NH Process Team
The Process Team consists of 4 individuals from the NHNDT and 3 members of the Backbone Organization. The format for this team was proposed and agreed upon by the NHNDT in 2013. The role of the Process Team is to help design the process for developing the NH Food Strategy along with guide the structure for the NH Food System Network. They also help to set meeting agendas for their meetings, Strategy Team meetings, and any public input gatherings. They will be instrumental in helping to synthesize input from around the state to draft the NH Food Strategy.
Rebecca Brown
Executive Director, Ammonoosuc Conservation Trust
New Hampshire State Representative, Grafton County District 2 Rebecca Brown and others founded ACT in 2000 as the North Country’s first locally-based, grassroots land conservancy. She served as ACT’s first board president. Rebecca graduated from Mount Holyoke College and took an M.A. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. Her early career was in Philadelphia, where she did policy work for political campaigns and elected municipal officials, and was government relations director for an investment bank. She left the corporate world to start a company renovating historic Philadelphia homes, and later evolved that business into a non-profit contracting enterprise training inner city women in the building trades. After arriving in New Hampshire in 1993, she took a job as a cub reporter for The Courier newspaper in Littleton. Her newspaper and freelance work focused on forestry, wildlife, and outdoor recreation. She also reported for N.H. Public Radio for some years before becoming editor of The Courier. Rebecca left the newspaper to become Communications Director for the Connecticut River Joint Commissions. Rebecca’s book, Women on High: Pioneers of Mountaineering was honored by the National Outdoor Book Awards. She is editor and contributing author of Where the Great River Rises: An Atlas of the Upper Connecticut River Watershed. She wrote the concluding chapter on the region’s future in the acclaimed book, Beyond the Notches: Stories of Place in New Hampshire’s North Country, published in 2011. Rebecca is also a dedicated volunteer. She is past chair of the North Country Region Advisory Board of the N.H. Charitable Foundation. She served on the board of the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire and on the Sugar Hill Conservation Commission. She is a trustee of the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vt., serves on the Sugar Hill Planning Board and the board of the North Country Council, and is president and an at-large representative for New Hampshire on the Connecticut River Joint Commissions. Rebecca can be found on trout streams, trail running, hiking, and hunting. She lives with her husband Harry Reid and their canine Wily-Mo in Sugar Hill. |
Dr. Lynda Bruchette
Senior Partner, Cooperative Development Institute
The Cooperative Development Institute is a non-profit organization that builds cooperative leadership and enterprise in the Northeast, where she leads agricultural, fisheries and food systems initiatives. Lynda consults with start-up and established production, purchasing, equipment, distribution, marketing, processing and retail cooperatives, buying groups and farmers markets in the areas of market and business planning, conflict resolution, organizational development and feasibility analysis. Lynda is the author of Specialty Food Business Fundamentals and Show Me the {Grant} Money Guide and co-author of Market Planning for Value-Added Agricultural Products and Grants For Farmers. Over her 35-year career she has conducted numerous feasibility studies, marketing and business plans helping to launch new enterprises and strengthen existing ones. |
John Hamilton
Vice President of Economic Opportunity, NH Community Loan Fund
John Hamilton is Vice President of Economic Opportunity at the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, a 30-year old nonprofit that turns investments into loans and education to create opportunity and transform lives across New Hampshire The Community Loan Fund has lent nearly $170 million for affordable housing, child care and economic opportunities. John leads the Community Loan Fund’s Business Finance program, which connects business owners with the capital and expertise they need to compete in a changing marketplace. His Business Finance team works hard to get to know its borrowers, then applies creativity and experience to get to “yes” on hard-to-get-done deals, and to find the right type of financing to help its borrowers succeed. Business Finance recently created a Farm and Food Initiative to improve access to capital for farms, food providers and others that support the growth of healthy sustainable food systems in New Hampshire. John is also the founder and Managing Director of the Community Loan Fund’s Vested for Growth program, which has placed millions in growth capital. Vested for Growth uses a variety of deal structures, including debt, royalty financing and equity to enable high-growth businesses to accomplish their acquisition or new-product introduction strategies. John is a member of Granite State Angels, previously founded the Workforce Opportunity Council and Concord Area Trust for Community Housing, and is a past President of the NH Job Training Council. He was a Baldrige Examiner for the Granite State Quality Award in 2003 and 2002. |
Dr. Tom Kelly, PhD
UNH Chief Sustainability Officer, University of New Hampshire
Dr. Tom Kelly is the founding director of UNH's endowed sustainability program and the UNH Chief Sustainability Officer. Dr. Kelly collaborates with faculty, staff, students and others in the development of curriculum, operations, research and engagement policies, practices and initiatives related to UNH's four educational initiatives in biodiversity, climate, culture, and food. Co-editor and co-author of "The Sustainable Learning Community: One University's Journey to the Future" (2009), Dr. Kelly has been working in the field of higher education and sustainable development for more than fifteen years in the US as well as Colombia and Brazil. Current activities include working with UNH colleagues and outside partners on the UNH organic dairy research farm, Food Solutions New England, Carbon Solutions New England, the Ecology, Climate and Health Working Group, and more. A founding member of the Northeast Campus Sustainability Consortium working to coordinate activities in New England for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and a past guest director of the National Association of College & University Food Services (NACUFS) Board of Directors, he currently serves on advisory or steering committees and councils for the Real Food Challenge, the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, the Community, Food and Agriculture Program at Cornell University, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), and NHPTV's "Planet Granite." On campus, Dr. Kelly chairs the UNH Sustainability Academy Collaborative Council and participates in the Provost's Staff Council, Energy Task Force, Transportation Policy Committee, Healthy UNH, Ecosystem Task Force, UNH Lands Committee, Concerts Committee, and more. Dr. Kelly was a co-principal investigator on the INHALE project, a NOAA-funded research effort by the UNH Climate Change Research Center in collaboration with the UNH College of Health and Human Services to investigate the effects of climate variability, air quality, and weather on human health in New England, a visiting scholar at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego, and a visiting professor of transboundary environmental issues in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands at El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico DF. In addition to an undergraduate and master's degree in musical composition and conducting, he holds a master's degree and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. |
Curtis Ogden
Senior Associate, Interaction Institute for Social Change
Curtis brings to IISC his experience in education, community building, leadership development and program design, as well as a passion for efforts that support environmental sustainability. He has worked as an independent research, evaluation, and training consultant to a number of civic engagement and nonprofit support initiatives, including the Building Movement Project (currently housed at Demos), the Nonprofit Quarterly, and Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. Prior to joining IISC, Curtis was the Program and Knowledge Manager of the Building Excellent Schools Fellowship for aspiring urban charter school founders. The son of two teachers, Curtis was raised in Flint, Michigan, and benefited from early experiences living overseas. After college, he returned to Africa to do community and youth development work in Zimbabwe through Silveira House, where he was introduced to and deeply influenced by participatory action research and Training for Transformation methods. He went on to create ImPACT, a model youth service learning program based at The Learning Web in Ithaca, New York. In addition to his work at IISC, Curtis is an adjunct faculty member at Antioch University and a board member of the New England Grassroots Environment Fund. He has a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a Master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School. |