Read the 2022 Annual Report!
Click the image to read the 2022 Annual Report.
The 2022 Annual Meeting took place on November 9th, 5:30 p.m. – 7:45 pm, via Zoom. Stay tuned for the video recording!
Annual Elections: click here to vote for your Board of Directors.
ENSURING A THRIVING FUTURE FOR OUR CO-OP
AGENDA
5:30 p.m. – 5:45 p.m. Music and Highlights
We’ll listen to the Vermont Jazz Center Sextet, and through slides we will share highlights of the past year.
5:45 p.m. – 5:55 p.m. Welcome and Introductions
Our facilitator will review the agenda and share a few ground rules for the evening. Our Vice President will welcome everyone to the meeting and introduce this year’s Board candidates.
5:55 – 6:15: Officer Reports
Annual updates will be shared by the Co-op’s Board President, Treasurer, and General Manager.
5:55 – President Report (Jerelyn Wilson)
6:00 – Treasurer Report (John Hatton)
6:05 – GM Report (Lee Bradford)
6:15 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. Co-op Q&A
We welcome questions for any presenters at the Annual Meeting. All questions must be entered in the Zoom chat window.
6:30 – 7:15: Ensuring a Thriving Future for Our Co-op: Panel discussion
Join us for a panel discussion with various community organizers and leaders. We will explore how the Co-op adds value to our community, and how the Co-op can continue to help Brattleboro thrive in the coming years. We are pleased to welcome NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award winner Curtiss Reed Jr, Vermont State Representative Emilie Kornheiser, Brattleboro Interim Town Manager Patrick Moreland, Foodworks’ Director Andrew Courtney, and Amanda Witman from the Downtown Brattleboro Alliance.
7:15 – 7:25: Wrap up
OUR PANELISTS
Curtiss Reed, Jr. has spent his life advancing structural change in public and private institutions to recognize, value, nurture, and apply social justice principles throughout their organizations. His journey began as a child in St. Louis fighting Jim Crow racism followed by two decades of social and economic justice work in international arenas. For the past two decades, his work has focused on where Vermont’s economic development intersects with inclusion and equity. He has a reputation for being humble, gracious, compassionate, and skillful in the use of inquiry as a subversive activity. Inclusion and equity have become both the means and the end in his practice of applied social justice. His body of work has produced substantial changes in Vermont law enforcement, education, commerce, and human services delivery as well as state and municipal government use of inclusive and equitable practices in Vermont’s increasingly diverse cultural landscape. Curtiss has been a resident of Brattleboro since 1979 and recipient of honorary doctorates from the SIT Graduate Institute (2015) and Middlebury College (2019) and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP (2019).
Emilie Kornheiser, I’m an avid food shopper, cook, and host, and love talking in the aisles about jam or carrots or whatever is in front of us. I was proud to serve on the board of the coop in 2018 and dive deep into labor relations, what accessibility and affordability mean in our diverse community, and how to support our farms and farmers. In most of my other minutes, I’m an elected state representative to Vermont’s citizen legislature. I serve on the Ways and Means committee. I’m just entering my 5th year of service in the legislature with a real focus on supporting and amplifying community voices. For the last decade, I’ve focused on improving the functioning and accountability of community development and support systems in and around Vermont state government. Before transitioning to local service, I worked internationally as a consultant– brokering and evaluating partnerships between corporations and national governments to meet community development goals. As a consultant I continue to work with organizations both public and private that put connection at the center of skills building, accountability, and economic justice.
Andrew Courtney was added to the Groundworks Collaborative team as the Director of Foodworks in May. Foodworks is designed as a neighborhood grocery store where everything is free and you can shop for what you want without getting the things you don’t want or won’t use – which can be the case with “food shelves” or various emergency food distribution sites. Andrew joins the organization with a broad range of operating experience in the realm of food. Most recently Andrew was the owner of a small market specializing in fresh and nutritious foods in San Diego, CA. Andrew received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA from San Francisco State University. Andrew is joined in Brattleboro by his partner, Renee, and their two children Juniper (7) and Griffin (3).
“It felt like I was in a blissful dream when I came across this opportunity with Groundworks Collaborative. It is as if I have been training my whole life for this role. I am excited about the opportunity to continue to serve the community where I live through food – now with a much more important definition of what success means.”
Patrick Moreland, Brattleboro Interim Town Manager. Mr. Moreland grew up in California where he attended Loyola Marymount University. After graduating with a B.A. in Urban Studies he began studying Philosophy at California State University in Long Beach. In 1992 he relocated to Austin, Texas where he met his soon-to-be wife Julia in 1994. In 1998 they married and have since raised two Black & Tan Coonhounds, one Redbone Coonhound, and two Plott Hounds together. Mr. Moreland performed a wide variety of Community Development Work before settling into public service, first in the Town of Dover in 2009 and since 2011 here in the Town of Brattleboro.
Amanda Witman, Downtown Brattleboro Alliance. Amanda loves creating efficient systems to handle administrative and logistical challenges. She works with local business owners to improve efficiency and productivity, helping them assess challenges, develop strategies, and solve problems confidently. Amanda organizes restaurant participation, logistics, and scheduling for the Everyone Eats! program. She also coordinates the DBA’s one2one project, supporting downtown Brattleboro business owners in navigating challenges throughout the pandemic. Amanda is a Core Counselor with the Center for Women and Enterprise and has a private administrative consulting practice in Brattleboro.
