SeVEDS Board of Directors
Bios
Wendy Harrison, Vermont State Senator – Chair
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.
Meg Streeter- Meg Streeter Real Estate – Vice Chair
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.
Avery Schwenk – Hermit Thrush Brewery
Avery is a manager and founding member of Hermit Thrush Brewery in Brattleboro. His has a wide array of skills relating to medicine and creative problem solving. He recently moved to Southern Vermont and previously worked as a paramedic and Mentor Program Coordinator for the Delaware County Memorial Hospital Paramedic Department in Media, Pennsylvania. He has volunteered for over a decade with he international creative problem-solving organization Destination Imagination and is a former International Challenge Master, Instant Challenge Writer and consultant.
Bill Colvin- Bennington County Regional Commission, Treasurer
Bill Colvin is the assistant director of the Bennington County Regional Commission and the director of that organization’s Sustainable Community Development Program. Bill has worked in the community and economic development field in Southern Vermont, in both the public sector and the private sector, since the early 1990’s. While working as an economic development specialist in Wilmington and Dover, Bill became part of the early effort which ultimately led to the creation of SeVEDS. Bill is a ninth-generation Vermonter and he received his undergraduate degree from Middlebury College. Bill later went on to attain a Masters in Business Administration. He lives in Bennington with his wife, Jessica Chapman, a professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Gary Fox- Development Director, Town of Rockingham – Secretary
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.
Thomas Cain, Against The Grain Gourmet
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.
Samba Diallo – Southern Vermont AIDS Project
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 Grinold – Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation
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.
Keith Marks – NextStage Arts
Keith Marks 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.
Drew Richards – The Richards Group
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.
Sue Westa – Windham Regional Commission
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.