Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation Appoints New Board Members to Champion its Mission

The Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation, the 501c3 organization that supports the preservation, protection and enhancement of the future of the Rose Bowl Stadium as a National Historic Landmark, has announced the addition of two key members from the Pasadena area to its volunteer leadership within the community – Mark J. Miller to the Board of Directors and Dr. Chris Mattmann to the Advisory Board.

“The addition of these key community members provides Legacy and the Rose Bowl access to priceless perspective and energy that we will need to strengthen the mission of the Foundation as we approach our next step – a potential major capital campaign for America’s Stadium,” said Legacy Foundation President Dedan Brozino. “The heartbeat of Legacy’s ability to raise funds lies within a strong Board of Directors and Advisory Board that has evolved over the years. Mark and Dr. Mattmann are some of the most respected professionals in their fields and we are fortunate to have them in the family to assist us in hitting another level.”

As a new member of the Legacy Board of Directors, Mark J. Miller is currently the President / CEO of Pic ‘N’ Save Bargains. He has a corporate resume as an executive with extensive retail and wholesale executive-level experience leading companies from $10.0 million to $4.0 billion in sales. Before Pic ‘N’ Save, Mr. Miller served as the CEO of Sullivan Gift Co., a leading premium wholesaler of gifts and home decor products to over 10,000 independent home decor stores across the country. His prior roles include Senior VP of Merchandising for the Disney Stores and President of Big Lots, one of the largest extreme value retailers in America.

A 20-plus year native of the Pasadena area, Miller originally is from the Syracuse area before receiving his degrees from the University of Miami – Ohio.

As a new member of the Legacy Board of Directors, Dr. Chris Mattmann is currently the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer (CTIO) at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is also the Division Manager of the AI, Analytics and Innovative Development Organization in the Information Technology and Solutions Directorate at NASA JPL. He has over 20 years of experience at JPL and has conceived, realized, and delivered the architecture for the next generation of reusable science data processing systems for NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory, NPP Sounder PEATE, and the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Earth science missions.

He was the first Vice President (VP) of Apache OODT (Object Oriented Data Technology), the first NASA project at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and he led the project’s transition from JPL to the ASF.

A huge sports fan with lifelong local ties, Dr. Mattmann is also the Director of the Information Retrieval & Data Science (IRDS) group at the University of Southern California and an Adjunct Research Professor, from where he graduated as a Trojan. He teaches graduate courses in Content Detection & Analysis & in Search Engines & Information Retrieval.

Dr. Mattmann has materially contributed to understanding of the Deep Web and Dark Web through the DARPA MEMEX project. His work won the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism in 2017.

The Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation was founded in 2010 to preserve, protect and enhance the future of the Rose Bowl Stadium as a National Historic Landmark and has raised over $50 million in gross gifts and pledges to support the stadium, driven by its volunteer board and nationwide, growing donor base.

For more information on supporting the Legacy Foundation, please visit www.RoseBowlLegacy.org.