SeVEDS develops long-term strategies that generate growth and prosperity in our regional economy.
To be recognized as the model for rural economic development in the United States.
The SeVEDS Board develops long-term strategies that generate growth and prosperity in our regional economy. The overall mission is to be recognized as the model for rural economic development in the United States.
The greater Windham County, Vermont based board is governed by bylaws, originally approved on January 7th, 2013 and updated May 17, 2018
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SoVermont Zone is the official site for the Southern Vermont Economic Development Zone. It shares information about regional economic planning and collaboration, including the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) and how to submit projects, community leadership training like Get on Board, and the annual Southern Vermont Economy Summit. The site also explains the Zone’s purpose and partners working to strengthen the economy and communities across Southern Vermont.
Gary Fox is the development director for the Town of Rockingham, executive director of the two local development corporations in Bellows Falls and development associate at New England Center for Circus Arts.
After nearly 20 years of business experience in natural and organic food distribution, Gary has worked as a development professional in both the public and private sector for 15 years with experience at the local, regional and state levels. Past public service work for Gary includes 3 years as Secretary for the Rockingham Conservation Commission, 2 years as Secretary of the Trustees of the Rockingham Free Public Library, 2 years as Secretary and economic restructuring chair of the Bellows Falls Downtown Development Alliance, 2 years as infrastructure chair of the Great Falls Food Hub Working Committee, 10 years as Rockingham Historic Preservation Commissioner, 5 Years – 4 of them as President of the Southeastern Vermont Community Action Board of Directors, and 4 Years- 3 of them as President of the Vermont Community Development Association Board of Directors. Gary attended McGill University and Lesley College Graduate School earning a BSc. In Management Studies.
Gary and Jackie live in Bellows Falls in the house where their children, Ari 22 now studying in Boston MA and Ali 19 now studying in Gambier, OH were born. Family activities include skiing, biking, hiking, and cooking; kids have headed into sky diving, cooking and rock climbing for one, music, circus and ballroom dance for the other.
Chloe Learey has been Executive Director of The Winston Prouty Center for Child and Family Development since July 2007. Chloe is passionate about helping create communities where everyone is valued and has a chance to develop and contribute their gifts. The Prouty Center has grown significantly during that time as new programs to support young children and their families added over $2.4 million to the budget. In addition, The Prouty Center purchased the 184-acre campus of the former Austine School in 2016, moved operations to that location and took over managing the property. A community planning process in 2019 identified this asset as a potential site for developing housing, and efforts to explore this possibility began in earnest in early 2022. Initial master planning was completed in April 2023, and work continues on bringing this vision to fruition.
Meg is a 12th generation Vermonter and a realtor in the Mount Snow area (Meg Streeter Real Estate). She had previous careers in Boston, Baltimore, Washington, DC and El Paso, Texas in fields as various as anti-poverty organizing work with young mothers, sorting mail by memorizing 4250 street addresses and hiring scientists for the Food and Drug Administration. Always involved in community projects and start-ups with a passion for the non-profit organizations SeVEDS and Girls on the Run. Meg is currently enthusiastically working to transform Wilmington High School (her alma mater, along with Bates College) into a vital community center.
Keith Marks is the Exeuctive Director of the Colonial Theater in Keene, NH. Keith moved to Windham County in January 2020 from Jacksonville, Florida to take the director position with Next Stage Arts in Putney, Vermont. Marks holds a master’s degree from Tel Aviv University in education, a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Florida, and a graduate of the 2019 cohort of National Arts Strategies at The University of Pennsylvania. Prior to his arrival in Vermont, Marks produced arts experiences for the nonprofit Avant, produced and hosted a weekly radio show on Jacksonville-based NPR affiliate WJCT, published hundreds of articles as a freelance journalist, and owned a Pilates massage therapy center with his wife. He has two children, ages nine and five.
Wendy Harrison has served as municipal manager for the Town of Rockingham and the Village of Bellows Falls, the town of Vernon and the City of Winooski since July 2018. Harrison’s background includes a bachelor’s degree in economics, with a focus on Environmental and Urban Economics. She previously worked for the City of Philadelphia, the Village of Tequesta, Fla., Martin County, Fla., and the Town of Jupiter, Fla. Since moving to Vermont in 2015, Wendy has worked for the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust and Retreat Farm, joined the board of Southeast Vermont Transit and has been appointed to the Windham Regional Commission and the State Transportation Board.
Avery joined the Brattleboro community in 2014 as a cofounder of Hermit Thrush Brewery. Avery has been an active member of the Brattleboro Town Finance Committee, the Southern Vermont Economic Development Strategies board, and the Vermont Brewers Association. Prior to moving to Vermont, Avery studied Physics at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, MA , studied Music at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA, and worked as a Paramedic in Upper Darby, PA. Over two decades, he was also a participant, volunteer, and consultant for Destination Imagination, a global creative problem solving organization for kids pre-K through university. Avery currently spends his free time sharing his hobbies with his family and friends including vegetable fermentation, foraging, music, and kite flying.
Tom is a co-founder of Against The Grain Gourmet, a wholesale manufacturer of gluten-free bread and pizza products, with over 100 employees working at the BDCC Business Park. He holds degrees from Tulane University, University of Pennsylvania, and a doctorate from University of Maryland. He has nearly 40 years of business experience in academia, corporate systems development, compensation management, and technical/textbook writing. Prior to starting Against The Grain in 2006, he was a member of the music department faculty at University of New Orleans; a systems development and human resource manager at Dun & Bradstreet and Goldman Sachs; and the author of three technical books published by Simon & Schuster and numerous computer textbooks published by McGraw Hill, including Hard Disk Management, which was a technical book bestseller. Tom served on the Board of the Brattleboro Music Center from 2008-2014, including three years as Board President. He was appointed to the Southern Vermont Economic Zone Committee in 2015-2016, a special task force convened by the governor to assess the regional economic impact of the closure of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Tom grew up in Texas and moved to Windham county from New York City with his family in 1992.
With a BA in Social Thought and Political Economy and MA in Public Affairs, Samba was born and raised in Mali, West Africa. His family has been calling Brattleboro home for the past 20 years when his dad started teaching at the School for International Training. He is currently the Executive Director for the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont, a nonprofit providing direct services support, prevention, harm reduction and syringe services programs in Southern Vermont communities. Very grateful that through his job he gets to work with different members our community and be part of meaningful programs offering basic necessities that are usually not accessible to so many people. Volunteering is another way he likes to stay connected to the community, by offering his voice and time as an advocate. Nominated as an Emerging Leader and a Vermont Rising Star, it’s an honor to join the SeVEDS board, changing the economy of Vermont starts by making sure we have a strong, diverse and welcoming community for everyone who wants to call Vermont home. We can’t have an economy without people.
Adam is the Executive Director of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation. A graduate of Wilmington High School, Adam received a BA with honors in History Education from Castleton State College in 1995. Adam was the general manager of his family business, The White House of Wilmington until successfully selling the operation in 2008. Adam currently lives in Wilmington with his wife, Karen and their two children, Owen age 13, and Grace age 9. Boomer, their chocolate lab is all bark, no bite. The family enjoys skiing and snowboarding in the winter and camping and boating in the summer months. The summer is a busy time for the family and their restaurant, Wahoo’s Eatery now in its 16th year of operation.
A life-long resident of Southern Vermont, he enjoys contributing to the vitality of the local community. During the past 20 years he has served on; The Wilmington Planning Commission, Mount Snow Valley Chamber of Commerce, Twin Valley Facilities Committee, Bi-Town Committee, SeVEDS, Wilmington Works, and been elected to the Pettee Memorial Library Trustees, Wilmington School Board and Twin Valley School Boards. After selling the family business, Adam focused on running his other family business, Cleo’s Property management until 2011 when he accepted the position of executive director of The Mount Snow Valley Chamber of Commerce. In 2014 Adam took on a contract to serve as the executive director for Wilmington Works, the newly created Downtown Designated Organization for Wilmington.
Drew is Vice President and Principal at The Richards Group, headquartered in Brattleboro, VT. The Richards Group has over 90 employees and 11 locations throughout Vermont and New Hampshire and provides insurance, employee benefits and Retirement Plan solutions to clients in the tri-state area of Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Drew heads up the general business operations, including finance, marketing, IT and acquisition related activities. Prior to joining The Richards Group, Drew worked as an Investment Associate at Capital Resource Partners in Boston where he assisted in making $20 – $30 million debt & equity investments in growing middle market companies with $20 – $300 million in revenue. Before Capital Resource Partners, Drew was an Investment Banking Analyst in the Leveraged Finance Group at Citigroup in New York where he supported private equity and corporate clients in their financing of leveraged buyouts and recapitalizations through bank and high yield debt transactions.Drew received his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Economics from Williams College and his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He was born and raised in Brattleboro and currently serves as President of the board for the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust and as a board member of Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategies.
Westa joined the Windham Regional Commission in January 2019 and is the new Community Development lead at WRC, including the Brownfields program and the regional plan update. Susan comes to WRC from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in western MA where she was working with Planning Boards reviewing large scale solar applications and helping develop marijuana zoning bylaws. She also led the development of a Joint Land Use Study with the Westover Airbase and surrounding communities.
John Doty is a lifelong educator who moved to Jacksonville in the summer of 1970 with his wife Linda and infant daughter Rachel to take a job as physical education teacher at Whitingham School. After his graduation from Springfield College he taught in Hartford, CT and served as the vice president of the Hartford Education Association/NEA. He has been a teacher and principal in Windham County for most of his career in the communities of Halifax, Whitingham, Bellows Falls, and Windham. For three years he was principal of Athol Middle School in Massachusetts.
John has always sought to bring quality programming and high standards to the schools and challenging communities where he worked. He has served as a mentor to several aspiring, current, or retired local educational leaders.
John and Linda still live in Jacksonville. His three daughter’s families and six grandchildren all live within a short distance and are a constant source of entertainment and pride. John has served his community as a member of the Fire Department, Zoning Board, Recycling Committee, Whitingham and Twin Valley School Boards, and is currently an active member and director of the Deerfield Valley Lions Club and was recently elected as a trustee and treasurer of the Jacksonville Electric Company. He and Linda served as co-chairs of the 1986 Whitingham Old Home Days celebration. John’s current interests in addition to his family include gardening, genealogy, recycling, housing, food security, and local history.
Gretchen Havreluk is a business and municipal consultant with Ingram; May; specifically implementing small and large projects for her clients which includes writing and managing over $3 Million in grants. The Town of Wilmington has contracted Gretchen parttime since 2011 working on economic and community development projects from large scale sidewalk projects to creating business incentive programs.
Gretchen worked for the VT Small Business Development Center after Tropical Storm Irene, consulting affected small businesses in Windham and lower Windsor Counties. Using federal, state, and local grassroots resources to help these businesses rebuild. Gretchen has spoken to many Vermont communities, state agencies, and national organizations on her experience of rebuilding Wilmington and businesses. Gretchen has been a Board Member of the Vermont Community Development Association since 2016 and currently serves as the Treasurer. She has been a member of the Windham Regional Commission’s Community Development Committee since 2013 and currently serves as the Community Development Citizen Interest Commissioner. She has been awarded the 2018 SoVermont Leadership Award for excellence in Economic Development and the 2018 Southern Vermont Deerfield Valley Chamber of Commerce Person of Year. Gretchen holds a Business Administration degree from Southern Vermont College. She has also served on multiple non-profit organizations throughout Vermont. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her two grown children and five grandchildren. She also enjoys biking, skiing, and entertaining friends, and family.
Morgan is an expert in the design of renewable energy and smart grid systems integration, specializing in software application design that meets the needs of customers and distribution, transmission, and efficiency utility systems, enabling utilities to orchestrate distributed energy resources (DER). He is also an expert in advanced, smart-grid building operations, integrations and maintenance.
Morgan has helped DO transition into energy systems integration, design consulting services, and software development for commercial and industrial facilities and utilities. His work aligns building loads, demand flexibility, and grid efficiencies. DO has over a decade of experience developing our DER management platform that co-optimizes building demands, EV fleet demands, and distribution grid demands, enabling these DER to be used as a virtual power plant (VPP) by utility operators. The Flexible Load Management (FLM) pilot programs run with Green Mountain Power (GMP), Burlington Electric Department (BED), the Vermont Electric Coop (VEC), and Efficiency Vermont (EVT) use the DO software platform to coordinate more than 50 commercial and industrial buildings and process loads in Vermont, with close to 5 MW of flexible load in that VPP aggregation.
Karen Astley is the Town Manager, Zoning Administrator, Finance Director and Delinquent Tax Collector in Putney Vermont. Karen’s career in the public sector began with the Town of Westminster in 2013. A graduate of Southern New Hampshire University, Karen received a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration. Karen affiliates with International City/County Management Association, Vermont City Managers Association, and Vermont Women Leading Government.
As a leader in municipal government Karen recognizes the importance of transparency to stakeholders and the commitment to work with together is paramount. Karen’s experience has been in entrenched in municipal finances, infrastructure, economic planning and development, management of town departments and collaborating with state and federal agencies and non-profits.
Karen resides in Newfane with her husband. She enjoys the beach, the warmth of the sun and spending time with her six grandchildren plus one on the way.
