Equity
Trust Board of Directors
David
Abromowitz has been on the ETI board since 1994, and has served
on the Equity Trust Fund committee even longer. David is a lawyer at Goulston
& Storrs in Boston, where his focus is on public/private financing and development
transactions, affordable housing, economic development and Section 42 tax
credit matters, assisted living and senior housing, and strategic advice
for businesses, including non-profits. David conducts a broad national practice,
representing for-profit, non-profit and governmental organizations, and
is nationally known for his expertise in many areas of affordable housing
and economic development.
Jody Bolluyt is
a biodynamic farmer in the Hudson Valley. Together with her husband Jean-Paul
Courtens, Jody runs Roxbury Farm, one of the largest CSA farms in the country.
Jody grew up in rural Iowa working for large-scale corn and soybean growers
during summer vacations. She graduated from the University of Iowa with
a degree in biology and botany. In 2000, working with Equity Trust, Roxbury
Farm secured long-term land tenure on 150 acres of land to which Jody and
Jean-Paul hold a lifetime lease. Through the help of Equity Trust, Roxbury
Farm CSA members, and Open Space Institute, Roxbury is now a protected farm,
one of the first to make a new kind of land tenure work, and it is becoming
a model for other small farms around the country.
Ellie
Kastanopolous, Executive Director of Equity Trust since 2003,
has been a staff member since 1997, and a board member since 1994. Ellie
has managed the Equity Trust Fund, and ETI's operating finances since she
joined the staff, in addition to providing technical assistance to groups
around the country. Previous to that Ellie was the Director of the Maine
Homestead Land Trust Alliance, a statewide coalition of community land trusts.
Ellie and her children are homeowners and leaseholders with Covenant Community
Land Trust in Orland, Maine.
Monica
McGloin, Equity Trust Board Chair,
is a long-time board member, who also served on the ICE board. Monica works
with Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center in Cincinnati, and has been
involved with numerous local and national organizing efforts over the years,
including the Cincinnati Cooperative Land Trust. A member of the Dominican
Sisters of Hope, she has been one of the key players in ETI's religious
lands efforts, a program aimed at helping religious orders think through
ways they can deal with the large amounts of property owned by religious
groups.
Mary O'Hara is one of seven partners
at Burlington Associates in Community Development LLC, a national consulting
cooperative. She has 27 years of experience in the field of community development
lending and community reinvestment, and has served in leadership positions
at the Massachusetts Urban Reinvestment Advisory Group, Boston Community
Capital, and the Institute for Community Economics. Mary is currently working
with two leading cooperative financing and development non-profits - ROC
USA™, a national social enterprise developing and financing resident-owned
manufactured home communities ("mobile home park" cooperatives), and the
Cooperative Fund of New England, a regional CDFI that finances consumer,
housing, agriculture, and worker cooperatives, including CLTs and CSAs.
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Scott Reed is an organic CSA farmer in Western Massachusetts.
Riverland Farm, his thriving 11-acre CSA, has over 100 members and a well-stocked,
staffed farmstand. In addition to farming, for more than 20 years Scott
has worked on land tenure issues as a member of the Valley Community Land
Trust, and he also founded the Greenfield Area Land Trust.
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Kathy Ruhf is a consultant and project manager working on farm
tenure and transfer, food systems and agriculture policy. Kathy served as
Co-Director and Director of the New England Small Farm Institute from 1987
to 2004. She is a principal with Land For Good, INC. and a member of the
USDA Advisory Committee for Beginning Farmers and Ranchers. She is also
Coordinator of the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group.
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Skipper G. StipeMaas is a Community Economic Development Attorney
with Georgia Legal Services and is providing technical assistance and legal
help with organizing, fundraising and alternative land tenure models around
the state of Georgia. Organizations that Skipper is working with include
the Georgia Community Loan Fund, Inc., Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization
Society, Inc., Athens Land Trust, Inc., and People of Hope, Inc., as well
as many others. |