Can you share a little bit about your background?
I was born in the Netherlands and moved to Canada when I was one. I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph before pursuing graduate studies at Duke University in North Carolina. I worked in Papua New Guinea for a couple of years, and also managed a company in Japan. At the University of California, Berkeley, I ran programs that provided hands-on experience to MBA students, working on projects around the globe. Most recently I worked at Solidaridad, an NGO that focuses on sustainable smallholder agriculture worldwide.
I’ve always been a big believer in hands-on learning. That’s the way I learn best. So this aspect of the Cobscook Experiential Program really resonated with me and is one of the things that got me quite interested in CCLC.
What else brought you to CCLC?
Because I’ve traveled so much, I never developed much in the way of roots. As I’ve gotten older, I came to see the value in settling down. I saw the people here and how rooted they are in this community and how dedicated they are and how proud they are of it. It resonated with me. I saw what CCLC had accomplished and felt that my leadership and business skills could help build upon the organization’s 20-year legacy of impact and innovation.
What are your hopes for CCLC in five years?
I step into my role just as CCLC has accomplished significant milestones in four areas: the original campus plan is now complete and ready to host year-round activity; Cobscook Experiential Programs enters its 10th year of accredited program delivery; TREE now has data demonstrating its far-reaching positive impacts and has developed an exciting Maine/California collaboration; and perhaps most significantly, CCLC’s co-founder and founding executive director, Alan Furth, a visionary educator, is retiring from his 20 years at the helm.
I hope to leverage my skills and experience to support and build upon these accomplishments so that in five years CCLC has become an even greater contributor to the health and vitality of all three nations–American, Canadian, and Passamaquoddy–that call this region home and whose members have governed CCLC throughout its history. In five years, I hope that:
1. Cobscook Experiential Programs is able to expand enrollment and complement the work of a broader coalition of regional schools and communities;
2. Our campus is bustling with programs throughout the year; and,
3. TREE’s work to transform the rural education experience has become widely adopted, not only throughout Washington County, but across Maine and the nation.
Achieving these goals is going to take all of us, including you, members of CCLC’s larger community, working together. My first task is to be sure I really understand what we do and how we do it, and then to ensure that we have the proper organization, systems and capabilities in place. We need to embrace the roots from which we sprang while we build for the future. We cannot accomplish it on our own, so we will be seeking opportunities to strengthen existing relationships and establish new partnerships. Please join us as we launch into our next twenty years. I look forward to opportunities to meet and speak with all of you, our community.