The Gifford School Board of Directors
The Board of Directors, currently numbering 17, are volunteers who represent a wide variety of professional expertise, providing the leadership and knowledge to maintain Gifford's standard of excellence.
Officers
Andrew R. Klein, Ph.D. is the President of the Gifford School Board. He currently is a Senior Research Analyst at Advocates for Human Potential, Inc., human services and criminal justice research and technical assistance provider. He also is the editor of the National Bulletin on Domestic Violence Prevention, published by Thomson Reuters. Formerly, he served as Chief Probation Officer for an adult and juvenile court in Massachusetts.
Margaret W. Manion, M.D. is Vice President of the Gifford School Board. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She completed her pediatric residency and served as Chief Resident at The Floating Hospital at New England Medical Center. She has practiced primary-care pediatrics in the Boston area since 1991 and at Longwood Practices since 2008. Dr. Manion is a Clinical Instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She also serves on hospital committees at Children's Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital and contributes pediatric insight to Tufts Health Plan Medical Directors for Pediatrics and Quality Management.
Ellen E. Michelman is the Secretary of the Gifford School Board. Most recently she was the Director of Special Education at the Neighborhood House Charter School in Dorchester. Prior to that, she served as an Administrator of Special Education for the Brookline Public Schools for nineteen years. Her professional experience also includes service as a special education consultant and program evaluator, as well as involvement on several special education advisory committees.
Robert M. Turner is Treasurer of the Gifford School Board. He teaches in the financial accounting area at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at Babson College. Prior to joining the faculty at Babson, he taught at Boston College, Boston University, and LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, where he also serves on the Board of Trustees. Previously he was Associate Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Boston College. He began his professional career at Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
Board Members
Kenneth L. Coleman has spent the past 25 years in senior executive and consulting roles with start-up software companies in the Boston area. A native Californian and graduate of Stanford, Ken came to the Boston area in 1979 to attend Harvard Business School and has been here ever since. He worked as a management consultant with Bain & Company before starting an entrepreneurial career in high tech. He spent the past ten years as a cofounder and executive vice president at TimeTrade Systems, a venture capital-backed company he cofounded. Prior to that, he was a member of the start-up executive team that built Lionbridge Technologies into a publicly traded global company. Ken lives in Brookline and attends All Saints Parish (Episcopal), where he has served as Treasurer for the past four years.
Martha M. Cowden is the Associate Program Manager of the Children's Investment Fund, which provides technical assistance, training, and financial support to early education and care and after school program managers who are improving or expanding their facilities. She also is a consultant to government and non-profit agencies and specializes in planning and research, program development, community collaboration, grant making, and resource development.
Peter R. Fenn, Esq. has been practicing civil law since 1981, concentrating on civil litigation, civil rights, land use, real estate litigation, permitting, and conveyancing. He served as a board member and treasurer for the Massachusetts ACLU for many years and conducted prison reform/civil rights litigation on its behalf. He is a board member of several non-profit organizations, including land trusts and senior housing facilities.
Miriam Freidin, M.D. is an adult and child psychiatrist in private practice, with offices in Boston and Lexington. She has been a dedicated supervisor and teacher of residents in child psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center for nearly 30 years. Dr. Freidin has been active in the New Council of Child Psychiatry for many years, serving as president-elect and president from 2000-2002. In addition, she has been involved with the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society since 1980 and had been a member of its Ethics Committee for 15 years.
Dr. Toni Hays is the current President of Regis College and was previously the Dean and Associate Professor for the Regis College School of Nursing and Health Professions. She is a graduate of Boston College, Boston University, and Brandeis University. Dr. Hays is a resident of Wayland and is committed to issues related to school-based health care. She was instrumental in the development of the first academic model for school-based health care to serve underserved children in Boston's inner city Catholic schools. Dr. Hays has been on several home care, long term care and hospital boards. She currently serves as a member of the Parmenter Board of Trustees and Community Board, the Newton Wellesley Hospital Institutional Review Board, and Caretenders Home Care Advisory Board.
Reno R. James is the former Vice President of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, one of New England's largest charitable organizations focused exclusively on education. He also formerly served as the Senior Vice President for Administration at Cambridge College.
Penelope W. Kirk was President of Daylight Daycare, Inc. for 25 years and the owner of Little Executive Center at New England Executive Park. She has been a consultant to businesses regarding childcare issues, a volunteer for the MSPCC, an ESL volunteer, and a “book lady” at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. While “in retirement,” she rehabbed a big house in Roslindale. Presently, she works as Service Coordinator for the Needham Housing Authority. Her current volunteer work is as chauffeur for Bailey, a therapy dog in the Alzheimer's unit at the Bedford VA Hospital.
Joseph B. Lillyman, LICSW is a clinical social worker in a private practice in Concord, which serves children and adults from surrounding towns in the greater Boston area. He is actively involved in mental health advocacy and has served as past President of the American Association for Partial Hospitalization, and he presently chairs the Consortium for Psychotherapy, another advocacy group of multi-disciplined mental health professionals who network across the U.S. He has been affiliated with Gifford since its inception, first as a staff member in 1965 and then again in 1973 as a Board member.
Philip J. Ortins is Vice-President of C & R Management Corporation of Chestnut Hill and has been involved in real estate management for more than 30 years. He has been actively involved in the construction and renovation of The Gifford School's campus during the past 15 years.
Bill Poulin is managing director of product management and development at Columbia Management Investment Advisers, LLC, where he is responsible for retail and institutional product strategy and development in Boston. As a member of the investment community since 1979, Mr. Poulin also has served as vice president of investment product management and development at Fidelity Investments, as an executive vice president and director of marketing at LifeHarbor in Cambridge, and as a vice president of investment banking at Putnam Lovell, in New York. In addition, he spent eight years at John Hancock Funds where he most recently was the senior vice president of marketing and corporate development. Poulin is a graduate of Keene State College and received an M.B.A. in international / corporate finance from Fordham University Graduate School of Business.
Robert Rothberg is a business lawyer with more than 30 years experience in private practice and industry. He is of Counsel to the Boston law firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP.
J. Arthur Taylor retired from a 39-year career in banking, most recently with Bay Bank. After retirement he studied furniture making for three years at the North Bennett Street School and currently makes furniture in a shop in West Concord. He has been active in town governance in Carlisle and has served on the board of several non-profit organizations, including Emerson Hospital and Hurricane Island Outward Bound School.
Geline W. Williams is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, an independent state agency that coordinates technology, training, policy, and legislation for the eleven elected District Attorneys and their combined staffs of eighteen hundred prosecutors, victim-witness advocates, and investigators. Prior to taking that position in 2000, Ms. Williams spent fourteen years as a Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney and focused particularly on issues of child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault. She began her legal career as a civil litigator in Boston before joining the public sector.
Honorary Board Members
Frank C. Bequaert formerly worked as a staff member at the IBM Scientific Center in Cambridge, MA, and as a professor at Northeastern University. Frank and his wife, Lucia, own and operate Bequaert Old Books, an antiquarian bookstore in Fitzwilliam, NH. Frank was one of the original members of the Gifford Board of Directors and served as President of the Board.
Tristram Blake served as Executive Director of the South End Community Health Center for 38 years. Tris is particularly interested in management issues in non-profit organizations. He has been an organizational consultant to Gifford.
Nancy Grady has worked for many years as a teacher, tutor, and consultant for learning disabled students.
Martin R. Leinwand, Esq. has been associated with The Gifford School since 1978 when he was a middle school teacher. Following a twenty-year law practice with Ropes & Gray and McDermott, Will & Emery, where he specialized in advising healthcare facilities and companies, Mr. Leinwand became a Senior Vice President of Healthways, Inc. A Gifford Board member for twenty years, including terms as President and Vice-President, he spearheaded the school's fundraising efforts to rebuild the school's campus in Weston. He and his wife, Eileen, are now residents of Franklin, TN.
Dan Rothenberg is active in the real estate business in the Greater Boston area. He has been actively involved in the development of The Gifford School's campus.
Mel Scovell became active in managing community health centers and mental health centers after many years as a businessman. In the early 1970s he served as Assistant Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare as head of the state Medicaid program. His late wife, Cynthia, was a long-time Gifford Board member.
Marcia B. Stern is a retired early childhood special educator and currently is affiliated with the Concord Children's Center. Her youngest son attended The Gifford School. She served for over 25 years on the Gifford School’s Board of Directors and retired to the Honorary Board in September 2011.
Consuelo K. Tagiuri, M.D is a retired psychiatrist and faculty member of the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital. She also was the supervisor of early childhood programs at Boston’s Children’s Hospital until 2000. For twenty years Connie was Gifford’s school psychiatrist. After retiring from the school, Connie became a member of the Board of Directors where she served for the past twenty years, until her recent retirement.
Executive Director
Michael J. Bassichis came to The Gifford School as a social worker in 1976. Prior to this time he worked at The Judge Baker Child Guidance Center and Camp Wediko and trained at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Roxbury Court Clinic. Having been the Assistant Director for many years, he was appointed Executive Director in 1987.
In Memorium
The following Board members are listed in memory and in honor of their significant activity and contribution to The Gifford School and the Board of Directors. We thank you.
Robert L. Fenn retired from a 30-year career with Lowell Shoe in Hudson, NH, where he served as Executive Vice President. For eight years he was President of Gifford's Board.
S. Norman Sherry, M.D. retired after 36 years of practice specializing in developmental-behavioral pediatrics. Dr. Sherry served as Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and was a board member of the Child Welfare League of America for 24 years.
Cynthia Scovell is a past president of the board of directors. For many years she was the chairperson of the Statewide Advisory Committee to the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services. Cynthia volunteered in our art program as a way to get to know Gifford’s staff and students.
Len Tucker attended Andover Academy and then went on to Yale University to become a civil engineer. He served as a captain in the army during World War II and was recalled to serve in Morocco during the Korean War. As a civilian, he worked in construction for forty years. After retiring in 1951, Len volunteered in an inner city school and served on Gifford’s Board of Directors.
Peter S. Yozell was in the insurance business for over 60 years, the last 35 as a health and welfare broker. He was active in the Weston Town Committee and served on the Town of Weston's Housing Needs Committee. Previously, Yozell had chaired the Town of Weston Committee on Employee Health Insurance Matters. He was a member of The Gifford School's Board for over 25 years.
Bob Fenn was a member of this board for almost 30 years, serving as board president for several terms. His boundless energy, indefatigable enthusiasm, and commitment to the school and its students were driving forces behind the expansion of Gifford's campus over the last twenty years, and led - over Bob's protest - to the naming of The Fenn Center in his honor twenty years ago.
