley, and City, but her favorite things are to be out in the beautiful outdoors walking or hiking, landscaping, and listening to the wonderful array of live music the blesses our community.

Donna serves the Sonoma Valley community by working to make it a place that is vibrant, sustainable and accessible to everyone. In addition to advisory work for Catalyst, Donna has been involved with Sugarloaf Park and Montana Reserve to perform tail maintenance; Sonoma Ecology Center as an ad hoc volunteer (e.g. trash clean-up along Nathanson Creek); Cancer Support Sonoma (and one of the founders of the “ Wig Out” fundraising event); Farm to Pantry as a food Gleaner (see picture above); and Operation Christmas Tree. Donna and Chris support several other nonprofits (Impact100 Sonoma, Kids Scoop News, Rotary, Soroptimist International, to name a few). If that wasn’t enough, Donna also volunteers on two government committees, as Vice Chair of the Planning Commissioner for the City and on the Sonoma Valley Community Advisory Commission.

Beyond Sonoma, Donna is on the Board of Trustees, Executive Committee and Chair of the Research Operating Committee for the Morris Animal Foundation, a nonprofit that provides research funding for animal health. She has also been involved with numerous scientific societies and consortia during her career.

Currently Donna is mostly retired, but does a little consulting as a specialist in pharmaceutical drug discovery and development, and executive coaching. She spent 25 years in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry as a veterinary pathologist and toxicologist and executive leading Research and Development groups at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Genetech, and San Biotechnology.