Meet the Board
Melanie Buttarazzi - Founder
Melanie Buttarazzi is a Toronto native, calling Los Angeles her home for a decade. As finalist on So You Think You Can Dance her career as a dancer has led her to work with various artists including Jennifer Lopez, Pharrell, Pitbull, and Ne-Yo. With a BFA in Dance and Performing Arts from York University, she has taught and adjudicated dancers across Canada and the US. Her choreography has been seen in showcases and concerts across North America along stages for TedX, and Blue Shield of California. Her dynamic career achievements include commercials and productions for Sony, Budweiser, Ford, Honda, Hulu and fashion brands like Christian Loubutin. She has worked on stage and on set in television and film for 15 years.
Melanie’s passion for dancing has been the driving force for her entire life. This passion has led her to share the gift of dance starting a nonprofit organization for youth in underserved communities called Fostering Dreams Project. The organization partners with various nonprofits and school districts to bring a comprehensive curriculum designed to enrich the lives of foster youth academically and socially. Melanie is determined through dance to continue providing youth with support systems and community to help them see that they belong to something bigger than their circumstances.
Soleil Delgadilio - Board Chair
Her leadership focuses on underserved communities in Los Angeles County, where she was born and raised. Currently, she serves as the Volunteer & Community Engagement Specialist at the Children's Institute, Inc. (CII) where she utilizes her talents to engage the wider corporate community to give back. She currently serves as an advisory board member to College, Access, Readiness and Success (CARS), a project of Community Partners, The Teen Mom's Project which aims at sending teenage mothers to college, Fostering Dreams Project and she is a Big Sister for Catholic Big Brothers Big Sisters. At UCLA, Delgadillo currently serves as the scholarship board chair for the UCLA Latino Alumni Association where she has managed the scholarship process for the past four years and has overseen the growth of its first OrgullOSO Mentor Program. Soleil Delgadillo is the recipient of the UCLA 2017 Young Alumni Volunteer of the Year Award. She graduated from UCLA in 2009 with a bachelors degree in Sociology and minor in Women's Studies and California State University, Long Beach in 2011 with a Masters Degree in School Counseling with a Pupil Personnel Services Credential which allows her to serve as a counselor in K-12 schools.
Dara G. Ghahremani - Board Advisor
Dara G. Ghahremani, Ph.D. is associate research faculty in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and Semel Insitute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. He received his PhD in the Neuroscience area in the Psychology Department at Stanford University and was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA. His research aims to understand self-control behavior, its neural basis, how it is compromised in substance abuse, and how it may be strengthened using both pharmacological and non- pharmacological interventions. The self-control behaviors he focuses on include behavioral flexibility, response inhibition, and emotion regulation.
He uses multiple neuroimaging techniques to investigate the neural basis of self-control, including functional MRI (fMRI) to measure brain activation while people perform various tests of self-control and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to measure neurochemical markers of dopamine function. His studies examine both healthy control participants and those that are substance abusers.
Noel Mejia - Board Treasurer
After receiving his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California Los Angeles, Noel moved to New York City where he earned his Masters of Public Administration with a Specialization in Nonprofit Management from the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College. He wrote his master’s thesis on the administration of public/private development partnerships in Tanzania and Angola. Along with Fostering Dreams Project, Noel does work with the UCLA Latino Alumni Association where he was most recently the Chair of the Gala Committee, which raised the most money from one event since 2013.
Jessica Graves - Board Secretary
Board Secretary, dancer and actress in Los Angeles, CA. She has B.F.A. in Dance from Western Michigan University.
Since receiving her degree, Jessica has danced and acted professionally for film, television, and the stage, including working with such artists as Jennifer Lopez.
She truly believes dance can help make a difference in the lives of foster and at-risk youth, and that being able to express yourself in art, enables people to have goals, dreams, and to work through difficulties in life that are sometimes impossible to put into words. She has worked with youth in foster care since 2014 and continues to bring light and hope to the students at Fostering Dreams Project.
Aukai Cain - Board Advisor
Aukai is a hip hop choreographer who has performed with renowned artists like Janet Jackson, and has choreographed episodes for TV and worked in Film. His work has been seen on HBO, FOX and Good morning America segments. He has worked in the dance industry for over 30 years and has worked with youth in foster care for 15 years. He has been a part of Fostering Dreams Project since 2014 and has volunteered and worked with organizations such as First Step Transitional Living, and Los Angeles Youth Homeless Network.