Board of Directors

Betsy Burton, Vest Pocket Business Alliance of Salt Lake City, is the owner of The King's English Bookstore, founded in 1977 in Salt Lake City. An avid reader and lover of literature, she is passionate about keeping independent bookstores alive and well in the world. She was named bookseller of the year in 2001 by Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association, has done countless book reviews for radio, television, and print media, and writes for and edits The Inkslinger, a literary newsletter.

Merrian Fuller, at large, is currently studying renewable energy and business at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. She serves on the board of the E.F. Schumacher Society. Merrian was previously the managing director of BALLE and the director of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia. She has written for publications such as The Nation, Adbusters, Orion Magazine, YES! Magazine, In Business, and LILIPOH. Merrian graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University in international relations.

Laury Hammel, Sustainable Business Network of Greater Boston, author, Growing Local Value, founded a business in 1972 that was committed to excellence in tennis, good health, and fun. He purchased Longfellow Clubs in 1980 and immediately expanded its operations. In 1988, Laury gathered like-minded business leaders to found New England Businesses for Social Responsibility, and in 1991 founded the national organization Business for Social Responsibility. In 2001, he co-founded the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. He plays a major role in promoting social responsibility in businesses throughout North America.

Doug Hammond, Pioneer Valley BALLE of Western Massachusetts, is the founder and CEO of Relief Resources, a mission-driven sustainable business that provides an array of staffing support and management services to human service organizations, child care centers, and social change enterprises in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Doug is also a co-founder and executive director of Community Staffing Resources, a unique nonprofit health and human services staffing enterprise, and co-founder of Joyous Workplace, a consulting firm that assists organizations to improve employee retention and organizational performance. In his generally overcommitted life outside of work, Doug has spent the last 25 years passionately engaged in the evolution of corporate social responsibility.

Manuel Hidalgo, executive director of the Latino Economic Development Corporation in Washington, DC (parent organization of DC's BALLE network, Think Local First DC) and the newest member of the BALLE board, joined the board with a specific mission - to help diversify the BALLE networks. Manny has more than 15 years' experience in community development and advocacy; currently he's working to form a new BALLE network in Wheaton, Maryland. A second-generation Cuban American, Manny has written articles on Cuba for magazines and journals.

David Korten is the author of the international bestsellers When Corporations Rule the World; The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, Globalizing Civil Society, Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda, and the new The Great Turning. He holds MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the Stanford Business School and has thirty years experience as a development worker in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He has been a Harvard Business School professor, US Air Force captain, Ford Foundation project specialist in Manila, and Asia regional advisor to the US Agency for International Development. He co-founded and is board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, and is founder and president of the People-Centered Development Forum, an associate of the International Forum on Globalization, and a member of the Social Venture Network.

Michelle Long, chair, is the executive director of Sustainable Connections, a business network in northwest Washington State made up of more than 600 locally owned independent businesses and organizations committed to buying local first, a healthy environment, meaningful employment, and a strong community. She has founded and run several businesses and organizations that focus on supporting mission-driven small and medium-sized business, including coordinating BALLE in its first two years of operation, and co-founding Viatru (aka World2Market). Her organization's work has been featured in places such as CNN, USA Today, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Orion, In Business, and Grist. She is a regular speaker about local living economies and sustainable economic development, and gives workshops on creating Think Local First campaigns, running successful grassroots non-profit organizations, and forming local business networks.

Chris Morrow, Local First Vermont, is general manager of Northshire Bookstore, a family-owned independent bookstore in Manchester Center. He doesn't want Vermont to become a suburban strip mall. He likes blues music, travel, and free-spirited people. He is married with two young rascals and lives in Weston, Vermont.

Derrell Ness, Sustainable Business Network of Portland, Oregon, is president and founder of NSA Distribution, a distributor of computerized cash registers and peripherals based in Cerritos, California. NSA celebrated its twentieth year in business in 2005. More recently, Derrell founded Community Payment Solutions, a provider of merchant credit card processing services. Derrell moved to Lake Oswego, Oregon, in 2003 and since then has served on the board of the Sustainable Business Network of Portland, the Portland BALLE Network. He played an active role in planning and implementing Portland’s Think Local First campaign, initially launched in November of 2004.

Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig opened Zingerman's Delicatessen in March of 1982 in an historic building near the Ann Arbor Farmers' Market, with a staff of two, a small selection of great-tasting specialty foods, a host of traditional Jewish dishes, and a relatively short sandwich menu. Today Zingerman's is an Ann Arbor institution.

Don Shaffer, president and CEO, RSF Social Finance, has more than 12 years of senior management experience building social mission companies. Most recently, he served as BALLE's executive director. In addition, for the past year Don was the interim executive director of Investors’ Circle, an organization that facilitates the flow of private capital (over $111 million since 1992) from angel investors, professional venture capitalists, and foundations to more than 200 companies and small funds addressing social and environmental issues.

Ellen Shepard, Local First Chicago. As executive director of the Andersonville Chamber of Commerce and the Andersonville Development Corporation, Ellen Shepard provides marketing, technical assistance, and advocacy and policy initiatives in support of the commercial district in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood. Prior to her work in Andersonville, she was a PR and marketing consultant for a variety of nonprofit and governmental organizations, including the City of Chicago Department of Housing. Her experience with small businesses began at the League of Chicago Theatres, where she provided technical assistance to arts organizations. She spent many years before that as a stage manager and technician on assorted Chicago stages, including Steppenwolf and the Goodman. She serves on the BALLE board as well as that of its Chicago affiliate, Local First Chicago. In 2003, she was named a Chicago Fellow by Loyola University.

Judy Wicks, Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, founded the White Dog Café on the first floor of her Philadelphia home in 1983. As the restaurant grew, so did her notion that the strength of her business relied upon the quality and sustainability of its locally grown ingredients. Envisioning how strengthening relationships among independent, community-rooted enterprises could inspire broad and profound cultural change, she joined the Social Venture Network and co-founded the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies in 2001. She is currently writing a book about the White Dog Café and local living economies called Good Morning, Beautiful Business.

Trustees

Cathy Berry is an angel investor and managing director of Baldwin Investment Management and Family Office. She was a stockbroker for 15 years, having completed training with Drexel Burnham Lambert and then moving to Prudential Securities. Cathy is a family member and financial advisor of the Sandy River Charitable Foundation. A founding investor in Farmers Diner, Cathy is particularly interested in rural sustainability and organic food. She is hoping to be a part of a group of Investors' Circle members launching a "Slow Money" Fund.

Michelle Knapik is the environmental program officer at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Previously she served as the director of energy policy for the City of Philadelphia, where she developed and managed several city-federal partnerships related to energy-efficient building strategies. Her work for Philadelphia focused on the introduction of sustainable building principles, including renewable energy options and related economic and community development opportunities. Michelle also worked to develop an alternative fuel program for Philadelphia and to expand a regional Clean Cities program to promote alternative fuel vehicle use and infrastructure development. She serves as chair of the Greater Philadelphia Clean Cities Coalition and on the boards of the Energy Coordinating Agency, a local nonprofit that provides energy services to low-income families, and the Philadelphia Chapter of the Society of Women Environmental Professionals.

Staff

William Shutkin, trustee and interim executive director, is an attorney, educator, writer, and non-profit pioneer. His expertise spans a variety of fields and disciplines, from sustainability to social entrepreneurship, urban planning to economic development, green design to global warming. Bill has lectured and consulted around the world on the ideas and innovations guiding us to a prosperous, sustainable future and is the author of two books, the award-winning The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century and A Republic of Trees: Field Notes on People, Place, and the Planet. The legendary environmentalist David Brower described Bill as “an environmental visionary creating solutions to today's problems with a passion that would make John Muir and Martin Luther King equally proud.”

Mary Rick, program director, holds an MBA in Sustainable Business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Washington. Her coursework there included long-term projects with Clif Bar, Ecotrust, and the WA State Employees Credit Union. Mary graduated magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she received her BA in international relations and the environment, with a minor in economic trade and development. Her studies also included a year of community development research in rural Kenya. She went on to direct the membership program at Global Exchange, an international human rights organization. Her work has been featured in Metropolis Magazine and In Business, and honored by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce. An interview with her can be found on GreenBiz radio.

Ann Bartz, program manager, has a degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley. In her working life, she has sold books, tended grapes, elected a senator, helped develop the California solar industry, edited an academic journal of economics and several award-winning national magazines, recruited small manufacturers for a climate protection program, and helped launch an early stage of the Ella Baker Center's Green for All program. She holds a certificate in permaculture design; for more than twenty years she has taught strategies for leadership development and eliminating racism. She has written on the environment, economics, health, and social change for Not Man Apart, Mother Earth News, Health, YES! and In Business, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog.

Todd Mills, program manager, has a BA in global studies with a focus on development and globalization from the University of Michigan. He also studied microfinance, economies of solidarity, and community development in Brazil and helped launch a neighborhood development project in Kampala, Uganda, focused on job creation and community health. Over the course of three years in the development department at Global Exchange, an international human rights organization based in San Francisco, Todd served as membership coordinator, interim major gifts and events coordinator, and assistant to the grants coordinator. In his spare time, Todd enjoys hiking and making furniture from reclaimed wood.