Maggie Cohn (Vice Chair)
Maggie is the Southeastern New England Loan and Outreach Officer for the Cooperative Fund of New England, a Community Development Finance Institution founded in 1975. She has served as the Executive Director of local non-profits, working for the Mission Hill Health Movement; for the Boston Collaborative for Food & Fitness with a broad array of community organizations, institutions and municipal agencies; and for Mission Hill Main Streets, working with local businesses and residents to improve the commercial district. Previously she worked at Red Sun Press, a worker-controlled commercial print shop in Jamaica Plain. She serves on the board of the Back of the Hill Community Development Corporation and is a member of Boston Building Resources, Harvest Cooperative Market and the Dorchester Community Food Co-op. She holds a BA from UMass Boston and a Master’s Degree in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University. She shares her home with her husband and three elderly cats, and prefers to travel by bike.
Nick Clark
Nick is the President of the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society, which operates three large-format grocery stores and two auto service centers in Vermont and New Hampshire. As a founder and board member of Livable Real Estate Cooperative, he spearheads efforts to combat the pressing shortage of affordable housing by fostering local collaboration. Nick’s experience includes municipal government as a former member of the Selectboard for the Town of Thetford, Vermont—where he served as Chair. He enjoys understanding and addressing multifaceted challenges, from workforce housing initiatives to strategic planning and budget management. With a dedication to community development, Nick thrives on maximizing organizational efficiency and pioneering innovative solutions to tackle even the most daunting obstacles.
Carolyn Lagomasino Edsell-Vetter (Board Chair)
Carolyn is a Latinx Cooperative Business Support Officer at the Cooperative Fund of New England since March 2019. She works with Spanish- and English-speaking applicants and borrowers to assess project feasibility and connect with culturally-appropriate technical assistance resources. Previously, she was a worker-owner for 19 years and co-CEO for 5 years of A Yard & A Half Landscaping Cooperative in Waltham, MA. In 2013, she led the conversion of A Yard & A Half Landscaping to a worker-owned co-op, allowing the primarily Salvadoran immigrant employees to purchase the company from their retiring boss. Carolyn has been involved in co-ops and consensus communities since living in a cooperative house in college. She graduated summa cum laude in Religious Studies from Cornell University and holds an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School. She was also a graduate of the 2015 Boston cohort of Inner City Capital Connections. Carolyn, her partner Jesse, and their two boys enjoy running, dancing, and growing ridiculous amounts of food in their small urban garden. The daughter of a Cuban immigrant, Carolyn is particularly interested in using cooperatives to create social and economic justice for immigrants, BIPOC, and others who have faced structural barriers to bringing businesses to scale.
Heather Holland (Staff Rep.)
Heather Holland is the Communications Manager at CDI. Previously, she was director of communications at a healthcare technology company that used A.I. to help make fertility treatments more affordable for women and families. She led the start-up’s communications and messaging strategy, successfully helping to fundraise and fuel their expansion in the US, Canada, and Europe. Before she began her career in communications, Heather was a news editor and journalist leading local news teams in New York City, overseeing daily news strategy and editing and packaging enterprise stories. Heather graduated from New York University with a double major in Journalism and History. She studied abroad in Florence, Italy for her first year of college. She grew up in many different states across the U.S. before settling in Maine. She lives there with her husband.
Christopher Illum
Christopher Illum currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer for Habitat NYC and Westchester and is the Principal for the Habitat NYC Community Fund. Since 2007, his career has focused on the development, stewardship, and preservation of limited equity cooperative housing, reflecting Chris’ belief in its crucial role providing perpetually affordable homeownership opportunities for New Yorkers. Additionally, Chris was a member of the founding team that launched NYC’s first and only city-wide Community Land Trust, Interboro Community Land Trust, a significant milestone in democratizing land use and promoting long term housing affordability in NYC.
Chris earned his bachelor’s degree from Temple University’ College of Liberal Arts and his master’s degree from Hunter College’s Department of Urban Planning and Policy
Matthew Lewis (Treasurer)
Matthew is a citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Sipayik with strong experience and expertise in non-profit, community development financial institutions. He is the Director of Operations at Four Directions Development Corporation – a Native American led organization dedicated to improving the social and economic conditions of the Wabanaki tribes in Maine. Matthew has over a decade of experience working with Municipal, State, Tribal, and Federal Governments administering revolving loan funds and carrying out community development projects. He believes the cooperative model perpetuates individual and group growth and is a fantastic succession alternative. In his spare time, he enjoys crafting Excel formulas, tinkering with electronics to automate tasks around the house, and exploring the Maine woods with his wife.
Heiny Maldonado
Heiny Maldonado has a background in International Business, Urban Planning, factory work, and over 12 years of organizing experience. She initiated Fuerza Laboral’s Injured Workers Committee, the Popular Education program, organized numerous wage theft actions, and was responsible for member development, and leadership training. Heiny has significantly broadened Fuerza’s organizational alliances, including building a strong relationship with unions culminating in Fuerza’s membership in the RI AFL-CIO and broadened Fuerza’s organizational alliances, leading to the POWER Network partnership, and initiation of the Worker-Owned Cooperative program. She has been publicly recognized repeatedly by the RI State Legislature for her contributions to empowering the Latino immigrant community, by the City of Central Falls on International Women’s Day and was an honoree of the RI Labor History Society in 2017.
Libby O’Flaherty
Libby O’Flaherty was previously a Cooperative Development Specialist under CDI’s NEROC program. Prior to working at CDI, Libby worked with the Prison Birth Project and Community Action’s Family Center, providing wrap-around care to high needs families in Franklin and Hampden counties, as well as the first point of contact for evacuees to Franklin County following Hurricane Maria in 2017. Libby has developed a workshop on compensatory options for rural survivors of Intimate Partner Violence which has been presented to the Department of Health, among others. Libby is a graduate of Tufts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and resides in Franklin County, MA.
Carlos Masashi Teuscher (Clerk)
Carlos Teuscher (he/him) is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law at Boston College Law School. At Boston College, he directs the Community Enterprise Clinic, which provides free transactional legal support to worker cooperatives, housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and other community-based small businesses and nonprofit corporations in Massachusetts. Carlos is deeply committed to economic justice and loves how his work allows him to implement solidarity economy principles and values in community enterprises that are often led by immigrants, women, and people of color.
Joe Wendover
Joe Wendover is Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) at BAYADA Home Health Care. Prior to BAYADA, Joe served as Chief Diversity Officer and Lead Consultant at Deb Russell Inc., where he conducted comprehensive DEI assessments for business clients worldwide to identify needs and growth opportunities. He also coached leadership on inclusive management practices, internal policy design, and implementation.
Earlier in his career, Joe was the Corporate Field Inclusion Manager for Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), where he spearheaded a groundbreaking initiative to recruit, hire, and retain individuals with disabilities. Joe’s efforts led to the placement of over 250 individuals with disabilities at WBA’s Connecticut-based New England Distribution Center. With a master’s degree in industrial-organizational psychology and over 15 years of experience in HR and DEI, Joe is highly skilled in improving workplace behaviors and attitudes through hiring practices, training programs, and feedback systems. Joe currently serves as President of the Board for DisabilityIN:Connecticut and as Vice Chair of the Connecticut State Rehabilitation Council.
Deborah Winiewicz
Deborah and her husband Michael are residents of Halifax Estates, a resident-owned community (ROC) in Halifax, Massachusetts. Over the years, she has served her community in various capacities, including on the Rules/Bylaw Committee, as a Director-at-Large, and as Board President.
