December 12, 2017 • Craftsbury Common, VT • The Sterling College Board of Trustees voted unanimously to elect five members to the Board of Advisors at its Autumn Meeting. Joining the Board of Advisors are Paul Costello, Elizabeth Cullen, Ellen Falduto, Eloise Girard, and Scott Grieve ‘72.
The Board of Advisors is an advisory body, comprised of friends and supporters of Sterling College, dedicated to advancing Sterling’s mission of environmental stewardship education. “We are grateful to our Board of Advisors and their role in lending their voice and expertise to the College,” said President Matthew Derr.
The recently elected cohort includes a group of people with diverse backgrounds and interests, with alumni, community, and professional connections to Sterling College. They join the existing Board of Advisors, which includes Geoffrey Bok, Joan Bok, Marion Bok, Paul Gruhler, and Ashley Kidd, who were elected in April 2017.
Sterling College Board of Advisors
Geoffrey Bok is a partner in the Boston law firm of Stoneman, Chandler & Miller LLP, where he specializes in the litigation of civil rights, employment, and school law matters. Bok is a member of the Massachusetts and Vermont bars, and received a B.A. magna cum laude (1984) from Harvard University and a J.D. cum laude (1987) from Harvard Law School. He owns a home in East Craftsbury with his wife, Marion.
Joan Bok was the first woman to be named the chairman of a major US utility when she was named chairman of New England Electric System in 1984. She held that position, and related positions, until her retirement in 1998. Bok also served for many years as a director of Avery Dennison Corporation, Monsanto Corporation, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company and other for-profit and non-profit entities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University (service included one year as the President of the Harvard University Board of Overseers). She is a graduate of Radcliffe College and the Harvard Law School. She has homes in Boston and Greensboro.
Marion Bok is an English language arts teacher at the Carroll School in Lincoln, Massachusetts, where she has worked since 2006. Prior to entering the educational field, she worked as attorney for Boston-area law firms Franchek and Porter and Morrison, Mahoney, and Miller and also served as a case law editor for Lexis Nexis. Bok earned a Masters in Education in Special Education and Teaching from Lesley University in 2012, a JD from Boston College Law School in 1990, and a BA in English Literature from Mount Holyoke College in 1984. She owns a home in East Craftsbury with her husband, Geoffrey.
Paul Costello has served as the Executive Director of the Vermont Council on Rural Development since 2000. VCRD runs an annual Rural Summit, and conducts “Community Visits” that help rural communities build priorities, set action plans, and build connections to resources. It also provides customized facilitation on rural development policy at the local, regional and state level. Costello is a native Vermonter who attended UVM before earning a PhD in intellectual history at McGill. He has served on boards ranging from corrections education to cooperatives and libraries, and is currently committed to the boards of Vermont Rural Ventures, the Center for an Agricultural Economy, Partners for Rural America and co-chairs the Governor’s Climate Action Commission.
Elizabeth Cullen currently handles National Sales for Localvore.co where she combines a traditional sales and marketing background with her interest in sustainable food systems. She is active on the board of Slow Food Vermont and the steering committee of the Burlington Farmers Market. After receiving her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 2003, she spent eight years in New York where she worked for RR Donnelley and American Express. Cullen completed the Vermont’s Table Program at Sterling College in August 2012 to familiarize herself with the state’s farmers and value-added products. She lives in Charlotte with her husband and three children.
Ellen Falduto is the Chief Information & Planning Officer at The College of Wooster. She previously held senior roles at Hartwick College and Drew University where she focused on research, planning, information technology, finance, strategy development, feasibility studies, and implementation of educational and institutional initiatives. Falduto has an Ed.D and MBA from Seton Hall in education administration and non-profit finance and management, respectively. She holds an MS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Psychology.
Eloise Girard moved to Craftsbury, Vermont four years ago from Quebec. She has a technical degree in applied ecology and over 10 years of field experience in ecology/biology, sometimes working in very remote areas on bird population studies for the Canadian government and universities. She has also worked with different community based projects in environment/ecology in Canada and the U.S. but also overseas in Mali, South Africa, and Indonesia. In several projects she has worked in close collaboration with vulnerable/low-income groups such as women, special needs, new immigrants, and youth. More recently, she has been a core member of the Childcare Initiative task force dedicated to addressing the urgent need of affordable and high quality childcare in the Craftsbury area. This task force resulted in Craftsbury Saplings, a newly opened non-profit child care center of which she is the co-chair of the board of directors. Girard currently manages the Pete’s Green farmstand in Craftsbury.
Scott Grieve ‘72 has served for over fifteen years as the chair of the board of Wildlife Forever, the non-profit arm of the North American Hunting & Fishing Clubs, that works to ensure the health of our forests and waters. As the head of a software training company, Grieve first began working with Wildlife Forever in 1998 when his company, Pondview Productions developed a partnership with a computer game firm through which the business made a donation to Wildlife Forever every time a fishing or hunting game was sold. The partnership, which included sales of the top-ranked video game Deer Hunter, resulted in strong and enduring support for Wildlife Forever over several years. Grieve was first elected to the board of directors in 1999 and became its chair in 2002. After attending Sterling School, Grieve went on to graduate from New England College. He is the Chairman of the video production company Big Island Publishing, in Excelsior, MN.
Paul Gruhler is a resident of Craftsbury and a self-taught artist. Gruhler grew up in New York City, and has traveled throughout Mexico, South America, the Far East, and Europe. Gruhler’s first exhibition was in New York City in 1965 at the DeMena Gallery. Since then, he has shown his work in galleries and museums in Mexico City, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, and throughout the United States, including at Sterling College. Gruhler is a former businessman and has curated exhibitions of the State of Vermont art collection, VSA Vermont, Vermont artists with disabilities, and Helen Day Art Center.
Ashley Kidd is the program director of grants and research at the Endeavor Foundation, a New York-based foundation dedicated to efforts that foster independent thought, ethical understanding, deep appreciation of the arts, and reverence for the natural world. The Foundation pursues this objective primarily by supporting and catalyzing excellence in liberal arts education and related fields, and has supported the curricular and pedagogical development of a significant number of liberal arts colleges in the United States. Kidd graduated from Williams College with a degree in English and Religion in 2000, and from the New School with a Master’s degree in Liberal Studies in 2013.
—##—
MEDIA CONTACT Katie Lavin, Sterling College 802.586.7711 x111 • [email protected]
ABOUT STERLING COLLEGE
Founded in 1958 in Craftsbury Common, Vermont, Sterling College is the leading voice in higher education for environmental stewardship and rural placed based education. The College was among the first colleges in the United States to focus on sustainability through academic majors in Ecology, Environmental Humanities, Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems, and Outdoor Education. Sterling is home to the School of the New American Farmstead and the Wendell Berry Farming Program, is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, and is one of only eight federally recognized Work Colleges in the nation.
