Meet Your Local Officers and National Board Member

David C. Farmer, President

David C. Farmer is a practicing attorney and professional actor and director, currently serving as president of our local. David serves on national and local committees, and also served on the local board of the Screen Actors Guild Hawaii Branch before the merger. Besides his longtime membership in SAG and SAG-AFTRA (he joined in 1987), union membership runs in the family: His Aunt Frances joined SAG in 1936, and his brother Frank joined in 1960.

Rolf Burton, Vice President

Rolf has been a union actor since 2006. He served on both the national boards of AFTRA and SAG-AFTRA. He was the president of Hawaii’s AFTRA local and then co-president with Glenn Cannon when SAG and AFTRA merged. Currently, he is vice president of the Hawaii Local. Rolf is proud to volunteer his time to serve union actors in a leadership role. “All actors should be entitled to a fair wage and a safe work environment. I encourage other actors to learn what it means to be a union member, our history, our current situation and the future of our industry. We owe it to those who struggled before us and we have an obligation to preserve and expand what they achieved now and for future generations.”

Jean Simon, Secretary

Jean joined SAG 38 years ago following her first national commercial. She soon became involved in the effort to create SAG Hawaii and served on the Advisory Committee that paved the way for the first SAG board, and was a member of the board for many years. In addition, she was on the Screen Extras Guild Hawaii Board, SEG National Board (as SEG Hawaii chairperson) and the AFTRA Hawaii Local Board (as board member, secretary and president). She took a break from the board, but not from acting, due to a very demanding full-time job, and rejoined the board as secretary of the AFTRA Hawaii Local, becoming the secretary of the combined SAG-AFTRA Hawaii Local following merger, and was elected to the first SAG-AFTRA Hawaii Local Board.

Scott Rogers, National Board Member

Scott joined SAG in 1975, AFTRA in 1977 and Actors’ Equity in 1979. He currently serves on six national committees and numerous local committees, including chairing the Hawaii Local Conservatory Committee. He is very proud to have served on the last National Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild and the first National Board of Directors of SAG-AFTRA. Scott has been hired for more than 4,000 hours by movie studios, TV networks and production companies to coach actors on set for major motion pictures and national television shows.

This item was originally featured in the March 2015 local newsletter.