Live AID and Other Adventures by Cynthi Stefenoni

Cynthi Stefenoni was born at Santa Rosa General Hospital in July, 1949 and family lore has it that she was brought home to Sebastopol in a shoe box! She spent her first two years on 17 acres on Lone Pine Road, the next 2-1/2 years on Florence Avenue and then the family moved to almost 3 acres of apples on Robinson Road.

Cynthi grew up in the self-sufficient town of Sebastopol where Main Street provided everything a family needed for the day-to-day and many car dealerships, apple dryers, canneries and packing houses who ringed the exterior completed the picture. She attended Park Side (twice: K-2 and 7-8), BrookHaven (3-6) and Analy. She was on the student council in Junior High, a member of Sebastopol’s first GATE class and a 3 year member of the A Cappella choir at Analy. She sat on the Sonoma County Youth Council and was a member of the World Affairs Club, head Varsity cheerleader her senior year and a student reporter for area newspapers. She loved politics, books, baseball, writing poetry and family. And then there was music. Her poetry became song lyrics and she started writing songs and singing harmonies with her family of four as soon as her mother taught her the harmony to ‘The First Noel’. Music became her passion. She majored in it at SRJC and UC Santa Cruz and continued her education in vocal performance at BYU.

From 1971-1976, Cynthi was Company Manager of Sun Company LTD, a summer stock musical theater company for youth. At the end of 7 weeks of intense rehearsal and training, young people from throughout Sonoma County played to sold out houses for two weekends. Many of Sonoma County’s thespians started as part of Sun Company where lifelong friendships were forged.

Although her career path led her all over the US as an assistant director and producer whose credits included episodic television, children’s programming, movies of the week and independent features (credits available on Imdb), her first love was musical theater and live event production. Her live event production credits include the mega-productions “LIVE AID”, “Hands Across America” and “The Soviet American Peace Child Tour”. She currently produces reunions for The Rohna Survivors Memorial Association (TRSMA) with her sister. TRSMA serves families of WWII servicemen whose stories were suppressed for 50 years and are only now coming to light.

Cynthi has been a member of the Sebastopol Center for the Arts since 2009 where she has served on and as President of the Board of Directors, and volunteered on the Performing Arts Committee, the Literary Arts Committee and devoted countless hours to the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival (SDFF). She was integral in getting SDFF qualified as an Academy® Qualifying film festival in 2020 and was Festival Producer from 2014-2025. She has taught at the San Francisco Digital Film School and the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. She has been a member of the Directors Guild of America since 1987 and a member of the Rotary Club of Sebastopol since 2023.