Local community and business leaders work together to advance our mission to ensure public schools are places all students can thrive.
Dick Samuels joined the McLane Middleton law firm in 1980 and has been a director since 1987. Since 2013, Dick has served as the firm’s managing director. He is the former chair of the firm’s corporate department and concentrates his practice in corporate governance, corporate transactions (M&A), and securities regulation, including SEC regulation, private securities offerings, formation of private investment funds, and registered investment adviser and broker representation. Dick received his Bachelor of Arts cum laude, from Union College, his Master of Arts from Duke University (1976), and his J.D., cum laude, from Cornell University (1980) where he was an editor of the Cornell International Law Journal.
Roy Ballentine is founder and chairman of Ballentine Partners, one of the 20 largest wealth management firms. Roy graduated from Yale University with a B.A. and an M.S. He is a Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) and a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner. He has practiced as a fee-only financial advisor since 1984. Roy has served for many years on the Board of Trustees of Brewster Academy, a private secondary school located in the heart of Wolfeboro, NH. He is currently serving as the Chairman of the Board and a member of the Investment Committee. Roy also serves as a Trustee of the Wolfeboro Area Children’s Center and is a member of the Board of Directors of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New Hampshire, Families in Transition of New Hampshire and of the Wolfeboro Area Recreation Association.
Barry Brensinger received a Masters degree in architecture from Harvard University and a Bachelors degree in visual studies (design) from Dartmouth College, where he received the Marcus Heiman Award for excellence in the arts. A member of the American Institute of Architects, Barry’s work includes award-winning civic, corporate, educational, and healthcare projects throughout the northeast. In 2013 he received NHAIA’s Clinton Sheerr Award for his career-long design achievements.
Barry has also been honored as a community leader through his dedicated work with numerous nonprofit organizations. He has served as chair of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and founding chair of the Manchester Regional Community Foundation. In 2016 he was named NeighborWorks’ Goodwin Outstanding Neighbor. In 2007, he was the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year. In 1999, he received Manchester’s Good Samaritan Award and the Manchester Chamber of Commerce Business Person of the Year. Barry’s recent efforts have been focused on Manchester Proud, a City-wide movement, whose mission is to advance Manchester’s public schools through greater community engagement, understanding, and support.
Lewis M. Feldstein served for 24 years as the CEO and President of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, the state’s largest foundation. During his tenure the Foundation’s assets grew for $25 million to almost $500 million, becoming one of the largest community foundations in the nation. Lewis was several times selected as one of the ten most influential people in the state.
For ten years following the fall of the Soviet Union he played a lead role in building community foundations across Europe, and for seven years worked on the World Bank leadership team as the bank invested in, and tested, the role of community foundations and private philanthropy in the developing world. He co-chaired the Saguaro-Seminar “Civic Engagement in America” together with Robert Putnam at Harvard University and with him co-authored “Better Together: Restoring the American Community,” a book analyzing the grassroots development of civic engagement in the United States. In the political field, Lewis participated in the civil rights movement in Mississippi and was an assistant to New York City Mayor, John V. Lindsay. Among his singular achievements were seven year tenure as the MC of the International Zucchini Festival, and a stint as wine steward and personal assistant to John Wayne on his yacht in the Mediterranean. Lewis was listed among the Top 50 of nonprofit executives by the “NonProfit Times” and holds honorary doctorates from seven universities. Since retirement in 2010 Lewis has taken an active leadership role on several major New Hampshire public policy issues, including the lead role in opposing repeal of New Hampshires’s marriage equality law, continued to partner with Robert Putnam on emerging social capital issues, and acts as senior fellow on a national project working with selected community foundation ceo's.
Jennifer MacDonald, MD, is a physician executive and Army veteran experienced in leading diverse coalitions to achieve strategic impact at scale. She currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute, a member-based public private partnership with a mission to grow the nation’s bioeconomy and realize the transformational power of regenerative medicine and manufacturing.
Prior to this role, Dr. MacDonald served at senior levels of the federal government, leading multiple successful growth and transformation efforts and personally driving the execution of strategic priorities for two Cabinet Secretaries. At the Department of Homeland Security, she led efforts on non-traditional aviation technology, spearheaded efforts to improve health care quality and equity in the immigration detention system and managed the establishment of a joint task force on domestic extremism. Most recently, at the Department of Veterans Affairs, she led the organization’s nationwide transformation into a hybrid delivery and payor system; redesigned strategy for a $300 billion infrastructure portfolio; led COVID-19 staffing and operations efforts through the height of the pandemic; and oversaw preparedness efforts for passage of the largest Veterans benefits legislation in a generation. She served as a spokesperson for the enterprise, engaging VA’s 400,000 employees, the White House, federal and state interagency partners, Congress, labor unions, and the media. Prior to federal service, she served 11 years in the Minnesota National Guard and deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, earning a Bronze Star for high profile mission achievement and volunteer humanitarian medical work. She completed her Family Medicine residency at the University of California, Los Angeles and medical school at the University of Minnesota.
Heather McGrail has been with the Greater Manchester Chamber for over six years, successfully leading efforts to build a strong membership and high level of community engagement for New Hampshire’s largest Chamber. In May 2022, Heather was selected as the Chamber’s President & CEO after a statewide search that resulted in more than 70 applicants. To her role, Heather brings nearly two decades of non-profit and corporate experience and a rich history of community activation. What Heather loves most about leading the Chamber is the multi-faceted nature of the work and the ability to drive positive change in the community.
Heather lends her time serving on multiple Boards within the community, including the Air Service Support & Enhancement Team (ASSET), Manchester Proud Council, Manchester Development Corporation, NextGen Manchester Resiliency Council and Amoskeag Industries. Heather is honored to have been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Granite State Outstanding Women’s Leadership Award. A New Hampshire native with deep Manchester roots, Heather began her college studies at Saint Anselm College and earned a Neuroscience degree from Brandeis University. She lives in Bedford with her teenage sons, two cats, one dog and a bearded dragon. Her favorite place to be is on a mountain ridge.
Sindiso Mnisi Weeks is an Associate Professor at the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her current work focuses on transformative constitutionalism and the pursuit of justice and human security by poor, indigenous women and men living in rural South Africa.
Sindiso has served as a senior researcher in the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where she also taught African Customary Law. She was a resident scholar at the University of New Hampshire School of Law and a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. She has published in academic and popular media on justice in law and society, women’s, economic, social and cultural rights, governance, participatory democracy, and the South African constitution, and has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Women in Science Award for the Development of Rural Women. Sindiso also serves on the Boards of New Hampshire Legal Assistance and the St. Paul’s School Advanced Studies Program.
Mel Myler has been a proven leader, manager, and agent of change in education association work for over 40 years. In 2008, he retired from his executive staff position with the National Education Association (NEA) after serving the organization at the local, state and national level. For 20, he served as the executive director of NEA New Hampshire. He is a consensus builder providing a hands-on, creative approach to strategic planning and systems thinking. In each of his work experiences, he has initiated organizational change to meet new demands faced by a changing world.
His knowledge of organizational development and ability to organize has allowed him to seek the common ground to effect needed modifications in operation and program systems. Through his career, he has demonstrated an ability to move an organization into new dimensions while accommodating the human side of the enterprise. He is recognized by his colleagues as a leader, mentor, and agent of change. In November, 2012 he was elected to serve his first term in the New Hampshire House of Representatives serving on the House Education Committee. He currently serves as the House Education committee chair.
Dr. Steven Paris recently retired after having been in medicine for over 40 years. Most recently he was the Regional Medical Director for Dartmouth-Hitchcock Community Group Practices. He was in pediatrics from 1977-2019 and provided medical management of multi-specialty group practices with specialties in managing varying financial models of healthcare financing, implementation of electronic health records, hospital and medical group mergers and affiliations, and creating new ways for access to care for vulnerable populations. Dr. Paris graduated Harvard University (1970) with honors, went on to Duke University medical school (1974) where he graduated with honors, and did his pediatric training at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (1977). He has been board certified since 1979.
Steven is active with many organizations, including: Children’s Public Health Fund Board, City Year New Hampshire, Healthy NH Foundation Board, Cheshire Medical Center Board, and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health Board.
Nadine Petty is Associate Vice President for the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer at the University of New Hampshire. She has twenty-four years of experience in educational settings, including sixteen years in higher education. Prior to arriving at UNH, Nadine served as Executive Director of the Center for Diversity and Enrichment at the University of Iowa, where she led a large team of staff dedicated to the success of students with marginalized identities.
For most of her personal life and professional career, she has devoted herself to a wide-range of diversity and social justice causes and endeavors which include teaching cultural ethnography courses, serving on and leading various diversity-related committees and boards, and creating and strengthening diversity and inclusion services in various institutions and within communities and school districts. Although she has been immersed in diversity, equity, and inclusion work for many years, Nadine believes she has only begun to scratch the surface of available knowledge and research, viewing herself as a lifelong learner and devotee of diversity and social justice issues. Nadine’s current main initiative is creating a Center for Neurodiversity at the University of New Hampshire.
Alan. L. Reische chairs the Sheehan Phinney Bass & Green Corporate Law and Governance, mergers and acquisitions and business formation and succession planning practice groups. His legal practice is focused on transactional matters, business acquisitions and mergers, planning for next-generation internal ownership transfers and debt and equity financings from institutional and non-institutional sources. He has continually been recognized by his peers in Chambers USA – America’s Leading Business Lawyers as the “dean of the corporate bar,” bringing “innovative approaches to complicated corporate problems,” in Woodward/White’s Best Lawyers in America, and was named a New England Super Lawyer by Law and Politics in the area of corporate law.
Alan is active with many organizations. He is the vice-chair and a member of the board of directors and executive committee of the workforce opportunity council, member of the board of directors of the New Hampshire Center for Non-Profits and is a board member of New Hampshire Public Radio.
Steve Sanger has had a lifelong interest in community development and equal justice and a lifelong career in storytelling. At 18, he joined Just-A-Start, a program uniting kids from the suburbs with kids from the projects in East Cambridge, MA. They lived and worked together for the summer providing labor to improve housing in the Wellington/Harrington neighborhood. That led to an opportunity to become a community organizer for the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority, organizing tenants against their slumlords. He was told by his boss at the time, Just-A-Start founder Gordon Gottsche, that he was one of, if not the youngest HUD community organizer in the country.
Following that, Steve went to UNH, getting a degree in communication and journalism. For the next 10 years he worked as a broadcast journalist filing stories of both local and national importance, including Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign and the Iran Hostage Crisis. He is now retired following 30 years of producing and directing “non-fiction” TV commercials and documentaries and brand consulting. Before and after his retirement, Steve served as a board member for City Year New Hampshire while producing marketing and recruiting videos for City Year HQ. During that time, he attended cyzygy in LA and Little Rock where he met Bryan Stevenson the founder of the Equal Justice Institute. Inspired by him, Steve eventually became involved in EJI’s efforts to document, recognize and honor victims of racial terror. Steve lives in Portsmouth with his wife Karen Mazzari. Together they have 3 children and 2 grandchildren.
Lesa Scott is now retired after spending 40 years in the educational publishing space with 75% of her career spent between Scott Foresman and Heinemann Publishers. Prior to moving into publishing, Scott taught school in Arkansas and Texas. Lesa is a product of the public school and college systems and has a deep passion for supporting educators in their roles of educating all students.
After having previously served for over 10 years on the City Year New Hampshire Board, Lesa rejoins the board in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.