As a seasoned charitable fund-raiser and entrepreneur, Layne has given her insights and advice to friends over the past fifteen to twenty years. Realizing that there were plenty more qualified volunteer advisors for charitable fund raising but there was no place they could gather from across the country, she dreamt up Vivanista.

Before Vivanista, Ms. Gray was the founder of LKE Productions, a global technology industry conference management company. LKE produced conferences, product launches and seminar series for groups ranging from a few hundred to over fifteen thousand. Before that, Ms. Gray held technical marketing management positions at both Oracle Corporation – as the Director of UNIX Product Line Marketing, and Altos Computer Systems.

Ms. Gray dedicates a portion of her free time to charitable causes in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to being a member of the Board of Directors for the San Francisco Zoological Society she is a Sustainer in the San Francisco Ballet Auxiliary as well as the Junior League of San Francisco, which awarded her with the 2009 Junior League Sustainer of the Year Award.

As the Chair or Co-Chair of fund raising events, she has helped raise millions of dollars for numerous non-profit organizations. Some of those charitable events include:
• American Cancer Society Gala 1991
• San Francisco Ballet Sugar Plum Parties 1993
• San Francisco Ballet Fashion Show 1995
• Junior League of San Francisco Fashion Show 1997
• San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker Festival 2000
• San Francisco Zoo HallowBooZoo 2003, 2004
• International Museum of Women Gala 2008
• San Francisco ZooFest 2008
• Macy’s Passport 2009
• Arthritis Foundation Fashion Show 2009 (Honorary Chair)
• Junior League of San Francisco 100th Anniversary Conference and Gala 2012

Layne Gray received her B.A. from the University of Oregon in Marketing and Statistics.