By Lookout Staff

December 15 -- A sociology professor and an entertainment lawyer will head the Santa Monica Board of Trustees during the coming year.

Dr. Susan Aminoff, who teaches at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, and Rob Rader, an attorney working for Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP in Los Angeles, were elected Monday as chair and vice chair respectively of the seven-member board.

Aminoff succeeds Dr. Nancy Greenstein as chair and Rader, who also serves on the Bayside District Board, which runs the Downtown, succeeds Aminoff as vice chair.

Aminoff -- who has served since 1999 as the chair of the Joint Labor-Management Benefits Committee of the Los Angeles Faculty Guild -- has been active in several community college organizations and projects. She also serves on the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges' Health Care Committee and the California Federation of Teachers Retirement Committee.

She developed and administered the ENCORE Emeritus College for Lifelong Learning at Pierce College.

A Santa Monica resident for eight years, Rader is an attorney who represents studios, producers and distributors in all aspects of acquisition, development, production, promotion, distribution and licensing of interactive video games, television programs, consumer products, themed entertainment, videocassettes, DVDs, and websites and online content production.

He previously served as vice president of business affairs for MGM Television Distribution, where he was responsible for all domestic pay, free, cable and syndication television licensing. Prior to that, he was head of business affairs for MGM Home Entertainment, MGM Consumer Products, MGM Interactive and MGM.COM. Rader, who worked on President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign, is a member of the board of the Wilshire/Montana Neighborhood Coalition.

Rader teaches entertainment law at Pepperdine Law School as an adjunct professor.