board of directors

President
Aimee Harmon-Darrow

Vice President
Toni Woodlon

Treasurer
Barth Pobee

Secretary
Julie S.

Board Members
​
Aimee Harmon-Darrow
Toni Woodlon
Barth Pobee
Julie S.
Amber Harding
Amber Barnes
Marisa Canino
Traci Mathena
LaQuisha Hall
Telisha McDonald 
Bryan Appel
​Barry Norman
​

board of directors bioS

Aimee Harmon-Darrow (Board President, Founder, Parent/Legal guardian/Family member of a current student) Aimee is a founding parent of Creative City, and she served on the Board prior to the school’s opening and has served as chair or co-chair of the Facilities Committee since before the school received its charter. Her fifth grader has attended the school since it opened, and her younger child is a kindergartner. Aimee has worked to establish relationships with various Park Heights organizations, including Park Heights Renaissance and the Park Heights Community Health Association. She is skilled in outreach and organizing and is keenly interested in ensuring our school’s success through our current contract and into our next renewal. She is also interested in continuing to work on our eventual expansion to the middle grades. Aimee works as a Financial Analyst with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and she has served on various nonprofit boards in the past. As a member of the Board at Creative City, Aimee intends to continue to serve on the Facilities Committee as well as participate in the Outreach Committee.

Toni Woodlon  (Consultant): 

Barth Pobee (Accountant, Parent of Current Student):

Julie  S. (Board Secretary, Parent/Legal guardian/Family member of a current student)
Julie is the parent of third  graders who have been attending Creative City since kindergarten. During that time, she has been part of the School Village Association and has volunteered in her sons’ classrooms and at other school-related events, including serving as a Den Leader for Boy Scouts. Julie appreciates the school’s sense of community and is interested in joining the Board to help the school continue its mission. She has a background in writing and substantive editing, development, and communications, and she is familiar with grant-writing and has helped implement fundraising campaigns. Julie has experience in both print and electronic publications, and has worked on social media plans and content for nonprofits. As a Board member, Julie anticipates being most closely involved with the Finance Committee.
​

 Marisa Canino (Executive Director, Parent/Legal Guardian/Family Member of Current Student) has a passion for service, a commitment to seeing Baltimore City and its residents thrive, and a demonstrated track record in fundraising and nonprofit management. She has shown her commitment to the Baltimore community for 15 years through her professional and volunteer work with nonprofits serving Baltimore families.  In her 11 years at Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake, she progressively served as Development Director, Deputy Director, and Chief Operation Officer, garnering resources of up to $12 million annually, and managing programs that enabled more than 100 low-income families to purchase safe, decent, affordable homes of their own.
 
Her volunteer experience, most notably, includes her oversight of the community effort to rebuild the playground at Stadium Place from the ground up with hundreds of volunteers after an act of arson in 2008.
 
Marisa holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Franklin & Marshall College, and a certificate in fundraising management from Indiana University.
 
A mother of three, Marisa is also passionate about education and the opportunity for parents to be able to choose the school that is best for their child. She was a parent-founder at Creative City for two years before a broad search led to her being hired in the role of Executive Director. 
 
Traci Johnson Mathena (Principal) joined Creative City as its Principal on July 20th, 2015. Prior to joining our school, she served as an assistant principal at Towson Law and Public Policy High School in Baltimore County (2009-2015). During her tenure, she supervised various academic departments as well as the school’s Student Support services, Special Education Department, Student Activities programs and the Testing Program. She also developed the Academic Commitment Creates Empowered Successful Students (ACCESS) Program, an after-school academic intervention where teachers, peer tutors and university students worked with struggling learners.
 
Traci has been an urban educator for over 20 years. She started as a teacher in 1994 after working as a metropolitan reporter for the Baltimore Sun for six years. In Baltimore City, she worked at her alma mater Western High School (Class of ‘88) and Canton Middle School. She was a teacher and Language Arts Department Chairman at Dumbarton Middle School in Baltimore County for eight years before joining the Towson High School administrative team. Her appointment to Creative City returns Traci to the Park Heights area where she was raised.
 
Since 1995, Traci has written curriculum for both Baltimore City and Baltimore County public school systems, mentored teachers, led professional development seminars about Differentiated Instruction, and taught graduate courses in education for Towson University and, most recently, the Johns Hopkins School of Education.
 
Traci is a National Board Certified Teacher of English Language Arts/Early Adolescence and earned her master’s degree in Leadership in Teaching from Notre Dame University of Maryland. She is the proud alumna of University of Maryland College Park and the even more proud parent of a current Terrapin, a Linguistics and Psychology major who will graduate in 2017.

LaQuisha Hall: 

Amber Harding: 

Amber Barnes: 

​Bryan Appel:  (Faculty Representive/Parent of Current Student)
 

Barry Norman Jr (Faculty Representative) is part of our REST team here at Creative City. This is Mr.Barry’s second year with Creative City.Mr.Barry was the former Unit Director at the Boys and Girls Club location in Towanda Recreation Center.. He is interested in contributing to the growth of Creative City and the Park Heights Community. He is the owner and operator of Charm City School of Self-Defense, a community based martial arts program that holds class at Creative City.