Board of Directors - Greater Newburyport Village

HomeBoard of Directors

Our mission

To promote living well and independently through community engagement and neighborly support.

Board of Directors

A working board comprised of the functions listed below, these resourceful and
committed members provide hands-on leadership for our all-volunteer organization.

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President & Treasurer: Paul Harrington

President: The President oversees the overall operations of the Village and serves as chairperson of the Board of Directors and is a member of the Advisory Council.

Treasurer: The treasurer oversees financial management functions including budget, bank relationships, bookkeeping oversight, insurance policies, and financial reports.

About Paul: Paul Harrington is a Newburyport resident. He serves as an alternate member of the Newburyport Tree Commission and formerly served as co-chair and treasurer. Paul is the retired president of E M Duggan, Inc. He has also served as president of the Boston Chapter of the Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Contractors Association. He was trustee chairman for the Pension Fund of Boston Plumbers Local #12, which included oversight of the Health and Welfare funds. He holds Massachusetts journeyman and master plumber licenses.

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Clerk: John Mercer

Clerk: The Clerk oversees the maintenance of board-related documents, including meeting notes and other official records, ensuring that they are accurate and filed in a timely manner.

About John Mercer: Born at Anna Jaques Hospital, raised in Byfield, and a graduate of The Governor's Academy and Harvard College, John is continuing a 50-year career as an educational consultant to businesses in the U.S., South America, and Europe.

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Strategic Planning & Analysis: Kitty Krajci

Strategic Planning & Analysis: The Director of Strategic Planning and Analysis engages and facilitates the board in establishing, managing, and evaluating the strategic plan. This includes leading the strategic planning process, establishing and monitoring progress toward goals, measuring the effectiveness of strategic initiatives and programs, ensuring alignment with the organization’s mission, vision, and values, and deepening our understanding of our constituencies.

About Kitty: A former bank executive, Kitty leveraged her business experience to become a management consultant, helping companies plan and execute business strategies focused on their stakeholders. She is the author of Change For Good: Making Your Business Sustainable Through a Value-Driven Strategy. Kitty earned her MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and professional certificates in Artificial Intelligence, International Banking and Sustainable Development from New York University, plus accreditation as a LEED Green Associate. She has played an active role in numerous community planning and sustainability initiatives, as well as volunteering for a variety of local non-profits.

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Member Care: Bill Franz

Member Care: The Director of Member Care manages resources to ensure members are satisfied with delivery of the organization's programs and services. This includes managing member on-boarding and outreach (including special membership programs and member-led activities); regularly communicating with members; and directing the efforts of team members who assist with the Member Care function.

About Bill: Bill Franz lives in Newburyport and recently retired from a 35-year career in Human Resources Development, working for several small start-up corporations as well as several large multinationals. Bill possesses a doctorate in Human Resources from Boston University, specializing in Training and Organizational Development. In his last position, he served a dual role for a global lighting company, and was responsible for international executive, managerial, and organizational development, and for the human resources administration of several large divisions across NAFTA. With his wife and three children, Bill was a former 30-year resident of Windham, NH.

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Member Services: Nancy Rose

Member Services:The Director of Member Services oversees Concierge and Good Neighbor services, vendor referrals, and other member services. This includes finding a volunteer to perform requested services, handling requests for referrals to professional vendors, handling reservations for Village events, and providing information about the Village to interested parties.

About Nancy Rose:Six months after falling in love with Newburyport on a 1980 visit, Nancy moved here from her Philadelphia hometown with five young children. She began to rehab a beautiful old Victorian and within two years, embarked on an almost twenty-year career in retail, opening the first of four shops in Newburyport and one in Hampton Beach. She later became Director of Operations for the national chain, Children's Orchard. Active with the retail committee of the Greater Newburyport Chamber of Commerce, Nancy chaired Christmas in Newburyport and was also involved in the first Senior Celebration event at Newburyport High School. After ten years growing Children's Orchard, Nancy left retail and entered real estate, first in sales and then in management. In 2018 Nancy retired from her position as manager of the Newburyport and Topsfield offices of Keller Williams Real Estate.

In addition to her Concierge role with The Greater Newburyport Village, she is a founding member and President of the Board of Directors of IC Haiti, a non-profit organization that built and maintains an elementary school in Puit Chacha, Haiti.

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Marketing & Communication: Bill Franz

Marketing & Communication:The Director of Marketing & Communication ensures that the communities served by the Village learn about the Village's activities, services, and commitment to "living well and independently for a lifetime." This includes managing the Village's outreach to churches, COAs (Councils on Aging), and individuals interested in the Village.

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Programs & Events: Susan Coolidge

Programs & Events: The Director of Programs and Events, working with a team of Village Builder volunteers, oversees the planning and coordination of educational and cultural programs and social events tailored to the needs and interests of members, volunteers, and the public. This includes managing resources to provide offerings that increase the value of membership.

About Susan: Susan and her husband, Dennis Wolkoff, lived in southern Indiana, Beverly, and Cambridge, MA. Five years after Dennis died in 2010, Susan moved back to the North Shore where she had grown up on a marsh. Having taught in Beverly Farms for 20 years, she has many friends and a sister in Ipswich. But what initially drew Susan back north was her work as a field teacher at Joppa Flats for Mass Audubon. Children and nature: the best combination in the world! Susan has found Newburyport to be a wonderful place for newcomers: friendly, full of interesting people, and very walkable!

Education: B.A. History of Art from Goucher College, M.Ed. from Lesley University, and an M.S. in Environmental Studies from Antioch University in Keene, NH

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Special Events: Janet DelMare

Special Events: The Village schedules events to gather members and volunteers to celebrate the Village, instill a sense of community, and foster relationships. The Special Events Coordinator, working with a team of Village Builder Volunteers, is responsible for planning and managing special events, ensuring they are carried out smoothly and within budget. The Coordinator makes arrangements with vendors and venues, selects menus, coordinates guest invitations and RSVPs, and ensures guests are greeted upon arrival.

About Janet: Janet's adventurous streak is evident as in her 40s, she ventured to a folk dance camp in a Mexico monastery and ended up teaching SCUBA diving in Belize, then moving through Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Honduras, meeting international travelers on walkabouts, diving, and climbing volcanoes. After this five-year adventure, Janet returned to Newburyport to start a family with a new husband and son. She loves her view of the sea from Plum Island (her name literally means "from the sea"), weaving on her loom, and her French bulldog.

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Volunteer Care: Paul Harrington

Volunteer Care: The Volunteer Care coordinator ensures there are sufficient qualified Good Neighbor volunteers to adequately address member service requests. Tasks include recruiting and on-boarding volunteers, providing orientation and required training, managing CORI reviews, regularly communicating with volunteers, facilitating activities that engage volunteers and express appreciation, and coordinating with Member Services and other Village teams that assist volunteer activities.

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Board Development: TBD

Board Development: The Director of Board Development engages and facilitates the board in evaluating its effectiveness. In close collaboration with the President of the Board, the Director of Board Development plans and organizes activities to ensure the board has an effective balance of knowledge, skills, and abilities to meet its obligations. This includes evaluating board effectiveness, assisting in the development of a board policy and procedure manual, recruiting new members of the board, managing new board member orientation, creating succession plans for board positions, and identifying board developmental activities.

About:

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Web Content Manager: Donna Franz

Web Content Manager: The Web Content Manager works with members of the Board of Directors to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the Greater Newburyport Village website. This includes creating web pages, updating content on existing pages, maintaining calendar entries as provided by the Program & Events team and others, coordinating communications among Village teams, and reviewing the site on a yearly basis. This team provides member training on the use of Club Express functions as needed.

About Donna: Donna and her husband lived in Windham, NH, for 30 years. They chose to retire to Newburyport because of the city's proximity to Plum Island, its walkability, the activities it offers, but mostly because of the great feeling they got when enjoying the area with their three children when they were young. Before working for 15 years as a technical writer and IT communications specialist in large corporations, Donna taught reading, writing, reading and math readiness skills, and ESL (English as a Second Language). Education: B.A. English from Merrimack College; M.Ed. from Tufts University; Technical Writing Certification from UMass Lowell.

Advisory Council

The Advisory Council supports and advocates for the Village within the community;
many of its members were instrumental in developing the Village.

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Advisory Council Members

Doug Bolick is a Newburyport attorney and long-time resident of the city. He has served as Planning Board Chairman and School Committee member and is currently serving on the Board of Registrars, which oversees local elections. He earned his B.A. from UNC-Chapel Hill, his J.D. from George Washington University, and his L.L.M. from Boston University.

Stephen J. DeGuglielmo, CPA, is the managing partner of the firm with over thirty years experience in public accounting. Steve provides tax, tax planning, and tax savings strategies to individuals and business owners. He also works closely with business owners to provide solutions to the challenges of operating a business and advises non-profit organizations on IRS regulations particular to their industry. Steve is certified as a Certified Public Accountant in Massachusetts and Florida.

Anne Ferguson: Anne's career in education has been dedicated to guiding students through the college admission process. For 22 years she was director of college counseling at Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and spent another 10 years as senior associate director at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. She extended her professional commitment by offering educational sessions at national conferences, and serving on numerous committees and boards in the college admission field. Anne and her husband live in Newburyport and often you can find her watching sporting events, a passion she inherited from both of her parents.

Fred Hufnagel has lived and worked in Newburyport for many years, serving as Treasurer and President of Essex County Greenbelt Association; Member and Chair of the Newburyport Redevelopment Authority; Board Member and Treasurer of the Newburyport Waterfront Trust; and Board Member and Treasurer of the Women's Crisis Center (subsequently renamed "Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center"). A graduate of Harvard College and University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Fred's career has been in financial management.

Stefanie Hufnagel is a university research scientist in Boston, with a strong interest in local volunteer opportunities in historic garden preservation (at the Museum of Old Newbury and at Maudslay State Park). She formerly served as a Trustee of the Newburyport Waterfront, member of the Board of the Historical Society of Old Newbury, and President of the League of Women Voters, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Maudslay State Park. She was also involved in the creation of a book on Newburyport’s garden history, called Gardens of the New Republic: Fashioning the Landscapes of High Street, Newburyport, which won the Massachusetts Historical Commission’s Preservation Award.

Hugh Kelleher is a graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover and Harvard College. For the past 16 years he has worked as the executive director of the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association of Greater Boston. A licensed master plumber, he serves as the chair of $300 million Boston Plumbers Local Health, Annuity and Pension Funds. A resident of Newburyport, Hugh was founding chair of the Newburyport Tree Commission and served on the city’s Charter Commission.

John W. Pramberg has been a Certified Public Accountant and currently practices law, specializing in the probate and administration of wills and trusts, the establishment and administration of not-for-profit organizations and tax controversy and advice. He is President-Elect of the American Association of Attorney-CPAs. A resident of Newburyport, he has served several terms on both the Newburyport City Council and School Committee. He has also been president of the Newburyport Maritime Society and Custom House Museum and serves as counsel and a trustee of the Wheelwright Scientific Foundation, counsel, trustee and treasurer of the Newburyport Society for the Relief of Aged Men and its Griffin Home, and counsel and trustee of the Moseley Foundation for Social Service.

Greater Newburyport Village is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization.

Our Village is a member of the Village to Village Network,

a national organization which provides information, encouragement and peer support to

similar villages in 200+ communities across the country.