About

Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is overseen and served by its Board of Directors. Serving on the Board are:

Alan Rappaport, Chair
Susannah Bristol, Vice Chair
Peter Brooks, Treasurer
Alec Walsh, Clerk

George Ahl
Chris Alley
Stever Aubrey
Jesse Huntley Ausubel
Janet Baker
Barbara Cole
Susan Crampton
Matthew Dix
Thomas Enders
Lisa Foster
Tara Gayle
Lizzie Horvitz
Sevda Kleinman
Chris Miller
Adam Moore, President
Wanda Moreis
Hillary Noyes-Keene
Brien O’Brien
Elizabeth Packer
William Plapinger
Tom Rapone
Robin Rivera
Aileen Roberts
John Schaefer
Carla Taylor-Pla
Samme Thompson
Sara Tucker
Amy Weinberg

Honorary Trustees
Emily Bramhall
April Hamel

Alan Rappaport, Chair, is an Adjunct Professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and Advisory Director of Roundtable Investment Partners. Mr. Rappaport spent his career in the financial services industry at Oppenheimer, the Beacon Group and Bank of America and currently serves on a number of corporate boards. He has served on the boards of a number of non-profit organizations including the American Museum of Natural History, the NYU Langone Medical Center, as chair of the board of GuideStar, and as Co-Chair of the Parents Committee of Duke University. He received his BA from Harvard College and MBA from Stanford University. A life-long resident of Martha’s Vineyard, he lives with his wife Jill and two children in Chilmark and New York.

Susannah Bristol, Vice Chair, is a resident of Tisbury. She served as a director of Sheriff’s Meadow from 2010 until 2020 and, after a brief hiatus, rejoined the Board of Directors in 2021. A graduate of Williams College and Columbia University Graduate School of Business, Susannah is president of a family-owned land company. Her primary interests focus on conservation, historic preservation, education and the arts. Having served as a trustee of the Episcopal School, The Chapin School and Groton School, she currently serves as a member of the Visiting Committee of the Williams College Museum of Art. With long term ties to the West Chop community, she recently was appointed to the Tisbury Master Plan Steering Committee.

Peter Brooks, Treasurer, was Co-Founder and Managing Director of CornerStone Partners LLC, an asset management firm for endowment and foundation clients, from which he retired in 2018. Mr. Brooks is a member of the boards of: Sentara Healthcare, Norfolk, Virginia; and Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, Tisbury, Massachusetts. Prior to establishing CornerStone in 1997, he managed his own private equity firm, Naushon Capital LLC, Boston through which he participated in the acquisition, financing or restructuring of companies in a variety of businesses ranging from sophisticated medical research to high technology and innovative sports equipment manufacturing. Before establishing Naushon Capital, Mr. Brooks was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. Mr. Brooks graduated from Harvard College and received his MBA degree from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and MA (Administration and Policy Analysis) degree from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.

Alec Walsh, Clerk, and his wife Sally moved full time to the Vineyard in 2019, coincidental with his retirement from Harding Loevner, an asset management firm in New Jersey where he was a portfolio manager and a partner. The restorative power of the outdoors and hiking have been a constant in their lives and those of their three children, with Jockey Hollow National Historical Park in New Jersey, the AMC huts in the White Mountains and the trail system here on the island all being an important part of their daily routine. His formative years were spent on Chappaquiddick before buying a house, in 2010, in Chilmark between Quitsa Pond and Squibnocket Beach. Alec is also a trustee of the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation.

George Ahl spent the majority of his career with M3 Capital Partners, which focuses on creating and scaling specialized real estate companies globally. He served previously on the boards of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA); the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; the Madison Square Park Conservancy; and on the Visiting Committee for the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). George was also on the Director’s Council for The Wooster Group, and remains on their Advisory Board. While maintaining a home in the Hudson Valley, George was a volunteer trailkeeper for the Mohonk Mountain Preserve, as well as a trail builder. He remains a Life Member of that organization. A graduate of Williams College, George splits his time between Chilmark and Williamstown, MA.

Chris Alley was born and raised on Martha’s Vineyard and has lived on the Vineyard most of his adult life. He is a civil and environmental engineer at Schoefield Barbini and Hoehn. Chris served on the SMF board from 2008-2018, as President of the Board for three of those years. He returned to the board in 2020.

Stever Aubrey and his wife, Elsie, are full-time island residents living in West Tisbury. Stever spent the better part of his career in the Boston area in the advertising business and then subsequently ran two healthcare companies. He’s now dabbling a bit in farming, raising pigs and chickens and tending to a sizable vegetable garden. Stever is an outdoor enthusiast who loves hiking, boating, and skiing. In addition to his work on the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, Stever has served on the board of The Martha’s Vineyard Museum as Board Chair, and is on the MV Bank Board of Directors as well as The Foundation for Underway Experiential Learning (FUEL). Stever is passionate about being actively involved with organizations on Martha’s Vineyard that are helping to preserve the natural beauty, heritage and diverse cultures of the island.

Jesse Huntley Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University, began his career as a resident fellow of the Climate Research Board of the US National Academy of Sciences, for whom he helped organize the first UN World Climate Conference in 1979. Since 1989 Mr. Ausubel has served on the faculty of Rockefeller, where he leads a program to elaborate the technical vision of a large, prosperous society that emits little harmful and spares large amounts of land and sea for nature. In the late 1990s Mr. Ausubel initiated the first global Census of Marine Life to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in all oceans. He now advances use of naked DNA in seawater for low-cost, easy surveys of marine life that do not disturb the animals. Mr. Ausubel is an adjunct scientist of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and member of the Council on Foreign Relations where he serves on the board of Foreign Affairs. A deep sea lobster, Dinochelus ausubeli, and genus of Bryozoa (small aquatic invertebrates), the Jessethoa, are named in his honor. His family began summering in Oak Bluffs in 1955.

Janet Baker is a trusted business advisor to iconic branded businesses and has served as an operations focused C-suite executive reporting to the Board of Directors. She is Assistant General Counsel with S&P Global, Inc. Janet is an experienced corporate and commercial attorney with expertise in information privacy and cybersecurity. She was a 2022 Fellow of the Economic Club of New York. She is a thought leader and won 2nd Place in the 2022 Inaugural Economic Club of New York’s Innovation and Social Impact Challenge. Her White Paper was entitled, Unleashing the Power of Climate Markets Will Drive Privacy ESG Risks: Is Your Board Seeing the Iceberg? She began her legal career in private practice in the corporate, finance, and securities departments of Dickstein Shapiro and Verner Liipfert (now DLA Piper).

Previously, Janet served as Executive Director of The Links, Inc., an international non-governmental organization (NGO), and is a member of Jack and Jill of America, Inc., a national organization for Black parents and children. Janet has received a Special Achievement Award from the U.S. Department of Justice. Janet is a resident of Washington, D.C., and summer resident of Oak Bluffs, where she is a member of the Cottagers, Inc. Janet’s Oak Bluffs family roots extend for nearly 30 years. She appeared on Voice of America, “Next Steps with Chris Meeks” and was S&P’s 2021 Juneteenth Day Speaker discussing her father’s, LTC (Ret.) William Baker, book. The Brownsville Redemption: Theodore Roosevelt’s Wrongful Disgrace of the All-Black 25th Infantry in Brownsville, Texas, 1906.

Barbara (Barbie) Cole is a registered architect in New Jersey with a small residential practice in the Princeton area. Barbie received both an AB and a MArch in Architecture from Princeton University. She has more recently scaled back her business and now spends half her time volunteering in the fields of education, conservation and the environment.

Barbie serves on the board of Middlebury College. She served on the Board of Princeton Day School for seventeen years in various roles culminating as the Board Chair from 2012-17. She is currently an emerita trustee of the school. She serves as Chair of the Board of the Watershed Institute in Pennington NJ, a regional environmental group dedicated to keeping water clean, safe and healthy. She is on the Princeton University Advisory Council. She also serves on the Chappaquiddick Advisory Committee of the Trustees of the Reservations.

Barbie is a passionate amateur landscape designer and gardener. She has designed extensive perennial and vegetable gardens at her family’s homes. She also manages woodlands, meadows, and fields on their 120 acre farm in Hopewell NJ, and coastal ponds, wetlands, sandy moraines and native fields on their properties on Chappaquiddick. Other interests and hobbies include cooking (using the produce from her gardens and chickens), travel, hiking, art and architectural history, and collecting.

Susan Crampton is a resident of Vineyard Haven and is a certified public accountant. She served on the Board of Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation for 10 years, from 2012 to 2022, and chaired our Accreditation and Audit Committees. Susan led the effort for Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation to adopt the Land Trust Alliance Standards and Practices and led our first effort to attain accreditation with the Land Trust Accreditation Commission. Susan has been involved in Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation for decades, as her late husband, Steve, was President of Sheriff’s Meadow from 2006 to 2008 and served on the Board for years prior. Susan serves on the Board of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, and in 2021 she was awarded the Excellence in Leadership Award from the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association. A graduate of Middlebury College, Susan spent much of her life in Vermont, where she and Steve raised their family and were active in their professions and in the community. Susan served as the Secretary of Transportation and was the first woman to serve as the Secretary of Transportation in Vermont.

Matthew Dix moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 1990. He and his wife, Rebecca Miller, own and operate North Tabor Farm. They also have three children who were born and raised on the farm. Matthew recently retired from the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank after 27 years, much of those spent as their property foreman. He has a strong interest in regenerative agriculture and progressive land management practices aimed at healing or mitigating the impacts of concentrated human activity on conservation lands.

Thomas Enders is a Senior Managing Director with Manatt Health, the integrated consulting, policy, and legal division of Manatt, Phelps, and Phillips, a leading national law firm. Tom works with academic health centers, medical schools, and children’s hospitals on the unique organizational, financial, and operational challenges posed by academic medicine. Tom is a graduate of Phillips Exeter, the University of Chicago (A.B.) and the Yale School of Management. For many years Tom served as a director of the Forest Stewards Guild, of Santa Fe, NM which practices and promotes responsible forestry. Tom and his partner Elise Thoron are avid walkers, and for the last 25 years have appreciated the variety and beauty of the Island’s trails, and are committed to the future ability for all to roam widely on this special land.

Lisa Foster, Ph. D., ACC is a business coach, speaker, and author of the book Bag Lady: How I Started a Business for a Greener World and Changed the Way America Shops (April 2022). As a coach, she helps managers become better leaders by using emotional intelligence to create the conditions for high performance. In 2005, she founded 1 Bag at a Time, Inc., a first-to-market reusable grocery bag company. A former high-school English teacher, she became a pioneer in the fight against single-use plastic and a top supplier of reusable bags in the US. She sold her business in 2017. In addition to coaching, Lisa speaks, leads workshops, and writes about emotional intelligence, leadership, and storytelling.

Tara Gayle is a landscape designer with an emphasis in resilient ecological design. In addition to becoming a certified soil consultant, her education has taken her across the country and the world, studying permaculture design and regenerative agricultural systems. At the core of her philosophy is a mission to encourage people to look at their environments holistically, while incorporating elements of time-honored design through reconnecting with and reinforcing our sacred relationship with the natural environment. Gayle is a year round resident of Martha’s Vineyard, and founder of the island-based landscape design company Gayle Gardens. Tara is a lead designer with United Designers; an intercontinental team seeking regenerative solutions for large scale projects. She has an Advanced Permaculture design certificate from Holland, and a BA in Studio Arts from Marymount Manhattan College

Lizzie Horvitz has been coming to Martha’s Vineyard since before she could talk, and it continues to be her favorite place on the planet. When she’s on island, she tries to jump in the ocean every day, explore the walking trails and try every restaurant that serves breakfast. She’s currently the founder and CEO of Finch, a company that helps educate consumers on the environmental footprint of their purchases and incentivizes them to make better decisions. She has a BA from Middlebury College and an MBA and Master of Environmental Management from Yale. Lizzie is originally from Shaker Heights, Ohio and currently lives in Denver.

Sevda Kleinman grew up in Turkey and after living in London, she now resides in New York City along with her husband Blake and their three children. She discovered Martha’s Vineyard while in college and became a seasonal resident in 2007. Sevda worked in advertising agencies – TBWA Chiat Day in Los Angeles and Fallon London for 15 years creating television campaigns and marketing communications plans for brands such as PlayStation, Orange, and Cadbury’s. Her young family considers the Vineyard to be their constant “home” and have hiked nearly all of the Sheriff’s Meadow trails and enjoy sailing and long beach days.

Chris Miller of Edgartown is the president and founder of Millers Professionals Group. Millers Professionals is a group of three companies, specializing in construction, landscaping, and pools. His company employs 80 people and is one of the largest such companies on Martha’s Vineyard. Chris founded the company in 2002 and his business has steadily grown. In 2023, Chris received a “40 under 40” recognition from the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce. A year-round resident, Chris came to the island from Brazil, and is very involved in the community, including local churches, schools, and sports organizations. Chris serves on the Board of the YMCA of Martha’s Vineyard. He is active with his children’s sports and is a regular presence on the soccer field sidelines during busy workweek afternoons. Chris loves the outdoors and understands all the effort that goes into good stewardship of conservation properties.

Adam R. Moore has served as the President of Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation since 2008. He was the Executive Director of the Connecticut Forest & Park Association from 2001 until 2008 and the Land Superintendent for the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank Commission from 1998 until 2001. Mr. Moore earned a Master of Forestry degree from the Yale School of the Environment in 1995 and a B.A. in Biology from Yale College in 1992. He lives in Chilmark with his wife, Melissa, and their four children.

Wanda Moreis is a third generation islander of Cape Verdean descent. She is a MVRHS graduate (Class of ’81) and earned a BA from College of the Holy Cross (Class of ’85). Upon joining the Jesuit Volunteer Corp (JVC), Wanda travelled to Los Angeles and worked as an inner-city, elementary Catholic school teacher, Principal, team coach, and community advocate. Wanda received her Master’s of Social Work (MSW) from California State University, Long Beach. She returned to live on the Vineyard full time in 2004. She has over 20 years of combined experience in Child Protective Services in Los Angeles and Massachusetts (MV). She is currently retired and resides in her family home in Vineyard Haven.

Hillary Noyes-Keene is a fine art photographer, painter and artist, who lives on Martha’s Vineyard with her family. She grew up in rural upstate New York, which led to a true love of landforms and nature. After teaching elementary school for a number of years, she continued her education, obtaining MA Landscape Architecture and MA Architecture from University of Colorado, Denver, and eventually opened a landscape architecture firm, Noyes Design. Raising four children on the Island, Hillary has been involved with multiple community education organizations advocating for children and the outdoors. With a career now focused on the arts, Hillary enjoys the ever-changing colors and textures of her surrounding landscapes.

Brien O’Brien and his wife Mary Hasten make their primary residence in Chicago but have been seasonal residents of Martha’s Vineyard since the 1980s. Brien is Chairman and CEO of Port Capital, a global investment management firm which manages domestic and developed markets global equity strategies. In addition to his career in the financial industry over the last 30 years, Brien has also been active in educational and conservation efforts. Brien is a Trustee of the University of Chicago where he also serves on the Executive Committee of the University. Additionally, he is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago Medical Center. Brien serves as a Trustee for Boston College and is a member of their Investment and Endowment Committee. Brien graduated with honors from Boston College with a B.S. in Finance and Theology. Brien previously served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation from 2010 to 2020. From 2017 to 2020 Brien served as President of the Board of Directors of the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation. During his tenure he initiated the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation Capital Campaign which is concluding in December 2021. Along with other members of the Board, the staff of Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, and the community, he was actively involved in the effort to secure Red Gate Farm, now Squibnocket Pond Reservation, which will be open to the public in fall 2022.

Elizabeth Packer (Liz) was born and raised on Martha’s Vineyard. Liz attended Wheaton College, receiving a BA in Studio Art. While at Wheaton, she spent a semester abroad with Semester at Sea. Upon graduating, Liz re-joined Semester at Sea as a crew member on the R/V Westward. After returning to port, she explored the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains, and later sailed extensively throughout New England and the Caribbean.

Liz established Spring Moon Farm, a small multi-generation family farm in the Northern Pines area of Tisbury. She is the proprietor of Smith Bodfish Swift, a grain store in Vineyard Haven where her creativity and love of gardening and farming along with her keen sensitivity to the environment connect. Liz is an avid horse-woman, naturalist, and hiker. Each of these inspire her poetry. She shares these passions with her children, Oscar and Lucy, both well-established in their own pursuits of conservation, biology, and forestry.

William A. Plapinger was a partner, in New York and London, for almost three decades (and is now Senior Counsel) at the global law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Bill and his wife Cassie Murray have been seasonal, and more recently permanent, residents of the Vineyard since 1968. They built a home near Cedar Tree Neck in the mid-1990s and now split their time between the Vineyard and New York City. In addition to being a director of Sheriff’s Meadow, Bill is a member of the governing boards (and executive committees) of The Posse Foundation and the Sundance Institute and was formerly chair of the board of trustees of Vassar College, a Commissioner on the U.S.-U.K. Fulbright Commission, and a member of the governing boards of the American School in London, the Conference of Board Chairs of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges and Global Citizen Year and a co-founder and director of the American Friends of the British Museum. He has also worked in recent years with partners on a venture to provide finance to African students at U.S. universities. Bill is a graduate of Vassar College and New York University School of Law, and was a Fellow in the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University. Bill and Cassie have three grown children who spent their childhood summers on Martha’s Vineyard and who return to the Vineyard as often as they can.

Tom J. Rapone is a year-round resident of Edgartown and a real estate attorney with the Martha’s Vineyard law firm of McCarron, Murphy & Vukota, LLP. As a child, Tom was introduced to the Island during summer visits, which were the start of his lifelong passion for boating and fishing. Prior to law practice, Tom spent over fifteen years as a saltwater fly-fishing guide based seasonally out of Martha’s Vineyard, the Outer Banks of North Carolina and the Florida Keys. A native of Medfield, Massachusetts, Tom received a BA from Boston College and JD from Suffolk University Law School.

Robin Rivera is an Emmy Award-winning media producer, Robin is a principal of Digital Laundry, a media production, studio and archiving services company based in New York’s East Harlem community, but now working remotely. A native of Los Angeles, she graduated from Stanford University (B.S. Mechanical Engineering) and the University of Southern California (Master of Urban and Regional Planning). While volunteering for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, she was invited to move to Lausanne, Switzerland to work for the International Olympic Committee. There, she spent three years as the English-language editor of the Olympic Movement’s monthly magazine, the Olympic Review. Robin then moved to New York in 1989 to work for ABC Sports, first as a features producer, then a programming executive. She was most recently the co-treasurer of the board of Civitas, an organization dedicated to addressing quality of life issues in East Harlem and the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and from 2017 to 2020, she served on the Board of Directors of the New York Junior League. She received the NYJL’s Outstanding Volunteer and Outstanding Sustainer awards in 1998 and 2019, respectively. Having purchased their Quansoo (Chilmark) property in 2004, and enjoying from long weekends to entire summers there, George and Robin moved to Chilmark full-time in early 2020. Currently, Robin is also a member of the Chilmark Town Affairs Council.

Aileen K. Roberts serves as Vice Chair of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia where she chairs the building committee. She has served on the board of directors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Franklin Institute, the Avenue of the Arts, the International House and the William Penn Charter School. She graduated from the Design School of North Carolina State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Landscape Architecture. Prior to starting a family she was a banker with PNB, now Wells Fargo, in the investment management and trust divisions. Aileen enjoys summers in West Tisbury working on design projects, vegetable gardening, golf, and walking the trails on the island.

John Schaefer has been a seasonal resident of Edgartown since 1978. He and his wife Pam live next to Ox Pond Meadow and Little Beach preserves. John was a member of the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation Board of Directors from 2005 to 2015 and served as its President from 2011 to 2014. He rejoined the Board in June 2016. He retired from Morgan Stanley in 2006 where he was a member of the Management Committee and was President and Chief Operating Officer of the Global Wealth Management Group. John is a board member of Annaly Capital Management (NYSE:NLY). He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Martha’s Vineyard Hospital from 2011 to 2022, serving as Chair the last three years. John is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Harvard Business School.

Carla Taylor-Pla has been enjoying Martha’s Vineyard, where her family has a home in Chilmark, for the last 45 years. Carla started her career as a broadcast journalist in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Following that, she worked to improve educational opportunities for children as a policy advocate for high quality early childhood education in Washington, DC. In addition, Carla served on the leadership team that launched the educational programming brand, PBS KIDS, for Public Broadcasting Service. More recently, she worked for The Washington Post where she managed advertising promotions. Carla is currently Founder and Owner of Carla and Liv KIDS, which supports children and parents in the transition to preschool and kindergarten. She is a speaker on the subject and author of a book series, SCHOOL IS NEW TO ME: A Beginner’s Guide to Starting School, which includes bilingual (English-Spanish) versions. Carla holds a BA from Yale University, an M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University (Medill School of Journalism), and an MBA from American University. She lives in the Washington, DC Metro area with her husband, daughter and rescue dog.

Samme Thompson serves as board member and senior advisor in the areas of digital transformation, artificial intelligence software and telecommunications. He was previously chief strategy officer at Motorola Corporation, responsible for corporate strategy, M&A, and One Motorola Ventures. Prior to Motorola, he was a Wall Street investment banker, a senior consultant at McKinsey & Co, and head of strategic planning at AT&T Information Systems. Samme presently serves on the board of directors for American Tower Corporation, is a trustee at the UChicago’s Marine Biological Labs, based in Woods Hole, and is a member of the Board at Pitt Business. Samme holds an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and a BS in electrical engineering from Prairie View A&M University. He and his wife, Janet currently live in Chicago, and are summer residents of West Tisbury.

Sara Tucker grew up coming to the Vineyard every summer with her parents and grandparents and now she and her husband and children have their own place in Vineyard Haven. Sara’s career has been focused on environmental conservation, including public lands management and water policy. She is currently a partner at Natural Resource Results, a consulting firm in Washington D.C. representing several non-profit conservation organizations. Prior to joining the firm, Sara served as a Senior Professional Staff Member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. She worked for three consecutive Chairs – including Senator Bingaman, Senator Wyden and Senator Landrieu. Sara staffed the National Parks Subcommittee under the leadership of Senator Mark Udall from Colorado. Sara served as the Director of Government Affairs at Trout Unlimited before her time in the Senate. She received her master’s in environmental policy from the University of Michigan and a bachelor of science degree from Cornell University. She is originally from Philadelphia and now lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and children.

Amy Weinberg and her family (husband John and 3 adult children) have called the Island “home” for thirty summers, returning as often as possible throughout the year. Passionate hikers, Amy and her family have always enjoyed the extensive trail systems and diverse topography that the Vineyard offers. As part of the Farm Group, Amy has recently taken on stewardship of Beetlebung Farm in Chilmark. She also serves on the board of the Smith College Art Museum and has recently rotated off the Board of the National Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Washington DC where she served for 12 years.