Business and nonprofit expansions

Shaker Hill Automotive, located at 675 Route 4A in Enfield, hs partnered with U-Haul to offer trucks, trailers, towing equipment and moving supplies.

The Center for the Arts, a nonprofit organization that serves the Lake Sunapee Region, now has its own space at 428 Main St. in downtown New London, which features space for a gallery and a classroom.

The Works Café, located at 25 S. Main St., in Hanover has expanded into the former Fat Face retail space at 27 S. Main St., in downtown Hanover.

Fidium, a national fiber internet company, has started construction and will offer broadband internet services to residents in Hartford, Hartland and Lebanon in New Hampshire this year.

Beacon Mobility, a national transportation company, has purchased Butler’s Bus Service, a Manchester, NH-based business that provides school transportation services to school districts in New Hampshire and Vermont.

Business new hires and leadership changes

Claremont Savings Bank has created an executive vice president role and promoted the following employees to fill those positions: Carol Vivian, chief customer experience officer; Jim Lynch, chief lending officer; and Paul Yang, chief financial officer.

Rachael Garvey, of Lebanon, has been promoted to branch relationship manager at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust in Enfield. She has been assistant branch manager at the Enfield location since 2024.

Luke Cady has been named chief operating officer and chief information officer of Norwich Technologies.

Nonprofit organization new hires and leadership changes

Andrew Reid is the new executive director of the Randolph Area Community Development Corp. He was previously executive director of Mosaic Community Land Trust in Pottstown, Penn. Reid replaces Julie Iffland, who is retiring from the leadership role and will continue on with the organization as a part-time project manager.

David Sleeper is the new executive director of the Ottauquechee Health Foundation, a nonprofit organization that serves residents in Barnard, Bridgewater, Hartland, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Quechee, Reading and Woodstock. Sleeper previously served as executive director of the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation and ran a conservation consulting business, replaces Mary Young-Breuleux, who has served as interim director since September 2024.

Lizzie Coelho has been hired as the grants coordinator at the Ottauquechee Health Foundation after holding the interim role for four months. 

Laurie Beyranevand has been hired as Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Pescosolido Professorship of Food and Agricultural Law and Policy. The role, named and funded by alumna Pamela Pescosolido, is the South Royalton school’s first named professorship. Beyranevand, an alumna who is director of the school’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems, will serve in the role for five years. 

Maverick, a two-year-old black Labrador Retriever, has been hired as an in-residence facility dog at in the Child Life Program at Dartmouth Health Children’s in Lebanon. He will accompany his handler Torie Miele in seeing and caring for pediatric patients.

The Vermont Institute of Natural Science, a Quechee-based nonprofit organization, has added three birds to its Raptor Ambassador Program. Bald eagles Wyoming and Minnesota, transferred to VINS from the Vermont Museum of Natural History in Marlboro, Vt. Addison, a northern harrier, is a former patient at VINS’ Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation who sustained brain damage and trauma to their left eye after being hit by a vehicle.

Dr. Jessica Weeks and Dr. MacKenzie Sloas have been hired as child psychiatry fellows at West Central Behavioral Health, which has locations in Claremont, Lebanon and Newport. The pair will being their roles in July and replace Dr. Alex Buell and Dr. Josh Prickel.

Dr. Michaela “Mia” Harrow-Mortelli, a fourth-year Dartmouth psychiatry resident, will join West Central Behavioral Health’s Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team in Lebanon for the next academic year. She will replaced Dr. Diana Fox, the nonprofit organization’s current fourth-year resident on the Lebanon ACT team.

Dr. Anna Noel Miller is the new chair of the department of orthopaedics at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She was previously a professor and vice chair of orthopaedic surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo.

Dr. Gabriela M. Andujar Vazquez is Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center’s new hospital epidemiologist. She previously held a fellowship in infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

Dr. James B. Yu will lead the genitourinary radiation oncology program in the department of radiation oncology and applied sciences at Dartmouth Cancer Center and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He was previously employed at  St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Conn.

Tammy L. Tarsa is the new interim CEO and president of Dartmouth Health’s Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire. She replaces Johanna Beliveau.

Dartmouth Health hired the following providers in February:

Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital: Peter L. Rippberger, family medicine; and Lases P. Thibodeau, orthopaedics.

Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center: Emily A. DesMeules, emergency medicine.

Dartmouth Cancer Center: Sabrina L. Searles, hematology/oncology; Nancy L. Thomas, hematology/oncology; Dr. Christianne Persenaire, gynecologic oncology.

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center: Harmony L. Tyner, infectious disease; Kristy Taylor O’Brien, psychiatry; Dr. Natalia C. Berry, cardiology; Katrina J. DeShaney, neurology; Hope E. DiCesare, cardiology; Dr. Mark A. Garret, neurology; Nicole E. Gottschalk, audiology; Todd S. Karalius, rheumatology; Dr. Lindsey A. MacFarlane, rheumatology; Mary D. Moore, palliative medicine; Willow Moryan, obstetrics and gynecology; Susanne M. Nelson, audiology; Bess A. Trevino, internal medicine; and Dr. James L. West, neurology.

Health Care and Rehabilitation Services, a nonprofit organization that serves Windham and Windsor county residents, hired the following employees in December and February: Ashlee Kelley, office generalist, Hartford; Heather Mason, clinical intern, Hartford; Courtney (Stebbins) Emerson, CYF respite provider, Hartford; Jesse Baughman, billing specialist, Springfield, Vt.; Tamara Kinsman, CYF respite provider, Hartford; Taylor Johnson, respite provider, White River Junction; Patricia Hanchett, team lead, Hartford; Miranda Collins, crisis intervention specialist, Springfield, Vt.; Brandon Sheridan, community outreach specialist, Springfield, Vt.; Michael Hall, residential specialist, Woodstock; Eric Resseguie, Jr., children’s outpatient clinician, Springfield, Vt.; Sierra Cantara, direct support professional (community), Springfield, Vt.; and Scott Maple, school-based behavioral interventionist, Hartford.

Nonprofit organization board appointments

Tamara Warschinski, leadership and planned giving officer at Kimball Union Academy, has been elected president of Junction Arts & Media’s board of trustees. She replaced Tracy Hutchins, executive director of the Upper Valley Business Alliance, who has served on the board since December 2020.

Amber Hanna, principal research associate at Adimab; Jennie Chamberlain, Hanover Selectboard member and film and media studies professor at Dartmouth College; and Johanna Evans, senior program manager and head of film and media at Hopkins Center for Arts at Dartmouth College, have been elected to the Junction Arts & Media’s board of trustees.

Mike Farber, co-founder of GreenStory, and Stuart Mathews, president of Metapoint Partners, have joined the Vermont Institute of Natural Science’s board of trustees.

Kathleen M. Fisher, who worked in investment and asset management on Wall Street for more than 40 years, has been elected to Dartmouth Health’s board of trustees.

Three new members have been elected to the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinics board of trustees: Jason T. Garbarino, executive director and co-founder of Nursing is STEM Coalition; Laurel J. Richie, former president of the WNBA; and Dr. Emily P. Zeitler, a cardiologist at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

Nonprofit grants and donations

The Cornish Community Initiative earned a $727,456 Northern Border Regional Commission Catalyst Program grant to put toward renovating the town’s former general store into a library and community center.

Families Flourish Northeast Inc. earned a $1 million Northern Border Regional Commission Catalyst Program grant to put toward building a 12-unit residential substance use disorder treatment facility for women with children in Lebanon.

The Mill School in Woodstock was awarded $25,000 through the First Children’s Finance VT and Make Way for Kids (MWFK) Infant/Toddler Capacity Building Grants program to expand the existing child care center by 14 infants and 30 toddlers, which will lead to employing 12 new staff member. The expansion is expected to be complete in June 2025.

Bambino University in Perkinsville was awarded $43,000 through the First Children’s Finance VT and Make Way for Kids (MWFK) Infant/Toddler Capacity Building Grants program to start a child care center that will serve eight infants, 20 toddlers and 20 preschoolers and employ 10 staff, including the owner. The center is expected to open by July 2025.

The following Dartmouth College students and faculty have earned $100,000 in grant funding from the Hopkins Center for the Arts (the Hop) and the Vice Provost for Research’s Arts Integration Initiative program: “Art, Business and Soft Power,” Chad Elias, associate professor, department of art history and Sunglim Kim, associate professor, Department of Art History, Department of Asian Societies, Cultures and Languages; “Bronzed: A History of Makeup, Hair, and Race in Hollywood,” Desiree Garcia, associate professor and chair, Department of Latin American, Latino, & Caribbean studies; “Medical Misogynoir: Graphic Medicine as a Tool to Raise Awareness of Medical Misogynoir Across Three Centuries in the US,” Shontay Delalue, senior vice president and senior diversity officer and Vinald Francis, biomedical illustrator and graphic medicine artist, Geisel School of Medicine; “Quilting for Resilience: Stitching Together Stories of Mutual Aid from Vermont’s Floods,” Sarah Kelly, research scientist in the Energy Justice Clinic at the Irving Institute for Energy & Society and a lecturer in the Geography Department, Aletha Spang, GIS specialist, Department of Geography and Charis Boke, lecturer, Department of Anthropology; “Vicarious,” Luke Cargill, graduate student, master of science in computer science with concentration in digital arts; “Living Interpretations: A Digital Exploration of Ambiguity in Art,” Clara Sava-Segal, graduate student, cognitive neuroscience, Emily Finn, assistant professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Neely McNulty, curator of education, Hood Museum of Art; “Under the Moving Skin: e-textile wearables for the Performing Arts,” Ivy Fu, graduate student, master of fine arts in sonic practice; “Cyber Folksongs for Digital Nomads: A Sound Ethnography,” Hermia Miaoxuan Huang, undergraduate student; “Visualizing Vermont Flooding: Mapping the White River with Drone Media,” Hayden Miller, undergraduate student; and “DROP,” Malik Terrab, undergraduate student, and Peyton Bond, intern, Department of Studio Art. 

Bar Harbor Bank & Trust employees donated more than $22,000 to 10 nonprofit organizations in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont including New London Hospital, Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity in White River Junction, Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock and Royalton Memorial Library.

Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, which serves residents in towns in Orange and Washington counties, has earned a $20,000 two-year donation from the Community National Bank, based in Waterbury, Vt.

Nonprofit expanded programs

Claremont MakerSpace has launched a new workforce development program titled “Trade Up Claremont.” Cortney Nichols, the nonprofit organization’s new director of education and workforce development, will oversee the program, which involves working with area businesses and community organizations to connect them with workers. Free training programs will focus on manufacturing, machining and facilities maintenance.

The Norwich Public Library has purchased around 300 phonics-based decodable books using a $2,500 grant from the Winnie Belle Learned Fund.

Plymouth State University has introduced a new 96-credit three-year applied bachelor’s degree program in cybersecurity, which the school previously offered as a minor. It will be available to students in fall 2025. There are plans to launch a four-year cybersecurity degree program in fall 2026.

Awards and other honors

Upper Valley children from 36 schools and 40 homeschool groups participated in the Upper Valley Trails Alliance’s (UVTA) Passport to Winter Fun Program this winter. The Norwich-based nonprofit organization distributed a record-breaking 6,100 passport booklets this year.

Generations United has named Kendal at Hanover’s Early Learning Center a Program of Merit for its “commitment to advancing meaningful connections between young children and older adults, enriching lives, and strengthening community bonds,” according to a news release from the nonprofit organization..

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center ambulatory nursing director Jean M. Bolger led the volunteer leadership team behind the New Hampshire chapter of American Heart Association’s annual 2025 Go Red for Women Luncheon in February.

The Lake Sunapee Region Chamber honored the following businesses, organizations and residents during its annual awards ceremony in February: The Bend at Sugar River, Sunapee, Rookie Business of the Year; Mackenzie Blizzard, Proctor Academy sophomore, Young Professional of the Year; Bark and Bray Farm Animal Sanctuary, Wilmont, Nonprofit of the Year; Donna Gazelle, Sunapee, Community Member of the Year; and The New London Inn & The Elms Restaurant, Business of the Year.

Events

Vital Communities is seeking applicants for its Leadership Upper Valley program, a 10-month program that aims to prepare participants for leadership roles in the community. Applications can be found at vitalcommunities.org/leadership-upper-valley/ and will be accepted through May 31. 

Information for this column was compiled using news releases emailed to Valley News staff. To have business or nonprofit organization news included in the next edition of Enterprise, email biznotes@vnews.com prior to June 20.