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President
Robert V. Brody, MD is a primary care, hospice and palliative care, and pain management physician and Clinical Professor of Medicine and Family & Community Medicine at UCSF. He has practiced at San Francisco General Hospital for 40 years; he was an original member and then chair of the hospital Ethics Committee for 17 years.
He is currently on the Executive Committee of the End of Life Liberty Project.
Vice President
Joyce Mayne is a Los Angeles native and graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Gerontology. After receiving her Master’s in Gerontology, she worked in the area of events and fundraising for USC while she started her family. After some time, she returned to get her Master’s in Social Work and later became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker focusing on the elderly and end-of-life causes.
Currently, Joyce has her own telehealth therapy practice while also working as a hospice social worker. Joyce is a volunteer at EOLCCA (where she answers the phones weekly), a Compassionate Companion at Verdugo Hills Hospital (sitting with those alone and ill in the hospital), and recently was the President of the La Canada Flintridge Education Foundation (LCFEF) where she raises funds for the local public schools. Joyce has also served and is serving on the Executive Boards of the PTAs in the La Canada public schools K-12th grades. Currently, Joyce is a Trustee of LCFEF where the focus is increasing the investment of the school’s educational endowment.
When not working and volunteering, Joyce loves to read and exercise. She also focuses on spending as much time with her two teenage boys, spouse, Chris and rescue dog, Luna. They enjoy traveling, trying new restaurants and whenever possible, experiencing live music.
Joyce is honored to be a part of this Board and looks forward to continuing to raise awareness and educate Californians on their end-of-life options.
Treasurer, Founding Director
ccomins@endoflifechoicesca.org
Claudia retired after a career in political and non-profit fundraising, branding and strategic planning. Her professional work tracked her passions for environmental protection, access to educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth, and the advancement of women’s reproductive rights. She spent a decade serving as Vice President for Development at Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, DC. During her career, she also worked with the Democratic National Committee, League of Conservation Voters, Edmund Burke School, and Identity, Inc. in the Washington, DC area. After moving to San Diego in 2009, she worked with Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest and the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.
Motivated by her eye-opening experiences managing health care and end of life decision making for her parents, upon retiring, Claudia was determined to pay it forward, and became a volunteer with San Diego Hospice. Her strong belief in an individual’s right to choose, in this case, a dignified death, drew her to become involved in the statewide effort led by Compassion & Choices to pass the End of Life Option Act in her newly adopted home state of California. Following the enactment of the law, she served as a client services volunteer with Compassion & Choices until the program closed in 2018.
In her free time, Claudia relishes Southern California’s lovely climate, hiking, beach-walking, foreign films, practicing her Spanish, baking bread, and cultivating a bird- and butterfly-friendly backyard garden.
Secretary
Adrian Byram has been thinking about and researching end-of-life decision-making for the last decade. After retiring from a 40 year career as an entrepreneur and senior executive in the IT industry in 2012, he began a PhD program in neuroethics – a new field combining neuroscience and medical ethics – at the University of British Columbia (UBC). His thesis showed that the choices made by surrogate decision-makers for ICU patients often failed to meet patients’ values, and suggested new ways to ensure patients’ autonomy is truly respected. Since completing his PhD in 2019 he has collaborated with colleagues from UBC in researching how advance requests for Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) could be implemented in Canada. Most recently, he and his colleagues have testified to the Canadian Parliament about legislation to enable advance requests while maintaining strong guardrails against abuse.
Our social and medical systems today rarely inform us about the choices available to us in the last stages of our lives. By working with EOLCCA Adrian hopes to help his fellow Californians learn about the choices that are legitimately theirs, and empower them to exercise control over the last days, weeks, and months of their lives.
Adrian grew up in Ottawa and Toronto in Canada. He has a BSc and MSc in Math and Physics from the University of Toronto, and qualified for a PhD in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University. He is very active in Sustainable Rossmoor – advocating for solar and EVs. He and his wife have been SF Ballet fans for decades and thoroughly enjoy the many arts opportunities available in SF and Berkeley.
Director
Hank Balson is a recent transplant to Southern California, having moved to Palm Springs in 2023 after growing weary of Seattle’s nine winter months of short, gray days and long, cold nights. One of the first things he did after moving to the desert was to start volunteering with End of Life Choices California. It was an obvious choice after having spent four years volunteering with End of Life Washington, where he served as a client support volunteer, as well as a member of the organization’s Equity & Access and Law & Public Policy Committees.
Hank is a civil rights lawyer who has devoted the past two-and-a-half decades to standing up for the constitutional rights of people in jails and prisons, especially the right to necessary medical and mental health care. He is a former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Washington, where he also served as a volunteer cooperating attorney.
In addition to his work on the EOLCCA board of directors, Hank supports EOLCCA clients by responding to calls from Californians seeking information about their end-of-life options and by assisting those who have chosen to pursue Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD). He also spreads awareness about California’s end-of-life options by speaking to groups throughout the state.
Founding Director
lcalkins@endoflifechoicesca.org
Lynne is an Ob-Gyn Nurse Practitioner, retired, with more than 38 years experience in the field of maternal-child health. She volunteers as a gynecologic clinician at St. Leo’s Medical Clinic in Solana Beach. She was a client services volunteer with Compassion and Choices from 2011 to 2018, acting as an advocate and personal support for individuals at end-of-life.
Lynne campaigned vigorously for the passage of California’s End of Life Option Act in 2015 and is eternally grateful for the legacy of Brittany Maynard that helped make this law a reality for all Californians. Lynne believes that just as we provide support at birth, so we should also provide support in death. She is passionate about the individual’s right to choose a peaceful death at the end of life.
Lynne has been an active member of Hemlock Society of San Diego for more than 10 years.
She has facilitated many Advance Care Planning workshops. She is also a host of Death Cafe Encinitas, a growing international movement wherein people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. It is an agenda-free place to talk about death, dying and living. (www.deathcafe.com).
Lynne is a founding member of Hand to Hand, a philanthropic group of women who grant funds to local non-profits which promote economic self-sufficiency and positive change in the lives of women and girls.
Lynne lives happily with her husband, Ken, in Encinitas and plays tennis 3-4 days/week. She is a voracious reader.
Director
Reina Galanes, PhD is the Speakers Program Coordinator for EOLCCA. She earned a BA and MA in Psychology from Wesleyan University; a Master of Education in Learning Systems Design & Development from the University of Missouri; and a Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology.
Over her career, Reina has demonstrated multidisciplinary skills across different fields. She worked primarily in healthcare insurance administration as a Behavioral Health Quality Manager, Regulatory Compliance Manager, and Regulatory Compliance Director at Aetna Life Insurance Company; Compliance Consultant at Kaiser Permanente; and Compliance Director at The Anthem Companies. Beyond healthcare, Reina worked in higher education as an Instructional Designer & Training Coordinator at the University of California. She also worked as a Senior Consultant in training services for the energy and utility industry at Mosaic.
After retiring in 2021, Reina volunteered at the Alameda County Community Food Bank and the Prisoners Literature Project. She learned about End of Life Choices California following the screening of Jack Has a Plan at the Alameda International Film Festival in 2023. Since joining EOLCCA, she has served as a Client Support Volunteer and in the Speakers Program. She accepted the role of Speakers Program Coordinator when her predecessor relocated out-of-state in May 2024.
Reina grew up in New Hampshire and moved to the Bay Area in 1988, where the sunshine and fog keep her comfortably transplanted. Her mental and physical health thrive on multiple forms of daily exercise. She enjoys amateur and professional sports, movies, music, reading, SF Ballet, and traveling. She believes in the power of education and actively practices lifelong learning.
Director
Susan recently retired after 28 years with Kaiser Permanente where she served as a Drug Education Coordinator with 40 years practice experience in Clinical Pharmacy. While at Kaiser Permanente, Susan managed quality and cost initiatives in drug use management, keeping patient safety at the forefront. In her role, she has taught new pharmacists and pharmacists in
training through the ASHP-approved residency program and Northern California schools of pharmacy.
Susan also served as a primary consulting pharmacist in the California End of Life Act program for Kaiser Permanente Northern California since the law was enacted in 2016. She has helped launch and improve the program within Kaiser Permanente and has been a National speaker at multiple End of Life conferences.
Susan served on the Advisory Council for End of Life Choices California before accepting a position on the Board of Directors. She currently volunteers her time to support families throughout their exploration of choices at the end of their lives, including being with them on the day of ingestion.
She is a graduate of University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Pharmacy and completed two years of post-graduate training at UCSF in Clinical Residency and a second-year specialty residency in Pharmacy Administration.
Director
Fran Moreland Johns is a freelance writer for local, national and online publications whose focus is often on end-of-life issues. She is the author of Dying Unafraid (Synergistic Press, 1999) and of related stories published in a number of magazines and anthologies. She holds a BA in Art from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and an MFA in Short Fiction from the University of San Francisco.
Dying Unafraid grew out of Johns’ experiences as a writer, a hospice volunteer and a volunteer with AIDS groups and the elderly. She served as a bedside volunteer and on the board of Compassion & Choices of Northern California for more than a decade – also working to pass the California End of Life Option Act – and is a founding member of the San Francisco Bay Area Network for End of Life Care. She has presented end-of-life issues papers at international conferences sponsored by London-based Progressive Connexions in Prague, Budapest, Lisbon and Bruges in recent years.
Johns’ other primary focus has long been on interfaith causes – she was a two-term member of the board of the San Francisco Interfaith Council – and on reproductive justice issues. Her book Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before – and after – Roe v Wade was published in 2013. Her online presence is at franjohns.net and on Facebook at FranMorelandJohnsWriter.
Born in Brazil to Methodist educational missionary parents, Johns grew up in Virginia and raised her three children in the Atlanta area. She has five flawless adult grandchildren. She moved to San Francisco in 1992 to marry her college sweetheart Bud Johns. Until his death in 2019 they enjoyed traveling the globe, exploring new ideas, and working to support the arts and progressive causes. She continues to support their mutual interests in music and the arts, nuclear disarmament, and social justice issues. In her generally nonexistent spare time she works on the short story collection she hopes some day to publish.
Director
Diane brings deep compassion and strategic acumen to her role on the EOLCCA board, shaped in part by her personal experience with the organization when they supported her brother staying “in the driver’s seat” through the final stage of his cancer journey.
As Vice President of Family Office Services for a local family, she is an experienced leader with over three decades of expertise in estate planning, philanthropy, risk management, and multi-generational governance. Known for her ability to balance tradition with innovation, Diane has been instrumental in shaping strategies that meet the evolving needs of a large and growing family network—45+ members strong—whom she lovingly refers to as her “family by love.”
A strong believer in one’s right to choose in all aspects of life, she previously served as a speaker for the American Cancer Society and remains passionate about supporting personal autonomy, purposeful living, and thoughtful legacy planning.
Now happily rooted back in the San Francisco Bay Area after earlier chapters in Connecticut, Chicago, and Toronto, Diane enjoys the region’s rich cultural life as a season ticket holder to the San Francisco Ballet and an avid explorer of art, travel, and the world’s diverse cultures. Outside of work, she finds joy in cooking, reading mysteries, and embracing the simple pleasure of a fresh ocean breeze.