Sue had a profound impact on the Women’s Foundation, as well as the many organizations, programs and campaigns to which she dedicated her time, leadership and financial resources. She was known throughout the Seacoast and state for her work advocating for equal pay, women’s rights, reproductive health care, the arts, community development and helping organizations build a sustainable future through planned giving.

Ever the manager, right through the end, Sue told her caregivers she was not dying until she was able to see a pre-publication of her upcoming book, Choose Joy! With her wishes at the forefront of their minds and wanting to help Sue see the final result of her years’ long work, her husband, Bob, and son, Erik, set up an office in the hospital, taking turns editing the manuscript, while the rest of Sue’s family sat with her for hours, telling stories. Four days after she entered the hospital, a copy of Choose Joy! was delivered to her room. Her husband, children and grandchildren got to be with her as she saw her final project realized. Two days later, she entered hospice.

We are so grateful to have been able to honor Sue as our 2024 AmplifiHER recipient at our GALA a few months ago. As we prepared for the event, we regularly remarked at how difficult it was to summarize Sue’s accomplishments, with her impact and involvement being so vast and substantial.

On a personal note, Sue’s impact on my life has been significant. As a friend and mentor for more than 25 years, Sue shared her feedback and opinions of me freely — whether good or bad! She was generous of her time and leadership and was always willing to roll up her sleeves and pitch in to help. I deeply respected her work ethic and her commitment to her family, friends and the organizations she supported. I am proud to have been Sue’s friend and I will carry with me the many lessons she shared.

— Tanna Clews, CEO, New Hampshire Women’s Foundation

HONOR SUE

Share a Memory
If you’d like to share a memory of Sue or a story about her, you can do so here: Share a memory or story of Sue.

Make a Donation
If you’d like to make a contribution to the Women’s Foundation in memory of Sue, you can do so here:

https://nhwomensfoundation.org/donate

or by emailing Tanna Clews at tanna@nhwomensfoundation.org.

WATCH OUR AMPLIFIHER TRIBUTE VIDEO CELEBRATING SUE

Watch here:

SUSAN WERNER THORESEN REMARKS — GALA 2024

Watch here:

The post A Note from CEO Tanna Clews: Remembering Susan Werner Thoresen appeared first on New Hampshire Women's Foundation.

Trans girls are girls. And trans girls, like all girls, deserve to be accepted and included in schools and have access to the many benefits of sports including teamwork, friendship, and belonging. New Hampshire girls are twice as likely as boys to experience poor mental health and LGBTQ girls have even higher rates of poor mental health than their heterosexual or cis-gender peers. At this moment in time, we need more support for girls, including trans girls, not efforts to socially alienate them.

These proposed bans on trans girls’ participation in girls sports are inconsistent with the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association rules, as well as New Hampshire’s non-discrimination laws, and would open the door to violations of the federal Title IX law. National organizations like the National Women’s Law Center, the Women’s Sports Foundation, and Women Leaders in College Sports all support trans-inclusive policies.

There are real issues we should be addressing in girls sports like a lack of adequate funding and resources, but that doesn’t seem to be a priority of the legislature. Student athletes are not asking us to ban their friends from playing sports with them. They, and we, say: Let trans girls play!

**

Op-ed by Tanna Clews, CEO, New Hampshire Women’s Foundation

Originally published at: https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/opinion/columns/2024/05/04/clews-let-trans-girls-play-school-sports-in-nh/73526466007/ 

The post Trans girls are girls. Let them play school sports. appeared first on New Hampshire Women's Foundation.

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More Women in Government Leads to Better Communities

On November 7th, voters in 12 New Hampshire cities will head to the polls to vote for the future they want to see in their community. There are many qualified women on the ballot, and we urge you to keep these women in mind as you vote.

More women in government — regardless of party affiliation — leads to better outcomes for women and girls. Women bring a rich background of experiences to the table, are more likely to seek bipartisanship and compromise and diversity of identity and experiences, including gender diversity, leads to better decision-making.

We are proud of New Hampshire’s strong history of women in leadership at the highest levels, but municipal governments continue to struggle to reach gender parity. Historically, women have good representation on School Boards (and we have to keep that up!) but we must also elect more women to our City Councils, Planning Boards, Library Trustees, and as moderators and mayors!

• Berlin’s School Board is 40% women and its City Council is 38% women. 
• Concord does better than most cities with 45% women on the School Board and 57% women on City Council. 
• Claremont has great representation of women on the School Board at 86% (though there is no School Board election in November) and has one of the few women Assistant Mayors in the state, but has ZERO women on City Council. 
• Dover can be proud that 63% of its City Council and 100% of its School Board are women! 
• Only 20% of Keene’s City Council are women. 
• Although Nashua has a School Board that is 89% women, the Board of Aldermen is only 33% women. 
• Outgoing Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig is one of only TWO women mayors in New Hampshire. Although Manchester won’t have a woman in the corner office next year, voters can increase the percentage of women on the School Board, currently 29% women, and Aldermen, currently 36% women. 
• In Portsmouth, 89% of the School Board are women and there is a woman of color assistant mayor, but just 33% of City Councilors are women.
• While 67% of Somersworth School Board members are women, the City Council is only 11% women. 
• In Rochester, the City Council and School Board are only 25% and 23% women respectively. 

Your vote on November 7th will determine the future of women and women’s representation in your city. Use your vote wisely, and, most importantly, VOTE!

— Tanna Clews, CEO, NH Women’s Foundation

**

Learn more about our Women Run! program

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The child care crisis looks like this: child care centers are struggling to hire and retain employees. This limits their legal capacity to make spots available for more children. If child care centers raise employee pay, that cost will be passed onto families. Thus, parents either can’t find child care spaces available or the rates are unaffordable. Businesses then struggle to hire employees because many potential employees don’t have child care.

The pandemic and subsequent recovery has brought into sharp focus just how much a strong economy relies on a robust child care industry, or, “the workforce behind the workforce.” We need sustainable support for the child care industry to build a foundation for our businesses, kids, and young parents, particularly mothers, to rebuild from the pandemic.

Like all New Hampshire businesses struggling to bounce back and rebuild in 2022, child care providers also struggle with the right balance to recruit and retain employees without greatly impacting prices for consumers and their bottom line. When the product is child care, and the consumers are parents with kids, this creates ripple effects across all industries.

Child care for one infant in New Hampshire costs $13,255 on average. For a married couple making the median income here, that’s 12% of their wages. For a median single-income earner, that’s 40% of her income. Child care for two children in New Hampshire costs $24.28 on average. For a married couple making the median income, that’s 21% of their income. For a median single-income earner, that’s 73% of her income. Many parents find that child care costs more than what they earn and may make the economic decision to not return to work to take care of their children at home. This has created an unsustainable cycle for child care centers, parents, and employers.

While nearly everyone is impacted by the current child care crisis, essential workers and women are feeling the impact of the child care crisis more acutely. Studies have shown that in response to COVID-19-related child care demands, mothers with young children have arranged reductions in their work hours that are four to five times greater than the reductions arranged by fathers. And without access to reliable child care, women leave the workforce. Women made up 53% of our state’s unemployment claims during the pandemic.

Between April 2020 and December 2021, 15% of Granite State workers who are out of the labor force cite child care as the primary reason for not working. This is exacerbated by regional disparities in what are called “child care deserts.” In these locations, mostly rural areas, it can be nearly impossible to find child care. For women trying to return to work in rural areas, these challenges can be insurmountable. Women make the economy work. We need a solution that reflects the greater burden on working women with families.

Some businesses have had the ability to be flexible or creative, allowing employees to work from home, to shift their hours to accommodate children’s schedules, and sick time to provide for children’s needs when they are exposed or sick themselves. But not all industries can be accommodating for employees — emergency responders, food service workers, hospitality and retail workers don’t have the option of doing their jobs remotely, for example.

All industries are affected by the child care crisis, and addressing it will require a multi-faceted approach. In an initial effort to tackle this crisis, the New Hampshire legislature is currently considering SB 446, “The Workforce Behind the Workforce Act”, which, as amended by the Senate, directs the Department of Health & Human Service, in consultation with the Child Care Advisory Council, to submit a plan to the governor and Legislature outlining proposals to provide economic relief and recovery to foster childcare opportunities in the state. The Early Learning Alliance is leading a broad coalition of community, advocacy and business support for this bill, and the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation and the New Hampshire Business Industry Association support this legislation. We urge the legislature to pass this bill and we urge Governor Chris Sununu to sign it.

We can’t stop there. We need parents of young kids to speak up about their struggle. We need businesses to engage with their legislators to explain the child care related challenges they meet in hiring. We need all workers and community members to recognize how this impacts their daily lives. We need our community and state leaders to take bold action to address the child care crisis for affordable, accessible, and high-quality care that will support a healthy, equitable, and prosperous future for New Hampshire.

—

Portsmouth’s Tanna Clews is CEO of the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation and Michael Skelton is president and CEO of the Business & Industry Association of New Hampshire. He lives in Bedford.

Originally published 5/2/2022 in the Union Leader.

The post Tanna Clews & Michael Skelton: Businesses need solutions for child care crisis in New Hampshire appeared first on New Hampshire Women's Foundation.

“These moves mark an exciting shift as our Board has just approved a new strategic plan that will guide our next 3–5 years,” said Foundation CEO Tanna Clews. “I’m excited to continue our longstanding relationship with Crystal Paradis, who has had deep ties to the organization since 2011 when she worked with several of our predecessor organizations. Karen Tebbenhoff has been an invaluable member of our staff for five years, and her expanded role in operations will be instrumental to our continued growth. Dow Drucker started as an intern last year and had an immediate impact on our research program, most notably playing a pivotal role in our “Women in COVID” special issue of Gender Matters. We’re excited to bring him on as a Fellow to help us continue to highlight important data about New Hampshire women and girls.”

The Foundation will be rolling out parts of its newly-approved strategic plan in the coming months, but some key highlights include a focus on community engagement with additional partnerships around the state, expanding the Foundation’s suite of philanthropic tools specifically for donors seeking gender lens philanthropy, growing the Women Run! program at the local level, and the launch of a new quarterly “Gender Justice Cafe” speaker series, which kicked off on March 8^th for International Women’s Day.

Prior to coming on board with the Foundation, communications specialist Crystal Paradis founded Feminist Oasis, a social enterprise that produced events, resources and membership offerings to explore intersectional feminist values in action. Her communications background includes working with local and national clients to improve messaging and broaden online reach. Her community engagement work has ranged from organizing TEDx events and local speaker series, to working on state and national political and issues-based advocacy campaigns. She published the popular #PortsmouthLOVE Letter prior to moving to Somersworth, NH, where she currently serves as a City Councilor At-Large. Her volunteer work includes serving as a board member of SOS Recovery Community Organization.

During her tenure at the Foundation, Karen Tebbenhoff has overseen major events and communications including the Foundation’s print and online publications. Prior to joining the Foundation, Karen spent more than a decade working as Director of Marketing and Communications for several prominent New Hampshire nonprofit organizations, including the Currier Museum of Art. She has played a pivotal role in the Foundations’ major events and publications and brings valuable expertise to her new role.

The post Announcing an Expanded Team to Support New Strategic Plan appeared first on New Hampshire Women's Foundation.

We are devastated not only by the attacks in Atlanta, but also by the ongoing perpetration of anti-Asian hate and violence – particularly against women – since the start of the pandemic. We reject the remarks made by Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office in Georgia and his characterization of the attacker as just “having a really bad day.” Misogyny, racism, and violence are deeply intertwined. We believe that how we call attention to these issues is crucial.

We are clear that imperialist policy, misogyny, racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric in the U.S. — both historical and present day — are the roots of what made this violence possible.

We unequivocally stand against all forms of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). There can be no gender justice without racial justice.

Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition addressing anti-Asian hate amid the COVID-19 pandemic, has found that 68% of the attacks on Asian Americans in the past year targeted AAPI women, who have historically faced sexualized stereotypes and sexual violence. According to Dr. Melissa May Borja, a researcher affiliated with Stop AAPI Hate, for the incidents in which we know the gender of the perpetrator, men were the perpetrator in 68% of the racist attacks. We call on men to act as allies and hold individuals accountable. 

We stand with our colleagues at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy and Native Americans in Philanthropy who call on philanthropy organizations to invest — and value — the diversity of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Specifically, by:

• Strongly repudiating violence against Asian American communities. Send a clear message about your institution’s position on anti-Asian violence and all hate-based actions.
• Disrupting the “model minority” and “perpetual foreigner” narratives alongside other racial and gender tropes that serve to divide rather than unify this nation.
• Supporting Asian American and Pacific Islander organizations as part of regular grant making and also in advancing a more holistic racial and gender equity strategy.
• Honor and support cross-racial efforts that strengthen rather than divide the United States along racial lines.

As women’s funds, foundations, and gender justice funders and allies, we vow to work with all who envision a world free from the social systems and environments that perpetuate hostility and hatred toward marginalized genders in communities of color.

 Below are additional resources to support the AAPI community:

• API Communities Resource Directory
• Stop Asian Hate
• AAPI Stop Hate
• Anti-Asian Violence Resources
• Asian Resources with a list of hate incidents updated daily

###

Signed:

Elizabeth Barajas-Román, President & CEO, Women’s Funding Network

Marya Meyer, Interim Executive Director, The Women’s Fund Miami-Dade

Natanja Craig Oquendo, Executive Director, Boston Women’s Fund 

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat, President & CEO, Washington Area Women’s Fund 

Roslyn Dawson Thompson, President & CEO, Texas Women’s Foundation 

Gloria Perez, President & CEO, Women’s Foundation of Minnesota 

Jennifer Steadman, Ph.D., Executive Director, Aurora Women and Girls Foundation, Inc.

Donna Haghighat, CEO, Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts 

Michelle Legaspi Sanchez, Executive Director, The Fund for Women and Girls

Tanna Clews, CEO, New Hampshire Women’s Foundation

Stacey Keare, President, Girls Rights Project

Teresa C. Younger, President & CEO, Ms. Foundation for Women

Ana Oliveira, President & CEO, The New York Women’s Foundation

Janelle Cavanagh, Vice President, Development, Global Fund for Women

Kimberly Crichton, Executive Director, Maine Women’s Fund

Felicia Davis, President & CEO, Chicago Foundation for Women

Jess Tomlin, Co-CEO, The Equality Fund

Tracy DeVries, Executive Director, Women’s Foundation of Mississippi 

Nicole Baran, Executive Director, The Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation

Sheri L. Scavone, P.T., EHSA, Executive Director, WNY Women’s Foundation 

Melanie R. Bridgeforth, MSW, President & CEO, The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham

Ellen M. Katz, President/CEO, Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation

Tania Turner, Executive Director, Fondo Semillas

The Community Fund for Women & Girls at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

Sharon LaRue, Executive Director, The Kentucky Foundation for Women

Anna Beth Gorman, Executive Director, The Women’s Foundation of Arkansas

Tine Ward, Founder & CEO, Rockflower Partners  

Women’s Fund of Omaha

Keri Koehler, Executive Director, Women’s Foundation of Greater Saint Louis

My Lo Cook, Executive Director, Shadhika

Julie Castro Abrams, Founder & CEO, How Women Lead

Kelley Griesmer, President & CEO, The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio

Beth Bengtson, Founder & CEO, Working for Women

Antoinette Klatzky, Eileen Fisher Foundation 

Lauren Y. Casteel, President & CEO, The Women’s Foundation of Colorado

Kelly Nevins, CEO, Women’s Fund of Rhode Island

Kate Kroeger, Executive Director, Urgent Action Fund

Junemarie Justus, Policy Director, US Women’s Caucus at the UN

Dr. Amalia Luxardo, CEO, Women’s Foundation of Southern Arizona

Leela Bilmes Goldstein, Executive Director, Women’s Fund of Hawai’i

Lisa Attonito, Executive Director, Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee

Sheri L. Scavone, CEO, WNY Women’s Foundation

Ruby Bright, Executive Director, Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis

Paulette Senior, President & CEO, Canadian Women’s Foundation

Karen Sterk, CEO, Jeannette Rankin Foundation

Denise Raquel Dunning, PhD, Founder & Executive Director, Rise Up

Katharine Len Yee Mitchell, VP of Community Impact, Women’s Foundation of Southern Arizona

Jane Sloane, Senior Director, Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality, The Asia Foundation 

Julie Keller, Executive Director, Women’s Fund for the Fox Valley Region

The post Statement of Solidarity and Condemnation of Violence Against APPI Community appeared first on New Hampshire Women's Foundation.

View Gender Matters report:

The full list of gender data of each municipality of New Hampshire’s 221 towns is below.

Methodology: This report was produced conducting original research obtained from elected official listings published by each of the 221 municipalities and 13 cities in New Hampshire and accessing other public references to local elected officials that identify them by gender/sex. In all instances verification of our conclusions was sought from each Town Clerk. This report would not be possible without their cooperation. These data are current as of August 2020.

Live in one of NH’s 13 cities (Berlin, Claremont, Concord, Dover, Franklin, Keene, Laconia, Lebanon, Manchester, Nashua, Portsmouth, Rochester, Somersworth)? Keep an eye out for city data coming later this year!

If you have any questions about the data listed here or our methodology, please email us at info@nhwomensfoundation.org.

Percent of Women Elected to Town Boards:

Note: The “Total” percent column is not an average of the town select board and school board, but is instead a percent of the cumulative count of town officials serving on each board. See next table for full data including count of officials in addition to percent.

Full Data on Gender Representation of NH Towns:

The post Gender Matters — Municipal Town Data appeared first on New Hampshire Women's Foundation.

We are in the midst of a public health crisis where women are bearing the overwhelming majority of negative health and economic impacts — while still shouldering most caregiving responsibilities for family members. Yet some New Hampshire legislators are focused on attacking our reproductive health care and restricting access to abortion. They have introduced six bills that had hearings this week over the course of two days.

Now is the time when we must call on our policymakers to reject these attacks on reproductive health care, and to provide critically-needed support for New Hampshire women and families.

Instead of restricting access to care during the pandemic, we urge this legislature to focus on policy priorities that would improve women’s health and that would address and alleviate the many economic, public health and caregiving burdens that New Hampshire women are carrying.

The New Hampshire Women’s Foundation supports full access to reproductive health care for all who need it.

We believe that women and people who can become pregnant should have both freedom to make reproductive and sexual health choices, and access to the necessary health care to fulflll those choices, including birth control, abortion, maternity care and gender-affirming health care.

The post Bills Before the NH House Judiciary Committee This Week Attack Reproductive Health and Rights appeared first on New Hampshire Women's Foundation.

Ona Marie Judge Staines

(c. 1773-1848)

Ona Marie Judge Staines was the enslaved body servant of Martha Washington in what was then the United States capitol, Philadelphia. In 1796, Judge fled to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There, she met and married a mariner, Jack Staines; they made their home in the adjacent rural town of Greenland with their three daughters. Jack was presumed to have died at sea when he did not return from a voyage. Each of the Staines’ children also predeceased Ona. She continued to live in the town with the freed family of a man formerly owned by a prominent New Hampshire merchant. Because President Washington had endorsed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1791, Ona Judge remained a fugitive for the rest of her life. The house itself no longer stands but her unmarked gravesite remains undisturbed on the property where she had chosen to live.

Dinah [Chase] Whipple

(1760-1846)

Dinah [Chase] Whipple ran the Ladies Charitable African Society School for African children in Portsmouth, the only school known to exist in the state of New Hampshire for former slaves or their children. Dinah was emancipated by her owner, Rev. Stephen Chase of New Castle, when she reached her 21st birthday. On that same day, she married Prince Whipple, the still-enslaved personal servant of Revolutionary War General William Whipple. Prince died in 1797, leaving Dinah and several young children living in the house they shared with another Black family in back of what is known today as the Moffatt-Ladd House. Dinah operated the school in her home from around 1807 until at least 1835. While little survives in her own words, public documents reveal much about Dinah Whipple’s accomplishments as a citizen.

Harriet Wilson

(1825-1900)

Harriet Wilson was born Harriet E. Adams in Milford, New Hampshire, to a White mother and a Black father. She is the author Our Nig (1859), believed to be the first novel by an African-American woman to be published in the United States. Wilson’s autobiographical novel describes the life of an abused mulatto child and her forced servitude at the hands of northerners, thus opening up questions of slavery in the North. Harriet married Thomas Wilson in 1851 and gave birth to a son, George, in 1852. Poverty stricken after her husband’s disappearance, Wilson wrote Our Nig to support herself and her child. George, however, died the next year and Wilson herself disappeared from record books. Researchers uncovered her life as a spiritualist and medium in Massachusetts, which lasted another thirty years. Harriet Wilson died in Quincy, Massachusetts, and is buried there in Mount Wollaston Cemetery.

The post Black History Month & The New Hampshire Women’s Heritage Trail appeared first on New Hampshire Women's Foundation.

The six new Board members are: Rochester City Councilor and former Trans Justice Organizer for ACLU of New Hampshire Palana Belken of Rochester; Managing Director of New Hampshire chapter of the International Institute of New England and former senior management of Boston Public Health Commission Elsy Cipriani of Derry; constitutional and administrative law professor at UNH School of Law and former Supreme Court Justice clerk Maggie Goodlander of Portsmouth; president of TCS of America Enterprises and former State Senator Melanie Levesque of Brookline; Executive Director of Lakes Region Community Developers and former Director of the Division of Economic Development at the NH Department of Resources and Economic Development Carmen Lorentz of Belmont; and Vice President of Human Resources at Northeast Delta Dental and University Systems of New Hampshire Trustee Connie Roy-Czyzowski of Manchester. 

The six women were elected to three year terms ending 2023. Current NHWF Board Members re-elected to a three year term include Board Chair Martha Fuller Clark, Vice Chair Linda Johnson and Member Rashida Mohamed.

“We are thrilled to welcome these new board members to the Foundation. Each of them are leaders in their fields and communities, and have demonstrated a passion for and commitment to our work.” said NH Women’s Foundation CEO Tanna Clews.

During The Annual Meeting in December, the Foundation Board also re-elected Board Officers: The Honorable Martha Fuller Clark, Chair; Linda Johnson, Vice-Chair; Mica Stark, Secretary;  and At-Large Executive Committee members Sue Ratnoff and Dan Weeks. Sheila McNeil, Senior Manager, Audit at Wipfli, was elected Treasurer, replacing Kyung Kim who is retiring from Board service. 

“I am excited to welcome Palana, Elsy, Carmen, Maggie, Melanie and Connie to the Foundation,” said Board Chair Martha Fuller Clark. “Each has been a friend to the organization for a number of years, and they all will add tremendous value to our Board and to the organization. I am grateful for their leadership and willingness to serve.”

More information about the new Board members:

• Palana Belken is an activist, organizer, and city counselor who has called the seacoast home since 2014. In November 2019, she made history when she won a city council seat in the city of Rochester against a long-time incumbent. She is the first openly transgender person to ever get elected to a city council in the state of New Hampshire. Palana has spent the past two years as the Trans Justice Organizer for the ACLU of New Hampshire, where she worked as a community organizer and advocate. Palana lives in Rochester.
• Elsy Cipriani serves as the Managing Director of the New Hampshire branch of the International Institute of New England (IINE), the organization’s largest reception and placement program for newly arrived refugees. She leads the effort in NH to expand education and career services to both refugees and immigrants. Elsy started her career with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRI) in South America working with refugees and immigrants in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Originally from Bogota, Colombia, Elsy now lives in Derry, NH with her husband and son.
• Maggie Goodlander is a lawyer and teaches constitutional law and administrative law at UNH School of Law. She has spent much of the past decade working in legal and policy positions in each branch of the United States government and in both houses of Congress. Maggie is a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve and serves on the board of directors of New Hampshire Legal Assistance and the World Affairs Council of NH. Maggie lives in Portsmouth.
• Melanie Levesque is a Nashua native and president of TCS of America Enterprises, a communications consulting company. From 2006 to 2010, and from 2012 to 2014, Melanie represented Hollis, Brookline, and Mason in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. Melanie served in the State Senate for one term from 2018 – 2020. Melanie has also served as a Trustee for the New Hampshire Community College System, Advisory Committee Member for New Hampshire Endowment for Health, Deacon and Trustee for the Brookline Community Church, Trustee for the Town of Brookline and Secretary on the Hollis Brookline Coop Schoolboard. Melanie Levesque lives in Brookline.
• Carmen Lorentz is from the Lakes Region and currently serves as the Executive Director of Lakes Region Community Developers (LRCD). LRCD helps the Lakes Region thrive by developing healthy homes, creating vibrant community assets and engaging residents. Prior to joining LRCD, Carmen was the Director of the Division of Economic Development at the NH Department of Resources and Economic Development. Carmen lives in Belmont.
• Connie Roy-Czyzowski is the Vice President of Human Resources at Northeast Delta Dental. She has over 30 years of experience in Human Resources and has served as Vice President, Human Resources with Northeast Delta Dental for over 15 years. Connie also serves as a Trustee of the Community College System of New Hampshire, a member of the HR Advisory Board for Moore Center Services, Inc., a member of the Advisory Council for the NH Department of Employment Security, Corporator for the Canterbury Shaker Village, and a member of the Board of Directors for the YWCA NH. Connie lives in Manchester.

View all of our Board members and the bios here.

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