Tiburon’s Brenda Bottum aims to build community through volunteer work

Brenda Bottum joined the board of the Marine Mammal Center about four years ago, drawn to the Sausalito-based nonprofit’s mission to promote ocean conservation through marine-mammal rescue, science and education.

The Tiburon resident began to help guide the center behind the scenes, but about a year into her tenure as a board member, she asked if she could spend the day with the organization’s veterinarians and volunteer crew; there are some 1,400 volunteers playing vital roles for the nonprofit, from feeding animals, administering medications and cleaning pens to helping rescue stranded mammals to leading visitor tours.

She says that hands-on experience left her completely inspired.

“I drove away thinking, ‘I’ve got to do more than just be on the board,’” she says.

Since then, Bottum, 65, has been balancing her board member duties with regular volunteering at the center, becoming particularly skilled at helping train elephant seal pups to eat fish on their own so they can be released back into the wild.

And that’s not her only volunteer commitment. For the past seven or so years, she’s also served on the board of the Belvedere-Tiburon Library Foundation, where she helps lead the committee that runs the library’s art gallery, including overseeing the gallery’s transformation from staging solo exhibits to hosting group shows that draw artists from around the Bay Area.

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