Amy Cunningham
Amy is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Vermont Arts Council, working to bring the organization’s strategic goals to fruition. She directs the programs team, manages the Vermont Creative Network, and is the contact for national advocacy efforts. Amy has worked for more than 15 years in leadership positions in Vermont cultural and educational nonprofits. Her educational background is in U.S. history and museum studies. When she’s not at the Arts Council, Amy enjoys knitting, exploring Vermont, and overly ambitious gardening projects.
Ben Rose
Ben has been involved in disaster recovery for the State of Vermont since joining Sue Minter in the Irene Recovery Office in February 2012. His previous experience includes twelve+ years as Executive Director of The Green Mountain Club and six+ years as Executive Director of the Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District. He holds a B.A. in sociology from Yale University and a Masters in natural resource planning from the University of Vermont. He represented Williston in the state legislator and served as clerk of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee from 1995 to 1998. He has served as a Justice of the Peace in Williston for 22 years. Ben co-founded the Catamount Trail Association in 1984 and served as CTA’s first Executive Director. Ben and wife Lori Fisher live in Williston Village, where they raised two grown children who both now live in Denver.
Carolyn Frisa
Carolyn Frisa is a paper conservator in private practice and runs her conservation studio, Works on Paper, LLC from southern Vermont. She specializes in the conservation of artistic and historic works on paper, wallpaper and photographs as well as emergency planning, disaster preparedness and disaster response for cultural heritage collections in both the public and private sectors. She received her M.A. in Paper Conservation from Camberwell College of Arts in London, England in 2000 and worked at Tate Britain and the Northeast Document Conservation Center prior to moving to Vermont in 2008 to establish her own practice. Carolyn has been a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation since 2007 and has been a member of the AIC’s National Heritage Responders (NHR) team which responds to the needs of cultural institutions during emergencies through coordinated efforts with first responders, state agencies, vendors and the public since 2011.
Carrie Cleveland
Carrie Cleveland is the Education + Outreach Manager at CERF+ where she has held various positions since 2008. During this time, she has participated in all aspects of the organization’s work to help artists have resilient careers. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history, with extensive work in the visual arts, from Marlboro College and prior to her time at CERF+ she was an entomologist’s assistant by day and a tenor saxophone player by night. In addition to her work at CERF+, Carrie is a student of Facilitated Communication, and she is also a beginning metalsmith.
Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup
Executive Director, Vermont Humanities Council, full bio coming soon.
Eileen Corcoran
Eileen, Community Outreach & Media Coordinator at the Vermont Historical Society, has been working for over fifteen years with local historical societies and museums in Vermont via a variety of organizations and programs to support capacity-building, networking, and collections care; including emergency preparedness.
Jamie Duggan
Jamie Duggan is the Director of Preservation for the State Historic Preservation Office, assigned to the State Historic Sites program. He is responsible for the maintenance and repair of significant state-owned historic properties, including 80+ buildings and structures and over 1,300 acres of land that recount the history of Vermont from the arrival of the Native Americans 9,000 years ago to the roaring 1920s of President Calvin Coolidge. Utilizing his expertise, Jamie ensures the highest levels of preservation and restoration are undertaken in the stewardship of these Vermont places. His preservation management plans support enhancing energy efficiency and climate resiliency by continually evaluating and developing policy and procedures that prepare and protect our historic sites from potential threats, impacts, and emergencies. In recent years, Jamie has participated in the development and review of national standards related to hazard mitigation techniques for historic buildings including elevating and armoring structures against flooding. He also works to increase public awareness and illustrates how disaster recovery activities and flood mitigation best practices can be used to foster local redevelopment sensitive to historic preservation.
Joseph Watson
Joseph is the Preservation Manager for the Middlebury College libraries. He’s also the coordinator of the Addison County Cultural Heritage Emergency Response Network, a group for folks who work with cultural heritage collections (Libraries, Museums, Historical Societies, Town Offices) to provide mutual aid in preparedness for, and response to disasters.
Katelynn Averyt
Katelynn is the disaster response coordinator at the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative where she manages SCRI’s research data related to cultural heritage under threat and coordinates emergency response field work and deployments for domestic and international cultural heritage disaster missions. Before returning to the Smithsonian Institution, Katelynn was the development coordinator at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier and deputy director at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe. She received her M.A. in Art and Museum Studies from Georgetown University and her B.A. in Classics from The Catholic University of America. Katelynn lives in Richmond with her husband, daughter and two dogs.
Megan Johnson-Saylor
Megan is a Roving Archivist for the Vermont Historical Records Program, based at the Vermont State Archives & Records Administration. As Roving Archivist, she supports the program’s Director, Rachel Onuf, in offering technical assistance to cultural heritage repositories through site visits and other resources for preservation of historical records. She has recently relocated to Vermont from Minnesota where she has spent over a decade working in college and university libraries as an archivist and librarian. Her undergraduate studies were in studio art and business management and her focus as an academic librarian was supporting fine arts and humanities departments. In her spare time, she enjoys knitting, baking, and forest bathing.
Michele Bailey
Michele Bailey has worked in the field of arts administration at the Vermont Arts Council since 1988. She is currently the Senior Program Manager administering the Cultural Facilities Grant program as well as public art programs. She also serves as the Council’s Accessibility Coordinator and is committed to increasing access to and inclusion in arts and cultural activities for all people. Michele has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in performing arts with a minor in Dance from Johnson State College (now Northern Vermont University) in Johnson, Vermont.
Paddy Reagan
Paddy, of Waking Windows fame, will have a full bio soon!
Rachel Onuf
Rachel Onuf is the Director of the Vermont Historical Records Program, based at the Vermont State Archives & Records Administration. In this role, she offers technical assistance to cultural heritage repositories through site visits and reports, workshops and trainings, and serving as an ongoing resource. She also encourages and facilitates collaborative efforts among Vermont repositories in an effort to build statewide capacity. In addition to VACDaRN, she is an active member of the Collections Care and Conservation Alliance and the Vermont Suffrage Centennial Alliance. Past jobs include serving as Roving Archivist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Director of Archives at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. She taught as an adjunct for Simmons College School of Library and Information Science and worked as an independent consultant for many years. She lives on a sidehill farm near the village of East Orange with some glorious Gotland sheep and their guard donkey, Glory.
Taiga A. Christie
Taiga A. Christie is a health educator, EMT, director, playwright and lighting designer creating work at the intersection of theater and emergency preparedness. She currently works for Vermont Emergency Management and is a founding director of Faultline Ensemble, a collective of artists and health workers making theater that fosters community resilience. Taiga holds a masters in public health from Yale University and a BA in Theatre/Anthropology from Reed College. She is excited about collaborative, interdisciplinary work, centering underrepresented stories, and prioritizing accessibility to diverse creative voices.
Tom McMurdo
Tom is Assistant State Librarian for Information and Access at the Vermont Department of Libraries (VTLIB). He oversees VTLIB’s online resources, interlibrary loan, collections, services to state employees, and cataloging support and IT support for libraries. Following a decade at the University of California physically and digitally preserving newspapers, Tom came to Vermont in 2011 to help start the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project at UVM before moving to VTLIB in 2012.