Woolsey S. Conover resides in Holderness, NH with Bea, his wife of 50 years. Woolsey has been actively involved in pro bono activities since retiring from the employee benefits administration business. He was a founder and principal of Consolidated Group Trust, Framingham, MA a company with over 800 employees at the time of its sale. Earlier in his career he was associated with Connecticut General (now CIGNA) and the Hartford Insurance Group. Currently he is a Trustee of the Lakes Region Conservation Trust and New Hampshire Public Radio. His prior activities, while residing in Massachusetts, included Director of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, President, Board of Governors for the Copley (Art) Society of Boston, Director of the Appalachian Mountain Club, and a Trustee for the Danforth Museum of Art and the Rivers School. In 1993 he convened a group that led to the formation of the Foundation for Metrowest, a community foundation serving 30 cities and towns west of Boston. In 1991, Woolsey and Bea established the B. K. & W. S. Conover Foundation, since merged into a Donor Advised Fund at the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. A graduate of Princeton University and an avid painter, Woolsey also enjoys travel, hiking and golf in his spare time.
Dr. Jessica Hoffmann Davis has published and lectured extensively on the role and promise of arts learning. She was the founder and first director of the Arts in Education Program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, a senior lecturer, and the first appointee to the Bauman and Bryant Chair in the Arts in Education. Much of her research was conducted at Harvard’s Project Zero, a place where the arts are explored as vital arenas for meaning making and reflection.
Dr. Davis has published seven books and monographs based on her research, most recently: Why Our Schools Need the Arts (Teachers College Press, 2008); and Why Our High Schools Need the Arts (2011).
Dr. Davis holds a Doctorate in Human Development and Psychology and a Master’s in Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Environments from Harvard University. She is married to Will Davis. They have homes in Holderness and in Boston.
David Govatski retired from the US Forest Service after a 30-year career as a Fire and Aviation Management Officer, Forester and Silviculturist. He has a Bachelor of Science in Forest Management from Unity College in Maine and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Silviculture from the US Forest Service. David worked on a National Interagency Incident Management Team with the US Forest Service for eight years.
David serves on the board of directors of WhiteMountainHistory.org and is the Secretary of the Weeks Act Centennial Coordinating Committee. He was employed by the AMC Hut System in 1967 and 1968. He is one of a dozen people to have red lined all the trails in the White Mountains. David has a small forestry and natural resource consulting company in addition to his volunteer activities. He is an avid naturalist with a focus on birds and alpine plants, a hiker, canoeist, Nordic skier, and snowshoer. He serves on the Board of Directors of several environmental organizations and is an active trip leader.
He lives with his wife, Kathi, in their home in Jefferson NH.
Dick Hamilton, of Littleton, N.H. has over 50 years experience in the travel and tourism industry including 35 years as CEO of the White Mountains Attractions Association, from which he recently retired. He was the first executive director of SKI 93 and is the founder of the N.H. Travel Council. He currently serves as the chair of the N.H. Scenic Byways Council, the chair of the Department of Resources and Economic Development Advisory Board, the chair of the DTTD Joint Promotional Committee (otherwise known as “tourism matching grants”), a member of the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund, vice president of the Old Man of the Mountain Museum, a member of N.H. Travel and Tourism Development Advisory Council, a board member of the Flying Yankee Restoration Group and a member of the Littleton Chamber of Commerce. He also served 14 years as a member of the Board of Governors of the N.H. Community Technical College system.
As he has been an active promoter of the White Mountains as a tourism destination, he is also an avid collector of vintage White Mountains memorabilia, thus his long love affair with Mount Washington.
He has been married for 43 years to his best friend Sandra and has three grown children and six grandchildren aged 2-16. Dick was elected a trustee in 2005.
Andy McLane and his wife, Linda, live in Weston MA and have a vacation home in Bridgewater NH on Newfound Lake. He works with TA Associates, a Boston based private equity firm managing $16 billion in capital. Andy joined TA Associates in 1979, became a Managing Director in 1982 and Senior Managing Director in 1997, and served on TA’s Executive Committee for 20 years. He became a Senior Advisor of the firm in 2008. Andy is Chairman of the Board of Tempur-Pedic International. Prior to joining TA Andy was a Vice President at the State Street Bank and served two years with the U.S. Peace Corps in Chad, Central Africa.
He holds an AB degree from Dartmouth College (1969) and an MBA degree from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth (1973). Andy serves on the Boards of the Cambridge Boat Club, the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), St. Paul’s School and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team Foundation, and is a member of the Investment Committees of the Appalachian Mountain Club, Dartmouth College and Phillips Exeter Academy. He was born in Littleton NH.
Rebecca Weeks Sherrill More, Ph.D., holds appointments as Visiting Scholar in the department of History at Brown University and Lecturer in History in the Division of Liberal Arts: HPSS, Rhode Island School of Design. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Brown University. She directed the Harriet W. Sheridan Center, Brown’s professional development center in pedagogy for faculty and graduate students until her retirement in 2010. She continues to teach part-time at Brown andRISD. She and her husband, Tim, are also part-time residents of Lancaster NH on a family farm established by her grandfather Sinclair Weeks.
She continues active research on the social, economic and cultural history of Early Modern England and Colonial America. Her lectures include colonial settlement in New Hampshire and the 1911 Weeks Act, which her great-grandfather Congressman John Wingate Weeks sponsored to further development of the Federal National Forest Reserves.
She currently serves on the board of the Weeks Medical Center, the President’s Council at Plymouth State University and the Outreach committee for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests and the National Council at Strawbery Banke Museum.
Ben worked in commercial and international banking for eighteen years in Chicago, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul and Boston. In 1992 Ben changed careers and worked in philanthropic advancement at Milton Academy (Milton, MA), Brown University (Providence, RI), and the Dexter and Southfield Schools (Brookline, MA). He has managed and been active in numerous fundraising activities and capital campaigns as a professional and as a volunteer.
Ben has a BA in History from Harvard University and an MBA from University of Chicago. He has a CMC certification from MentorCoach LLC (Bethesda, MD) and an ACC certification from the International Coach Federation (ICF).
Ben lives in Milton, MA and Randolph, NH and has been married for 35 years. He has three grown children of whom he is excessively proud.
Nature, athletics, foreign cultures and music have always been important in Ben’s life. He is an active backcountry skier, mountaineer, and hiker and has recently taken up road biking. Not long ago, he rode a bike over 400 miles in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Other strong interests include travel, photography, classical music, jazz and reading.
Edward B. Roberts is the David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology at M.I.T., where he long chaired the Sloan School’s Technological Innovation & Entrepreneurship research and education programs. He founded and chairs the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, now named the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. Roberts has been a co-founder and/or director of numerous companies including Meditech, Sohu.com, and Zero Stage Capital, and emerging growth firms such as Daktari Diagnostics, PR Restaurants (the NH and Maine franchisee of Panera Bread) and Visible Measures. He has authored over 160 articles and eleven books. For the past 40 years Ed and his wife of 55 years, Nancy, have spent their summers at their home in Littleton NH, purchased in the ‘70s to provide a base for their family’s active skiing at Cannon Mountain.
John Small is a Graduate of the University of New Hampshire (B.A., 1976, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude). Retired managing director of Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson), a global human resources, financial, and risk management consulting firm. More than 30 years of experience in human resources consulting, with expertise in employee benefits design, financing, communication, and implementation, as well as human resources strategy and alignment of human resources programs to support overall organizational goals. Member of Towers Perrin Board of Directors, 2004–2010. Appointed to the USNH Board of Trustees by Gov. Lynch to a term beginning June 23, 2010, and expiring June 30, 2011.
Bryant Tolles was born in Hartford, CT. He has a B.A. degree in American Studies from Yale (1961), an MAT in History also from Yale (1962), and a Ph.D. in History (New England and American Studies) from Boston University (l970). Bryant was assistant dean at Tufts University from l965-71, assistant director of the New Hampshire Historical Society (Concord, NH) from l972-74, executive director of the Essex Institute (Salem, MA) from 1974-84, and Professor of History and director of the Museum Studies Program at the University of Delaware from 1984 to 2006. Now retired he and his wife, Carolyn, live in Concord, NH where he has devoted time to book projects, nonprofit trustee and committee work, and part-time teaching (Tufts, Harvard). Focusing primarily on American architectural history in his scholarship, he has lectured and published books on New Hampshire and Salem, MA architecture; summer cottages in the White Mountains; resort hotels of the White Mountains, the Adirondacks and the New England coast; and, college and university architecture and campus planning in New England before 1860. His current non-profit board service includes the New Hampshire Humanities Council, the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center and the Canterbury Shaker Village.