Board of Directors

Please note that our organization is completely self-financed.
We depend on your membership fees, participation in classes and donations to function.

All board members are volunteers. 
If you are interested in serving on the board, please contact Terry Rankin at president@afjackonville.org

President
Terry Rankin

Terry has been involved with the Alliance Française since the early 70’s when her high school French teacher in Washington DC signed  the class up for membership.  Later, the French company she was working for in Los Angeles in the 80’s/90’s had a corporate membership and she attended many events produced by Alliance including the spectacular annual Beaujolais Nouveau in Beverly Hills. Most recently with the Alliance Française de Jacksonville, she served as the board liaison with the Nantes sister city program before becoming President.
Terry brings a wealth of nonprofit experience to the Presidency.  Having served for 5 years as the President of the Board of Directors of the Advertising Federation in Oregon, she guided to organization to profitability during her tenure.  In addition, she served on the Board of Director’s executive committee for the Humane Society of Central Oregon for 3 years during an expansive capital campaign that resulted in the building of a new animal shelter valued at over one million dollars.


Vice President/Academic Advisor
Sheila Kloc

Sheila began learning French at 5 years old in elementary school and is happy to say she is still learning! She received a Masters from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and moved to Paris after that to continue her language studies. She has been involved with French and language learning throughout her career and has taught all levels through middle school, high school, undergraduate and post-graduate. She has also worked in various positions in language schools. She thinks you can never be too young or too old to start learning another language.

Treasurer
Rolf Leimgruber

Rolf was born in the German speaking part of Switzerland just outside Zurich. Part of his mandatory language curriculum in secondary school was French. Working as an apprentice in an international logistics company simultaneously continuing to learn French in business school, he had the opportunity to use the language dealing with offices in France and Belgium. 
This led to an internship as a trainee ("stagiaire”) in Paris for 18 months and he subsequently transferred to New York. In New York he continued his studies of French at the Alliance Française. The job also provided opportunities to interact in French with overseas offices. He met his wife in New York and after a few years they moved to Atlanta, GA. Following their stint in Atlanta, they moved to London,  and then returned back to Switzerland. Living in Switzerland Rolf worked with clients in the watch industry and not surprisingly, the corporate language was French. His next move was to a French company in Hong Kong with a corporate language of French. That allowed him to travel throughout Asia experiencing multiple cultures and food. Moving back to Jacksonville in 2016 and rejoining the Alliance Française, he took part in the language and cultural exchange with Nantes, France in 2018.  He is now retired and joined the board as Treasurer in the summer of 2020. Besides English and French, he also speaks German with basic knowledge of Spanish and Italian. His hobbies include cooking, wine, traveling (67 countries and counting), as well as supporting various charities financially.


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Secretary
Alice Hanes

Alice was born and grew up in Seoul, Korea until she was 18 years old. In 1974, she moved to Bloomington, Indiana and finished undergraduate and her Doctor of Optometry degree from Indiana University.   She met her husband there who was finishing his medical school.  We have lived across much of the United States, Austin, Texas, Indianapolis, Indiana, Chicago, Illinois and Holland, Michigan.
Two years ago, after our retirement, we decided to move to Atlantic Beach to be close to our older son and his family, especially our first granddaughter who is now 15 months old.
She has always had a love of the French language as well as the French culture.  We have been to France many times in the past 10 years, including 6 weeks of living in Bordeaux, where we attended and loved going to French language school.
Shortly after, we retired and moved to the Jacksonville area, one of the first things we did was to join and participate in Alliance Française de Jacksonville.  It has been a great experience and we have enjoyed learning French language and culture, as well as meeting friends through Alliance Française de Jacksonville.

Membership
Roberto Guardia

Roberto has been a member and student of the Alliance Francaise de Jacksonville since 2014.  In June 2016, Roberto and his wife Marisa participated in the fantastic Nantes immersion program.  Roberto, originally from Panama, moved to Jacksonville in 2006 after living in the Seattle area for 20 years.  Roberto and Marisa have four wonderful adult children spread out in Seattle, Raleigh, NC and Jacksonville.  Roberto has many years of experience as a Geotechnical Engineer specialized in tunnels and works for a national reach firm.  He enjoys road bicycling several times a week and traveling when possible in France, Spain and Italy.  Roberto and Marisa had their first grandson on December 2020 in Raleigh, NC.

Events
Sofie Bogaerts

Sofie grew up in the Flemish part of Belgium near the Dutch border. Though she loves her Flemish culture, she was always on the look-out for travel and to discover new horizons. She met her husband Thomas at the KU Leuven university where she got an MA in French and Italian Linguistics and Literature. She briefly taught French and Modern Foreign Language Didactics in college and high school but in 2005 she moved to the South of Rome with her husband and two daughters. After that, they lived a couple of years in Moscow, in London, São Paulo Brazil and again London to end up in Jacksonville in August 2019. During all the moving, Sofie has taught French, music and French literature in both British and American international schools. In Brazil, she volunteered in an after school program teaching middle school children English and French in a favela. Together with a friend, she also started up an English learning program at an orphanage.
Sofie enjoys cooking, reading, going out and playing with her dog.


Website
​Jean-Michel Bourgade

Jean-Michel was born in Paris and raised in the “ville-parc” of Le Vesinet, near Versailles. He attended a catholic high-school in Rueil-Malmaison (near Napoleon’s Chateau). He then studied in an “Ecole d’Ingenieurs” in the heart of Paris and graduated with a MS in Computer Engineering.  He worked in the Software & Telecom industries in Paris and then Sophia Antipolis, the “French Silicon Valley” on the French Riviera.  There in the medieval village of Valbonne, he met and married his American wife from Nashville, TN.  He later obtained an MBA from a business school in South of France and moved to work for the Pharmaceutical industry in Basel-Switzerland. Each day he commuted to live in French Alsace across the border of Switzerland and Germany (locals speak French Alsatian and Swiss-German dialects!). In 1999 he moved with his wife and French-American daughters to work for the Software industry in Boston, MA and then for the Financial Services industry in Richmond, VA. Each time he joined French community associations and raised his daughters in French as feasible… Finally he moved to Jacksonville in 2008 to work in 6 Sigma and healthcare analytics for the Healthcare Insurance industry. Dedicated travelers with his wife, he returns every year for long visits with family and friends in various regions of France and to further explore Europe. He joined the local Alliance Francaise Board in 2020 to help with the website presence.


Advisor
François Kloc-Consul Honoraire de France, Honorary Consulate in Jacksonville

Please note that our organization is completely self-financed.
We depend on your membership fees, participation in classes and donations to function.

All board members are volunteers.

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Director of Education

David Bellamy