Daniela Melo, Board Chair
Ms. Melo grew up in Portugal and migrated to the United States as a teenager; New Bedford has been her home since 2008. She holds a Ph.D. and master’s degree in political science from the University of Connecticut, and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Connecticut College. Ms. Melo is a Fulbright scholar and has been the recipient of fellowships from the Tinker Foundation and the Luso-American Development Foundation. She is currently a lecturer in the division of Social Sciences at Boston University. Her research occupies the intersection of three areas of study: social movements and activism, gender studies, and European politics. Ms. Melo’s work has been published in various journals including Social Movements Studies, the Journal of Women in Politics & Policy, Foreign Policy Analysis and Comparative European Politics. She is currently editing a book with Paul Manuel (American University) titled “After the Carnation Revolution: Social Movements in Portugal since 25 April 1974.” The volume is forthcoming with Sussex Academic Press in 2023. In collaboration with Mr. Manuel, she is also researching the political engagement of the Portuguese American community in Massachusetts.
Tony Sapienza, Vice Chair
Mr. Sapienza holds a master’s degree from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating, Mr. Sapienza worked as a social worker and then joined his family’s tailoring and clothing business. He is the retired CEO of Joseph Abboud Manufacturing, which has a manufacturing facility in New Bedford. Mr. Sapienza serves as the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. He currently is the President of the Board of the New Bedford Economic Development Council and co-chairs its Regeneration Project Committee. In 2017, he received the Jacobs Award for outstanding leadership, vision, philanthropy and innovation. In 2018, Mr. Sapienza was the recipient of the Southcoast Businessperson of the Year award.
Joel Alvord, Treasurer
Mr. Alvord, a native of Connecticut, received his AB degree from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Amos Tuck School. He served as an officer in the U.S. Army and then spent his career in banking and finance in Connecticut and Massachusetts. He was a leader in numerous acquisitions and consolidations in the banking industry and served successively as Chairman of Hartford National Corporation, Shawmut National Corporation and Fleet Financial. After retiring from banking, he founded Shawmut Capital, a private equity firm in Boston. He was a director on multiple public and private corporate boards including the Bristol Press Publishing Company, a daily community newspaper in Connecticut which his family owned. He has been a trustee or chair of numerous arts, medical and educational organizations in Hartford and Boston. In later years he established the Center for Global & Environmental Studies at the Loomis School and, with his wife Lisa Schmid, started a school for girls in China and was an organizer and founding trustee of Our Sisters’ School in New Bedford.
Lee Blake, Clerk
Ms. Blake, a New Bedford native, holds a bachelor of arts degree in sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Ms. Blake has worked as a high school teacher and administrator within public schools throughout her career and now serves as President of the New Bedford Historical Society. Through her work, Ms. Blake has preserved and celebrated the legacy of African Americans, Cape Verdeans and Native Americans in New Bedford, including obtaining National Park Service status for historical landmarks in New Bedford that were vital to the Underground Railroad. Ms. Blake has received several awards for her work to preserve history, including the Governor’s Awards in the Humanities, the Dennison Memorial Community Center’s Founder’s Award and the Robert G. Stanton Award.
Charles Barmonde
Mr. Barmonde is a longtime resident of the South Coast and a UMass Dartmouth graduate with over 15 years of media experience as a trustee of the Scripps-Howard Foundation and a director of the E.W. Scripps Company. Mr. Barmonde, as a trustee of the Scripps-Howard Foundation, was instrumental in charting a new strategy both in terms of development and direction. During his decade of service on the foundation board he helped guide it through the financial crisis of 2008, and the selection of a new CEO and several new trustees. In his time as a director of the E.W. Scripps Company he has helped lead a 140-year-old journalism company through the transition away from print media, a CEO transition, and transformative sales, mergers and acquisitions. Scripps is now the nation’s fourth largest local broadcasting group, putting quality local news into over 25 percent of American households. Mr. Barmonde was similarly instrumental in supporting the creation of the Scripps News Network, a national news organization focused on fact-based journalism without opinion, now available to over 90 percent of Americans for free over the air, online or through connected television. Mr. Barmonde has been tapped to speak on panels and individually to stakeholders within and without Scripps from general managers, to new employees, investors and shareholders. He also runs a commercial ceramics gallery, Arch Contemporary Ceramics, near where he lives, in Tiverton, Rhode Island. “Give light and let the people find their own way.”
Jeanne Costa
Ms. Costa is a lifelong resident of New Bedford and a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth with a bachelor’s in sociology and a minor in education. She was employed by the Department of Social Services in Brockton and Boston for 20 years with her last position as the Civil Rights Officer. Ms. Costa was a Neighborhood Planner for the New Bedford Office of Community Development until her retirement. She is one of the Founders of the New Bedford Light and serves on the board of the New Bedford Light and the New Bedford Historical Society. Ms. Costa is a published book (The Making of the Cape Verdean) editor and author and was a freelance writer for the Cape Verdean News (CVN). She is the recipient of numerous awards for her community service in the Greater New Bedford area.
Lynne DeLucia
Lynne DeLucia is the co-founder and retired editor of the Connecticut Health Investigative Team, an in-depth news website focusing on issues of health and safety. Prior to C-HIT’s December 2010 launch, Lynne worked at the Hartford Courant for 17 years, holding the positions of assistant bureau chief, bureau chief, state editor and an assistant managing editor. Lynne was the supervising editor of the Courant’s team coverage of the Connecticut lottery shootings, which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Before joining the Courant, she worked at the New Haven Register as a reporter and city editor. She is a member of the Professional Advisory Committee, University of Connecticut, Journalism Department. In 2014, Lynne was inducted to CT-Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame.
Genesis Galan
Genesis Galan is the Director of Community Impact at PACE. Since graduating college in 2019, with a double-major in the Humanities (Psychology and English), she has worked in non-profit and community service, responding to the needs of low-income community members and their families, through various roles. She leads the agency’s strategic plan to combat issues of poverty in the community, assessing needs and taking action to address them. She was born and raised in New Bedford, with family of Dominican descent. She is bilingual, extending her ability to connect with community members of mixed backgrounds. In March 2022, she was appointed by the Mayor to serve on the Human Rights Commission and has volunteered with many local organizations focused on the development of youth, including as a Youth Court Judge, and with Our Sisters School and the Boys and Girls Club. Her research and experience has made her an informed community member, who is committed to expanding services and awareness that will create equal opportunity for all members of Greater New Bedford.
Lloyd Macdonald
Judge Macdonald, a New Bedford native, was appointed to the Massachusetts Superior Court in 2004, where he remained until his mandatory retirement in 2014. In his last two years, he was the Regional Administrative Judge for Bristol County. Before ascending to the bench, Judge Macdonald was a senior litigation partner in the Boston office of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart. He has served as Assistant Director of the Harvard Law School Center for Criminal Justice, an Assistant District Attorney in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston, and an Assistant United States Attorney, heading the office’s Public Corruption Squad. Following his retirement from the Court, Judge Macdonald was appointed to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. A former President of the Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust, he now serves on the board of the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Buzzards Bay Coalition, and the advisory committee of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Bristol County. Judge Macdonald practices law in New Bedford.
Walter V. Robinson
Mr. Robinson is a graduate of Northeastern University and holds honorary degrees from Northeastern and Emerson College. Mr. Robinson served in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer in Vietnam before joining The Boston Globe as an investigative reporter. He has held numerous positions at the Globe: He has covered local, state and national politics and the White House, and was the Middle East correspondent during the First Persian Gulf War. He has been city editor and metro editor, and led the Spotlight Team that won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its reporting on the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal. Mr. Robinson currently holds the position of the editor-at-large at the Globe. He was distinguished professor of journalism at Northeastern from 2007 to 2014 and was the Edith Kinney Gaylord Visiting Professor in Investigative Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University from 2016 to 2022. Mr. Robinson has been a journalism fellow at Stanford University and was a long-time board member of the New England First Amendment Coalition.
Barbara Roessner, Founding Editor
Ms. Roessner is an award-winning newspaper editor who has devoted her career to public service journalism as a news reporter, political writer, opinion columnist, writing coach, college teacher and news executive. She is a former managing editor of The Hartford Courant, where she supervised all aspects of content creation, including high-impact investigative reporting projects and creation of 60-plus hyperlocal news websites. She helped lead the Courant newsroom to one Pulitzer Prize and three Pulitzer finalists. As executive editor of Hearst Connecticut Media Group, she oversaw an amalgam of five daily newspapers, more than a dozen weekly newspapers and an array of digital products. Ms. Roessner is a graduate of Wesleyan University, where she has taught creative non-fiction writing and been honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award. She was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, and has twice been a Pulitzer juror. She currently serves on the board of the New England First Amendment Coalition, advocating for open government and press freedoms, and is a member of the Professional Advisory Committee to the University of Connecticut Journalism Department.
Stephen Taylor, Founding Publisher
Mr. Taylor is the current Principal of Densefog Group LLC, which engages in seed stage investing and family fiduciary management and trusteeship. Mr. Taylor, who studied philosophy and psychology at Yale, has extensive experience in journalism, publishing, and operations at The Boston Globe, and more recently during the creation of The New Bedford Light. During his 24-year career with the Globe, Mr. Taylor was a young reporter, and then held positions in operations, production, information technology, administrative services, and labor relations. He became Executive Vice President of The Boston Globe in 1993, a position he held until January 2001. In 1994, he was co-founder and President of Boston Globe Electronic Publishing, publisher of Boston.com and BostonGlobe.com during the first five years of those sites’ existence. More recently, Mr. Taylor taught the course Economics and Financing of Journalism for several years in the MBA program at the Yale School of Management, focusing on how to finance good journalism in a digital future. Mr. Taylor has experience serving as an officer, director, or trustee for multiple entities, including the Globe Newspaper Company, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Greater Boston Food Bank, the American Press Institute in Reston, Virginia, and the New Bedford Light. Mr. Taylor lives in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.”
John Vasconcellos
John Vasconcellos, a native and current resident of New Bedford, is a consultant specializing in supporting non-profit leadership and building local and effective philanthropy. Previously, John served as President and CEO of the SouthCoast Community Foundation based in New Bedford, Massachusetts where he led the organization through a critical time of reinvigoration, reimagination, and growth, broadening and deepening the asset base, reputation, access, and impact. Prior to this role, John served as Senior Regional Director for The Trustees of Reservations’ Boston, Southeast, Cape Cod, and Islands Regions focusing on protecting vital and threatened urban and rural properties while increasing accessibility and stewardship. John has also served as the Managing Director of GMHC in New York City, the nation’s first-ever AIDS service organization; Vice President of Development and Communications for the Buzzards Bay Coalition, a nonprofit environmental protection agency dedicated to the restoration, protection, and sustainable use of the Bay and its watershed; and Director of Development for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Prior to his nonprofit work, Vasconcellos held several management positions with Wells Capital Management, Wells Fargo Bank, and Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City and San Francisco. John has held multiple board and volunteer positions over the years, including the Headlands Center for the Arts, Horizons Foundation, Our Sisters’ School, Marion Institute, Zeiterion Theatre, Marriage Equality Coalition of the South Coast, and was a founder of New Bedford ACTS. He received his BA in Political Science and the Humanities from Providence College, and currently lives in New Bedford and Provincetown with his husband, Bill.
WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO THE VISION, DEDICATION AND PERSEVERANCE OF OUR FOUNDERS
KEN HARTNETT
REBECCA BARNES
JOHN BULLARD
CRYSTAL CAMPBELL
JEANNE COSTA
MANDI COSTA
DAVID EHRENS
JANET FREEDMAN
DANIELA MELO
BARBARA ROESSNER
LISA SCHMID
BOB UNGER
and in memoriam, KEVIN HARRINGTON
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