LIFE IN C MAJOR

LONGTIME CANTOR LUCY DUNN HAS HIT PERFECT NOTES BLAZING A BRIGHT TRAIL AS ONE OF O.C.’S MOST PROMINENT BUSINESS LEADERS

BY GREG HARDESTY

FR. SCOTT BORGMAN WAS excited.

Last May, the judicial vicar of the Diocese of Orange won the dean’s award after earning a degree in nonprofit administration from the University of Notre Dame.

He showed off the glass obelisk to Lucy Dunn, a fellow board member of the Orange Catholic Foundation (OCF).

Of all the people to brag to about awards.

In her garage at her home in Coto de Caza, Dunn – one of Orange County’s most recognizable business leaders over the last several decades, a gifted public speaker with expertise in real estate, law, and government – has boxes full of honors from the dozens of non-profit and other organizations she has worked with as a volunteer, board member and executive.

“I’m trying to figure out what to do with all my plaques and awards,” Dunn told Fr. Scott with a wink. “I’m thinking of hiring an artist to design a backyard water feature out of them.”

Dunn wasn’t bragging.

She’s just gotten heaps of awards over the years, mostly while serving as president and CEO of the Orange County Business Council (OCBC) from November 2005 to December 2022. And she simply doesn’t have room to display them all.

“I thought that was hilarious,” Fr. Scott recalled. “After she told me that, I just wanted to throw my award away.”

He didn’t, and Dunn has yet to build that fountain – a suggestion of one of her sons, Gerard Fane, a digital marketing specialist in the Bay Area.

But Dunn’s collection of honors illustrates how prominent and respected a figure she is in Orange County and throughout the state, having served as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development from May 2004 to November 2005. He appointed her to the California Transportation Commission in 2008 and Gov. Jerry Brown reappointed her to two more terms.

During Dunn’s term on the housing commission, state funds helped incentivize or create more than 72,000 affordable homes and shelter spaces for Californians –one of her proudest accomplishments.

BISHOP’S AWARD

Dunn’s work with the Diocese – she’s been a fixture at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Irvine for nearly three decades and is the parish’s longest-serving cantor – also has reaped her honors.

In 2014, Bishop Kevin Vann honored her with the Bishop’s Award for Exemplary Business Integrity, one of two handed out each year at the OCF’s signature event, the annual Conference on Business & Ethics (at which Dunn, for the second consecutive year, will be serving as emcee this year on April 21).

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And in Spring 2020, Bishop Vann asked Dunn to serve on the board of the OCF, whose main function is to raise money to support parishes, Catholic schools and ministries throughout Orange County, as well as special projects on the Christ Cathedral campus.

True to form, Dunn said yes.

This is a woman who, a couple of decades ago, was serving on 23 boards of directors, commissions and advisory boards at the same time – in addition to working full time.

Having retired from the OCBC a little more than a year ago (she retains the title of CEO emeritus), Dunn’s now down to “only” eight.

“When I work with organizations,” she explained, “I want to develop a reservoir of good will – not just to advance the OCBC’s mission or my own mission.

“I volunteer to help other non-profits succeed. I love doing that.”

‘REVENGE TRAVEL’

Dunn sips a cup of black coffee ahead of a late-afternoon appointment in Irvine – not far from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish.

Officially retired, she’s getting in a lot of traveling as she ponders Act IV of her career (she has been, roughly for 16 years each, a general practice attorney, an in-house attorney for homebuilding companies and leader of the OCBC).

“Right now, I’m kind of doing revenge travel after all the COVID restrictions,” Dunn said with her signature robust laugh.

Last year, she traveled through the Panama Canal and soon will leave on a trip to search for the Northern Lights from London to Bergen, Norway.

She just got back from Santa Fe, N.M., and soon will visit her grandchildren in the Bay Area (she has three, ages 10 months to 3). In addition to Gerard, Dunn has another married son, Edward Fane, a deputy sheriff for the San Fran-

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