Steering Team

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.

Meg Campbell

Meg serves as Vice President of special projects for the Preservation Trust of Vermont. She also manages PTV’s Easement Program, a job that happily takes her to every corner of Vermont every single year. Over the last decade, she has spearheaded PTV’s storytelling efforts, including making nearly 50 short films for award-winning projects around the state. These efforts have led her to co-found the Vermont Story Lab, an effort to help nonprofits of all kinds tell stories that increase their reach and impact. Meg also manages PTV’s communications and helps out with Field Services.

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. 

Jane Cadwalader

Jane is Roving Archivist for the Vermont Historical Records Program, based at the Vermont State Archives & Records Administration. Jane recently moved to Vermont from Phoenix, where she worked as an Archivist for the State of Arizona. Jane received a bachelor’s in Art with a concentration in Museum Studies from Arizona State University (2017) and a Master of Archives and Records Management (International Pathway) at the University of Liverpool, UK (2018). Besides collecting books, Jane enjoys traveling and learning about new places.   

Noel Clark

Noel currently serves as Communications Officer with Vermont Humanities. A Midwest transplant to Vermont, Noel has worked previously in nonprofit communications roles in Massachusetts and across Minnesota’s Twin Cities with organizations such as The Bakken Museum in Minneapolis and American Public Media in St. Paul. He holds a Bachelor’s in Professional Journalism from the University of Minnesota and spent over a decade as a radio journalist and a communications professional for diverse arts and cultural organizations. His reporting has been featured on NPR stations from KUT in Austin, Texas to KUOW in Washington state to NHPR in New Hampshire.

Eileen Corcoran

Eileen, Director of Service & Outreach at the Vermont Historical Society, has been working for over twenty 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 Vermont Division for 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.

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.