BOARD LIST
The Cooperative Capital Board includes the following people:
JON CRYSTAL
BRUCE BOARDMAN
ANDREW DANFORTH
REBECCA DUNN
CORY GREENBERG
MARY O'HARA
BRENDA PFAHNL
LJ TAYLOR
ADAM TROTT
BRUCE BOARDMAN – Brattleboro, Vermont. Bruce is the CFO of the Brattleboro Food Coop and spends time consulting to other neighboring food cooperatives. He is a graduate of Bentley College and was employed for several years as a CPA with the national CPA firm of Ernst & Ernst (now Ernst & Young). He has been Treasurer of the Bristol Yacht Company, and served as president of the Kenyon Division and later as a group vice-president for the Outdoor Recreational Products Division of the Brown Group in St. Louis, a company most known for their shoe divisions (Naturalizer, Buster Brown, etc.). In Vermont, he is the town auditor in his town of Jamaica, VT and has served as Chairman of the tax assessors for that town.
JOHN CRYSTAL, Burlington, Vermont. Jon is the Executive Director and a founding Board member of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center. He has worked for the Industrial Cooperative Association (ICA) as a loan officer with the ICA Revolving Loan Fund and as a consultant to the Marianist Sharing Fund, a faith based lender which has supported worker-owned businesses. Jon’s work experience also includes worker-ownership at GardenWay, Inc. as the assistant to the chief financial officer: assistant vice president of the University of Vermont (UVM) and Budget Director of Castleton State College. He has consulted to small businesses and non-profits in organizational planning and finance and taught as adjunct management faculty since 1987 at the graduate level at St. Michael’s College, as well as at UVM. Jon has a BA from Wesleyan University and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
ANDREW DANFORTH,Clerk, Foxborough, Massachusetts. Andy is an independent consultant to the international residential finance community. He has a quarter century of executive, accounting, technological, entrepreneurial and operational experience in banking and finance, and has held executive officer positions for two public companies. His clients have included 7 of the 20 largest banks in the United States, as well as numerous multinational banks, major software developers, several federal and state agencies. Possessing a particular passion for affordable housing issues, Andy has worked with several progressive non-profits and Native American nations, and also is a founder of a for-profit fund that invests in affordable and sustainable housing, and as an alternative to sub-prime financing. He is currently an advisor to the Mexican government on its continuing evolution of a competitive, formalized secondary mortgage market, and to a UN/NGO on the practical application of Shari'ah (Islamic law) to micro lending programmes in Southeast Asia. He is a CPA and serves on the Loan Committee, and is a Trustee of the Cooperative Capital Fund.
REBECCA DUNN , Treasurer, Wilmington, North Carolina. Rebecca is the Executive Director of the Cooperative Fund of New England and will serve as Executieve Director for the Cooperative Capital Fund. She manages the Fund from her home office (which moved in April, 1994.) She commutes to New England on an as needed basis and to facilitate tertiary Board and Executive Committee meetings. She has extensive experience as a business consultant and as a commercial loan officer for Barclays American. She was formerly a bank examiner for the State of Connecticut. Rebecca has also worked as a consensus process trainer and non-profit advisor to a number of groups. These include her local food co-op, an urban grocery store project, a symphony orchestra, an artists collective, and Dance New England. She helped the Wilmington Community Coalition, a diverse organization which served low-income city neighborhoods, form a community loan program. She has served on the Board of the National Community Capital Association, Temple of Israel, the Wilmington YWCA, New Hanover County Human Relations Commission, and Tidal Creek Food Coop. She has a BA in economics from Trinity College and an MBA in finance.
CORY GREENBERG, Shutesbury, Massachusetts is President and a founding board member of the Cooperative Capital Fund. Cory is a financial and management consultant to small businesses and serves is part-time CFO to one of those businesses. He is Treasurer of a movie theater management and investment company in the New York metropolitan area, and is active in various socially responsible and other investments. Cory is a CFNE board member and chair of the Loan Committee, as well as Treasurer and board member of Ten Directions, Inc. He has been CFO at a publicly traded company as well as a financial manager of a worker cooperative, and is a graduate of Hampshire College.
MARY O'HARA, Boston, Massachusetts. Mary is a member of the consulting cooperative, Burlington Associates in Community Development, LLC. She provides organizational development, strategic planning, and market analysis services to CDFI’s, community land trusts, and national non-profit intermediaries. Mary has served as the Director of Lending at the Institute of Community Economics and was a founding board member of the Boston Community Loan Fund. Mary has served as a guest lecturer at the Graduate Program in Community Economic Development at New Hampshire College and as an Instructor at National Community Capital Association’s and the National Community Land Trust annual conferences. The Cooperative Fund of New England has been a retainer client of Mary's for the last 3 years; Mary acts as Outreach Coordinator for CFNE assisting the Executive Director with visiting current and potential borrowers, providing technical assistance, administration of the loan portfolio, and marketing the Fund in Eastern Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. She has a BA in Government and Human Services from Cornell and is a member of Harvest Food Coop and Direct Federal Credit Union.
BRENDA PFAHNL,Goffstown, New Hampshire. Brenda's background is in cooperatives, community lending and affordable housing development. She holds a master's degree in Community Economic Development, as well as an MBA with a concentration in finance. She has worked with CFNE as an Outreach Coordinator as well serving on the Board. She has also worked as Finance Director for an affordable housing development company and with manufactured housing park cooperatives while working for the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund. In a volunteer capacity she has served as Treasurer on the Board of Directors of the Concord Food Cooperative and as the Secretary on the Board of Nesenkeag Farm. Brenda currently serves on the Equity Committee and Loan Review Committee.
L.J. TAYLOR, Somerville, Massachusetts. L.J. is a worker-owner and senior sales representative at Equal Exchange, in West Bridgewater, MA a worker-owned co-operative marketing fairly traded coffee, tea and chocolate from small farmer co-ops. He has worked in Bulk Foods at Weaver Street Co-op in Chapel Hill, NC. He has volunteered for the post of Mentor/Buddy coordinator at Equal Exchange to help push the continuing education needed to help cooperatives survive. L.J. helped in the formation of the Independents Coffee Cooperative in Philadelphia, which consists of café owners who support Fair Trade. He has a BA in mathematics from the University of Virginia where he specialized in business development and raised funds through the UVA Development Office.
ADAM TROTT, Florence, Massachusetts. Adam Trott is in his 3rd year as a worker/owner of Collective Copies in Massachusetts. Along with the Cooperative Capital Fund, Adam sits on the board of the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy. He cherishes his participation in the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives, as well as the 4 years he spent at the Fourth Street Food Co-op in Manhattan, with 2 years on their Finance Committee. Adam graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a BA in Theater and a BA in Social Thought and Political Economy.