About us
Leadership and staff
Northwest SHARE is led by a volunteer board.
Board of directors
The people who keep it running
Harry Terhanian
President
Harry has more than 40 years of nonprofit experience in the United States and France. He holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania (1968) and an M.A. from Beirut University, and studied at the American University of Beirut in 1968–69. In Paris in July 1969 he met Srila Prabhupāda, the founder of ISKCON, who inspired him to start an organization for holistic living, animal protection, a holistic school for children and a performing arts center. In 1998 he founded Northwest SHARE to bring programs in health, arts, relationships and education to the public, run by volunteers who share their knowledge and skills freely, especially with people who have not had the opportunity or means to access them. In 2012 he started the cow protection farm and spiritual center in Redmond. He has been a member of the ISKCON Governing Body Commission since 1988.
Ramesh Yerramsetti
Treasurer
Ramesh also serves as events director and organizational strategist. He holds M.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Alabama (Birmingham and Tuscaloosa) and is Chief AI Product Officer and Architect at MERP Systems. He previously worked as a director at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and at IBM, Accenture, Microsoft and the government of Andhra Pradesh, India.
Don Porterfield
Secretary
Don also serves as operations director. He is retired from Virginia Mason Hospital.
Vijayalakshmi Raman
Director
Viji is the executive director of Synergy Learning Academy. She formerly worked at Walmart headquarters.
Vidyasagar Chandrasekhar
Director
Vidyasagar works at Expedia and looks after Northwest SHARE’s accounting and internal audit.
Rakesh Patnaik
Director
Rakesh works at Meta and looks after audio, video and broadcasting for Northwest SHARE’s festivals.
Manoj Raheja
Director
Manoj volunteers with the Free Food Truck and works at Microsoft as a Principal Program Manager.
Staff
Our team
Latha Sambamurti
Artistic, Outreach & Development Director
Latha won the 2023 Humanities Washington Award, the highest award in the state for public humanities, recognizing her leadership, scholarship, service and advocacy for the humanities, arts and culture. She is the producer and director of several large-scale arts and culture festivals in Washington State. She has been a Washington State Arts Commissioner and is vice chair of the Redmond Arts and Culture Commission. An educator, community leader, trained musician and band leader, she captains the advocacy team at ArtsWA, promoting support for arts and culture among Washington legislators. She won the Kirkland Performance Center’s You Rock award for community service in 2018. She serves as a board director for several state and regional arts and cultural organizations, including 4Culture, Inspire Washington, CWCT, LTAC, the City of Redmond, APCC, NWFL, KPC, the OneRedmond Foundation, Festál, the City of Seattle, Temple of Music and Northwest SHARE, and is an onsite reviewer for 4Culture’s Sustained Support Grant Program. She serves on grant panels for city, county, state and federal arts organizations. Latha holds a master’s degree in English literature and has researched translations of Shakespeare into Indian languages.
Volunteers
The people behind every program
Free Food Truck
- Bharti Raheja — Helps with the Free Food Truck and language education
- Daniel Phipps — Left his restaurant job to serve people in need through the Free Food Truck
- Vikas Singh — Free Food Truck volunteer
- Puja Krishna — Free Food Truck volunteer
- Sanjay Gupta — Back-end cooking for the free food program
Goloka Farm
- Srujana and Satish Madusu — Grow organic vegetables at Goloka Farm in Redmond for the food truck
- Venkat Iyer — Gives his spare time to the Vedic Museum
Education, arts and festivals
- Srikanth Satyanarayana — Linguistic training director
- Bharti Raheja — Language education
- Sanjay Gupta — Arts coordinator for festivals
Community and operations
- Lavanya Reddy — Community service for 30 years, with Washington Helping Hands; former president of IAWW
- Jaipal Nalla — Back-office operations