Events

Cynthia Gregory is an award-winning writer and author of Journaling As Sacred Practice: an Act Of Extreme Bravery (2016), What Is Possible From Here (2021), LOVE NOTES From the SOUL (2024), and LOVE NOTES From the SOUL 2.0 (2025).  She is a member of the California Writers Club, Redwood Writers Chapter, and a member in good standing of the International Coaching Federation.

Cynthia’s mission is to help shift-makers and cultural creatives translate their meaningful life experiences into compelling stories. She does this through hands-on writing workshops, individualized author coaching, and transformational writing retreats that support writers at every stage. She earned her bachelor's degree in journalism from Gonzaga University and her master's degree in literature from Mills College.

Dan Orloff has spent more than four decades connecting Silicon Valley to its own soundtrack. As Founder and Chief Rock Officer of San Jose Rocks — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit documenting and celebrating the music heritage of Santa Clara County — he is on a mission to prove our region belongs in the same conversation as Nashville, Memphis, and Motown.

On May 29, Dan brings Rotarians a genuine music-history detective story: the long, winding path to unwinding one of rock’s great mysteries — where, and when, Grateful Dead first performed under that name. The trail runs through Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, a modest downtown house, and decades of conflicting accounts. And it leads to San Jose Rocks discovery of two key artifacts, long thought lost to time, that finally pinned the story down for good.

A longtime Santa Clara Valley resident, marketing veteran (Orloff Marketing, since 1992), and managing partner at Pruneyard Cinemas, Dan is a past president of the Campbell Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Board of Directors of the Rotary Club of San Jose. He has produced and promoted live music across the region for over 40 years.

And he won’t leave Saratoga out of it — expect a few local gems, pieces of Saratoga’s own music history hiding in plain sight. Come for a band you already know. Leave knowing your own backyard helped launch them — and how San Jose Rocks proved it.

Mark Fischer-Colbrie has more than 30 years of experience in building laboratory tools and diagnostic, therapeutic, and medical device companies. He was most recently CEO at Strateos, Inc., a software technology and automation company that seeks to accelerate life science research by enabling cloud access to broad-scale automation. Previously, Mark was the CEO for over ten years at Labcyte Inc., which invented novel lab tools and automation that have been adopted worldwide.

Before Labcyte, he ran business development and was the CFO at Adeza Biomedical Corporation, a women’s healthcare company. He holds four issued patents for diagnostics and therapeutics. In 2013, Mark was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Life Sciences for Northern California. Mark is the former Chairman of the Board for JDRF International, the largest global funder seeking a cure for type one diabetes.

As a 21-year JDRF volunteer, he served on the JDRF International Board for 7 years and was a member of multiple committees including Research, Finance and Nominating & Governance. For the Greater Bay Area JDRF Chapter, Mark served as the Chapter President for 3 terms and has been a board member for 18 years. Mark holds a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from University of California, Berkeley. He served on a life sciences industry board, the Analytical, Life Sciences Diagnostics Association (ALDA), from 2011 to 2024. Mark enjoys long-distance endurance events and has completed 14 Ironman Triathlons. 

Linda is a retired k-8 science teacher who taught teachers about the ocean at the Monterey Bay Aquarium summer institutes for 30 years.  She now volunteers at the Saratoga History Museum as the Director of Education programs. All the schools in Saratoga come for the interactive Pioneer Living program where children visit the Saratoga Blacksmith's home, wash clothes on a washboard, write on slates, read McGuffey readers in the one room schoolhouse, and visit the new Blacksmith building to learn about what blacksmith's do.

Her talk today features archival photos of some early people and their activities that built the little town that later became Saratoga.