Board of Directors
Leading the Way
Our Board
Fanny Smedile, Board President
Fanny is from Columbe, Ecuador; helping people has been her passion since her teen years. She studied Business Administration, and while working for a public hospital, she volunteered as a health promoter, making home visits to people who struggled to meet their basic needs. In 1988, she came to the United States and settled in New Jersey. As a parishioner in Pompton Lakes, she learned of the struggles of immigrant families and responded with compassion to the trauma and difficulty they experienced. Fanny collected and distributed food and furniture, and initiated ESL classes, health clinics, and Hispanic culture events. In 2000, Fanny and her family moved to Virginia; since then she has been active in justice efforts and outreach through the Catholic church. Fanny is a founding member of Creciendo Juntos and Sin Barreras, and serves as the senior member of the Sin Barreras staff. Her objective is to bring needed services to members of the Hispanic community and to reach out to those who are most vulnerable.
Clay Wilcher, Director of Finance
Clay is from Charlottesville, Virginia and is a graduate of Albemarle High School. After High school, he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada and studied grant writing at the University of Nevada. Clay has nearly three decades of experience in business management; he has worked in sales, the banking industry, and with a variety of business ventures. Clay has been involved in legislative advocacy and worked on the successful 2010 state-wide campaign to pass HB921, which extended the preservation of evidence in cases of child abuse. Clay is a founding member of Sin Barreras and a Board of Immigration Appeals Accredited Representative who assists clients with immigration cases.
Frank Sullivan, Board Member
Frank has a Masters’ degree in International Agriculture and worked most of his career in less-developed-countries, living for many years in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Honduras. He consulted for fifteen years in organizational development, project evaluation, and proposal writing for the World Bank, the World Food Programme, the United States Agency for International Development, and numerous international NGOs. Retiring to Charlottesville, he looked for a way to “pay back” the hospitality and friendships his family enjoyed in their many years in Latin America and discovered Sin Barreras ten years ago and has volunteered with Sin Barreras ever since. Fluent in Spanish, he is one of Sin Barreras’ three accredited representatives approved by the Department of Justice to offer legal immigration services to those in need.
Sheila Herlihy, Board Member
Sheila has worked as the Coordinator of Justice and Charity at the Church of the Incarnation in Charlottesville since 2013. She was born and raised in Ohio, studied abroad in the Dominican Republic, and has traveled throughout the United States and the world. Sheila is a graduate of Wittenberg University with a B.A. in Spanish and Sociology of Religion. A fluent Spanish-speaker, Sheila has worked with immigrants in Philadelphia, Delaware, and now in Charlottesville. Sheila’s work is informed by the practice of solidarity, and her aim to build a more inclusive and just community.
Dan Doernberg, Director of Communication
Dan Doernberg is largely retired and does volunteer media relations work for a variety of Charlottesville political groups and nonprofits. In 1983 he and his wife co-founded and ran the Silicon Valley-based bookstore chain Computer Literacy, which they sold in 1997 after moving to Virginia in 1994 (Dan still runs a computer history book publishing company spun off from the bookstores). He started the public interest group Fairness.com LLC which maintained the Fairness.com website 2000-2019, and 2008-2018 created and developed NowComment, a free cloud-based multimedia document discussion/annotation tool still actively used by thousands of colleges and K12 schools worldwide.
Dan Vogus, Secretary
Dan is an attorney living in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is an Emeritus member of the Virginia State Bar and is a volunteer attorney for the Legal Aid Justice Center Pro Bono Program in Charlottesville. Dan grew up in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. He has a B.A. form Yale College and a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School. After law school, Dan was in private in Columbus Ohio for five years. He then returned to Pittsburgh to work in the Law Department of H . J. Heinz Company for 24 years. Dan spent six of those years in London, England as General Counsel for Heinz Europe. After his career at Heinz, Dan did financial consulting for three years. He then returned to the practice of law. Dan and his wife, Sarah, moved to Charlottesville in 2015. Dan met Sin Barreras in 2017 and started volunteering soon after. He is a founding member of Sin Barreras’ Advocacy Committee, currently serving as the Chair, and joined the Board in early 2021.
Andrea Jacobs, Board Member
Andrea Jacobs is a first-generation Guatemalan-American. She moved to Charlottesville in 2001 to start her career in Software Engineering for Northrop Grumman. Since then, Andrea has spent the last 20+ years in the technology sector, building her software delivery, project management, and process management skills. She is currently a Process Manager at Capital One.
Andrea has volunteered for the C’Ville Sabroso Festival committee since 2017. She is passionate about the festival and helping Sin Barreras create a safe environment for our immigrant community to feel empowered to share all the wonderful art, cuisine, and dance with our Charlottesville and surrounding counties. She and her family know the challenges one faces when setting roots in a new community.
