Kate Jellema, PhD, Marlboro College – BBVT Project Director

Kate is the director of the Program in Nonprofit Management at the Marlboro College Graduate School, where she oversees the MS in Managing Mission-Driven Organizations, the professional development Certificate in Nonprofit Management, and trainings for nonprofit board members.

Anne Lezak, MPA, Marlboro College – BBVT Project Coordinator

Anne is a seasoned consultant and trainer specializing in policy, planning, and outcome measurement in human services. She designed and teaches a course on Outcomes and Evaluation as a faculty member of Marlboro College MS in Mission-Driven Organizations. Anne is invested in helping organizations better focus their missions, understand why and how to use performance measurement to improve agency outcomes, and demonstrate their impact both internally and to the wider community.

Amy Carmola, PhD, United Way of Chittenden County – BBVT Curriculum Designer

As the Research and Evaluation Specialist for United Way of Chittenden County, Amy provides performance measurement training and consultation based on the Results Accountability model for United Way volunteers, staff, board members, and partner agencies, as well as other non-profits and state agencies. She offers technical assistance non-profits to demonstrate program performance in a wide range of areas, including: early childhood, youth development, food assistance, safety/domestic violence, and caregiving. Amy received her PhD in Psychology from UVM, and has been trained in RBA and Logic Model models of planning and evaluation.

Hal Colston, SerVermont  – BBVT State Partner

In January 2011, Governor Peter Shumlin appointed Hal to be Executive Director of the SerVermont, formerly known as the Vermont Commission on National and Community Service, where he coordinates Americorps State and VISTA service programs and other volunteer and community services across Vermont. A nonprofit innovator, Hal is the founder of the Good News Garage in Burlington which was established in 1996 . He taught a community service course at Champlain College for the past six years and is now teaching a Diversity and Inclusion course at Burlington College. While establishing his other non-profit, NeighborKeepers in 2004, Hal was the founding Diversity Coordinator at the Howard Center for two years.

Dennis DePaul, The Consortium for Inclusion & Equity – BBVT Cultural Competence Consultant 

Dennis P. DePaul is the co-founder and vice-president of CIE, LLC, a consulting firm focused on intercultural competency and organizational health. His passion for multicultural and diversity training can be traced back to his childhood where he grew up with minimal financial means as an immigrant family in Vermont.  Dennis has facilitated countless diversity and multicultural training sessions in Vermont and nationally.  He is Assistant Dean for Business Operations in the Division of Student & Campus Life and holds a lecturer position in the Higher Education Student-Affairs Administration (HESA) graduate program at the University of Vermont. Dennis has served as President and Board Member for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Vermont and Vermont’s Camp Ta-Kum-Ta, a camp for children with cancer and as President and Board Member for the Children’s Oncology Camping Association, International, the professional association of children’s cancer camping professionals from around the world.

Lauren-Glenn Davitian, Common Good Vermont – BBVT Collaboration Coordinator

Lauren-Glenn is the Executive Director of CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, a long time advocate of strong communities, free speech and open networks. Based in Burlington Vermont, CCTV runs Common Good Vermont, which helps the state’s nonprofits to be more effective. CCTV also operates Channel 17/ Town Meeting TV and CCTV Productions.

Sue Graff, MS, United Way of Windham County – BBVT Trainer

Sue is the Community Investment Director for the United Way of Windham County, overseeing the Community Impact process, which includes working toward positive community outcomes on issues related to education, income, and health in Windham County. Sue has an M.S. in Nonprofit Management from the Milano Graduate School of New School University.

Joy Livingston, PhD, Flint Springs Associates – BBVT Evaluator

Joy has more than 20 years of experience designing and conducting qualitative and quantitative research to inform a range of human service program and policy decisions. She is deeply committed to information-based decision making, and especially enjoys helping individuals and groups figure out what they need to know and how they will use information. Consistent with Joy’s belief in the idea of “nothing about us without us,” she brings everyone involved with services and service systems into the research process.  Joy works with groups to develop practical, cost-effective and meaningful ways to measure progress towards their desired outcomes, providing all stakeholders with clear and concise information for decision-making.

Kate McGowan, United Way of Addison County – BBVT Lead Trainer

Kate has 25 years of non-profit experience, most recently serving as Co-director, United Way of Addison County and chair of the United Ways of Vermont. For United Way, she designed a grant process focused in part on articulating and measuring outcomes, has designed internal outcomes measurement systems of evaluation, and developed and facilitates outcomes measurement trainings for partner agencies including components of United Way Worldwide’s Approaches to Measuring Outcomes, logic models, You Get What you Measure & Results Based Accountability both in classroom/meeting settings and in a year-long Peer Supported Outcomes Measurement group based on work done by the Urban Institute in Washington DC.

Stacey Miller, PhD, The Consortium for Inclusion & Equity – BBVT Trainer & Cultural Competence Consultant         

Dr. Stacey A. Miller is the co-founder and president of CIE, LLC, a consulting firm devoted to helping organizations become more inter-culturally competent. Stacey has over 18 years of professional experience in student affairs and higher education as both an administrator and instructor. Colleagues describe her as a passionate and caring  professional whose dedication, humor, and dynamic personality inspires others. She has facilitated countless training sessions and workshops on cultural competence and student development, and presents at conferences and institutions nationwide on diversity, social justice education, multicultural competence, and intercultural communication. Stacey was an original member of the UVM President’s Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Equity, and was Chair for the President’s Commission on Racial Diversity. She has been the Director of Residential Life at UVM since 2003, and is a lecturer/scholar practitioner for graduate-level courses in cultural pluralism and religious, spirituality and education. She received her Doctor of Education degree in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at UVM.

Jen Peterson, Vermont Community Foundation – BBVT Advisor on Funders/Grantmakers

Jen is Vice President for Community Grantmaking at the Vermont Community Foundation. In that role, she works with others to develop grantmaking strategies and oversees grantmaking to a broad spectrum of non-profit organizations across the state. She is also part of a team of seven staff at the Foundation that provides advising services for philanthropists. She focuses on Rutland and Addison Counties, working to understand and direct philanthropic resources to address their unique needs.

Lizann Peyton, Nonprofit Consultant, BBVT Peer Learning Advisor

Lizann Peyton is a nonprofit capacity-building consultant, coaching boards, executive directors, and senior managers to lead their organizations through changing times.  She believes that the board chair-executive partnership is the most critical lever in nonprofit success; continuous learning and strategic thinking are at once simple, and imperative, to build into board and staff leadership work.  Based in Norwich, VT, Lizann guides strategic planning, board development, founder and executive transitions, focus groups, meeting facilitation, and fund development for nonprofit organizations.  As a former grant reviewer for the Corporate Fund in New Hampshire, she’s seen hundreds of stories of nonprofit success, struggles, lessons learned, and practical tips for putting ideas into action.

Donna Reback, MSW, Flint Springs Associates – BBVT Evaluator

Donna has worked as a social policy consultant for 25 years, guiding both long and short-term initiatives in the public and private non-profit sectors. Through facilitation, strategic planning, research and training activities Donna has helped multi-disciplinary teams build collaborative, concrete approaches to achieve improvements in policies and services on a wide range of human service issues. Donna’s work is built on her commitment to engage all concerned parties in finding common ground and building mutually beneficial solutions.. Practically, this means helping policy makers, service providers, consumers and advocates achieve outcomes that are informed by good data, driven by an understanding of “what works”, and dedicated to improving the lives and well-being of individuals and their communities.

Kathleen Swanson, CCTV Center for Media & Democracy – BBVT Sustainability Coordinator

Kathleen Swanson is the Development Director of CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, which runs Common Good Vermont. As a former journalist she believes that access to accurate information empowers people and organizations to make wise decisions.

Karina Ware, MS, Washington County Youth Services and United Way of Lamoille County – BBVT Trainer

Karina Ware is currently serving in two professional roles:  1) Director of the Vermont Coalition of Teen Centers, a program of the Washington County Youth Service Bureau and 2) Program Manager for New Foundations – a transitional housing program from United Way of Lamoille County.  Karina is the former Executive Director of two United Ways, one  in Paterson, New Jersey and the other in Franklin and Grand Isle Counties in Vermont. At both United Ways, she successfully led the move-to-impact model of funding which is grounded in Results-based Accountability.  Karina brings experience as a non-profit consultant, having worked with dozens of organizations through Partnership In Philanthropy as well as her own consulting practice.  Karina has an MS from Rutgers University in organizational communication and majored in public relations management.

Diana Wahle, Collaboration and Planning Consultant – BBVT Trainer

Diana is a collaboration and planning consultant who promotes cross-community initiatives, bringing together different sectors of the community to tackle a particular concern. Her hope is to convene exciting, positive, and meaningful conversations that cultivate an impact on what matters the most.  As administrator of the Alliance for Building Community regional partnership, she became a trainer in the application of Results Based Accountability (RBA) from 1995-2008.  To promote positive youth development, she helped develop a Social Competency Development curriculum in the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union(WSESU) as well as a Windham County Youth Council.  Diana uses RBA to coordinate the WSESU School Attendance Council.
Diana facilitates the Community Equity Collaborative, a group of community leaders who monitor a vision where the greater Brattleboro area is recognized as an open and welcoming community celebrating diversity free of prejudice and discrimination of all kinds. She is the mother of two adult daughters and lives with her husband in East Dummerston.

Susan Cheesman, Corporation for National and Community Service – BBVT Federal Program Officer

Susan Cheesman has been a Program Specialist for ACTION/Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) since 1993. She worked in the Arizona State Office from 1993-1997 and transferred to New Hampshire in 1997.  Since 1997, she has been working in the ME/NH/VT Office. During her eighteen years with CNCS, Susan has provided oversight and technical assistance to numerous non-profit and public agency sponsors (including AmeriCorps, VISTA and Senior Corps) in project planning and development, and in grant application preparation.  In addition, Susan evaluates effectiveness of project operations, assists in maintaining liaison with local, state, educational, and public and private sector officials and develops plans for establishing priorities for direction of CNCS resources.  Susan is the CNCS Ex-Officio member of SerVermont (formerly the VT Commission for Community Service).  Before she came to CNCS, she served as a VISTA volunteer at the Native American Tourism Center in Arizona.  Susan holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Dickinson College.