Shelby Sutter, Hightower Las Vegas
BOARD PRESIDENT
With over 10 years of experience in the financial services industry, Shelby Sutter provides comprehensive financial planning and long-term investment advice to successful individuals and entrepreneurs, community organizations, multi-generational families, charitable foundations, retirement plans, and a wide array of businesses to make meaningful impacts on her clients' daily lives. Shelby's focused her career on advocating for her clients throughout every chapter of their financial lives. She prides herself on finding solutions for her clients' seemingly unsolvable problems while providing a reassuring and knowledgeable presence throughout their unique journey.
Shelby is passionate about building successful, long-term, relationships with her clients to help them achieve their own custom blueprint to financial independence A.K.A. "Well-th". She has a diverse and unique background which allows her to deeply understand the psychology of money and how our money stories (the ones we inherit and the ones we tell ourselves) affect us throughout our entire lives.
A Las Vegas transplant since 2015, Shelby serves her local community in many ways and believes in supporting Southern Nevadan initiatives. She is committed to serving as a leader and an example of philanthropy in our community. She has extensive experience consulting to non-profit organizations as well as contributing as a member of board leadership. In addition to her role as Project REAL's Board President, Shelby also serves on the executive committee and board of directors for the Young Leaders Society (powered by the United Way of Southern Nevada), and is an active member of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Executive Leadership Volunteer Team.
Kimberly De La Cruz, Interdependence Public Relations
BOARD TREASURER
Kimberly brings nearly a decade of communications experience to her volunteerism with Project REAL and her role as a Public Relations Specialist with Interdependence Public Relations. Her career began in journalism at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest daily newspaper, where she started as a general assignment reporter and grew to become an entertainment columnist. She is now a Nevada Press Association award-winning writer.
Kimberly was the head of public relations for a global tech company, where she oversaw a team of PR and social media specialists and producers in Las Vegas, as well as agency partners in Japan, Southeast Asia, South Africa and France. She simultaneously served as the spokesperson for an in-house brand, one of the world’s largest dating sites, and traveled between New York, Los Angeles and London for media interviews and to host events.
As the face of the brand, Kimberly appeared in many domestic and international TV and radio programs, as well as newspapers and magazines, including Bloomberg, Business Insider, Forbes, and most recently, The Portal podcast with Eric Weinstein, Managing Director of Thiel Capital. In the same role, Kimberly was responsible for all outside productions involving the brands, and has also worked with BBC, 60 Minutes, VICE and several highly regarded documentary film crews.
Kimberly is passionate about finding the human-interest aspect in every storytelling opportunity. Her experiences afford her unique perspective of the world of communications, because she has worked on all sides to share information. Since 2016, Kimberly has played a direct role in nearly all news & media coverage Project REAL has received thanks to her generous volunteerism with our organization.
Mike Kamer, M.P.A., Project REAL
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ACTING SECRETARY
Project REAL's Executive Director Mike Kamer has been serving the mission of Project REAL since 2016. Mike's 10+ years of experience in program development & management have allowed Project REAL to significantly increase the number of students we serve and the number of tools available to serve them with.
Mike work began with Project REAL in March 2016, when he was hired as our Program Director. After spending the first three months learning Project REAL's offerings while finishing out the school year, he spent his first summer with us developing our organization's current model, the Sequential Education Program. This allowed the organization to more effectively serve students by creating multi-year planned interactions with them, increasing the likelihood that students would have at least one Project REAL experience each year. This approach - combined with a program redesign that worked to add 'field trip like memories' to every Project REAL experience students have - has led to our work having long-term impacts on student behavior, and increased their academic performance in the civics education topics we provide lessons for.
In his free time, Mike volunteers throughout the community, mentors our past employees and interns, and leads Nevada Nonprofit Network and it's Nerdy Nonprofit Nights - a social group for nonprofit professionals in Southern Nevada that aims to increase collaboration among our regions pubic service organizations.