Our 14-member Board has extensive experience in digital and print journalism, finance, technology, business, law, and the communities we serve in the Tri-Corner Region of New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
Membership is capped at 20 and the Board is working to enlist additional directors familiar with our media markets and experienced in matters important to the future of a print-and-digital news organization.
Dan Dwyer, Chair
Dan has owned and operated Johnnycake Books, seller of rare and collectible books, in Salisbury, since 2000, all the while active in public and civic affairs. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1974, Dan served on the research staff of the first Intelligence Committee of the U.S. Senate, and joined the Carter presidential campaign in 1976, after which he worked for the press advance office at the White House. He worked at CBS in Washington and New York before permanently moving to Salisbury in 1986. Dan was a candidate for the Connecticut State Senate in 1992 and 1994 and has served on a number of local and regional boards including Salisbury Family Services and the Northwest Connecticut Community Foundation and as an elected member of the Planning & Zoning Commission of the Town of Salisbury. His avocation is theater and he is the U.S. reviewer for the German magazine Blickpunkt Musical. Dan is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America and The Grolier Club.
Brian Ross, Vice Chair
Brian spent more than four decades as one of the country’s most honored investigative reporters. His stories have earned him every major broadcast journalism award, including 19 Emmys, six Peabodys and six Columbia DuPont awards. Ross is also the author of the New York Times best-selling book “The Madoff Chronicles,” detailing the crimes of financial fraudster Bernard Madoff. Ross currently serves as Chief Investigative Correspondent of the Law and Crime Network, which he joined in 2018 after 40 years of similar roles at ABC News and NBC News. He and his wife have lived in Sharon since 1986.
Devereux Chatillon, Secretary
Devereux is an experienced media and intellectual property attorney who specializes in the area of journalism and intellectual property rights counseling. Dev has worked at: Scholastic, Inc. as General Counsel; Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP (now Dentons) as a partner; Callaway Digital Arts, Inc., an Apple app developer; The New Yorker; and ABC. Educated at New York University (JD, Law), and Harvard University (AB, American History), Dev lives in New York City and practices in New York State. Dev is member of the Board of Trustees of the Practicing Law Institute, where she serves as Chair of the Board. For over 10 years, she was an Adjunct Instructor in the Masters Program in Publishing at the NYU School of Professional Studies. She has a home in Sharon.
Karen Byers, Treasurer
Karen retired in 2019 from her position as managing director and chief financial officer of the Markle Foundation, based in New York City. For 27 years, she managed the investment, financial, legal, corporate, accounting, budgeting, human resources, real estate and administrative affairs of this nonprofit organization. Earlier in her career, she worked for a variety of companies and organizations and was a management consultant specializing in nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions. Raised in Europe and the U.S. as part of a Foreign Service family, she holds two degrees in philosophy and an MBA. Karen lives in North Canaan, on the last remnant of family land in Canaan Valley settled by her grandparents in the 1930s. She is a regular sorter of books for the annual Norfolk Library book sale and a member of the vestry council of Christ Trinity Church in Sheffield, MA.
Henry Blodget
Henry Blodget is co-founder, Executive Chair of the Board and occasional columnist of Business Insider Inc., a global journalism organization with more than 700 staff members and offices and affiliates in more than 17 countries. Insider’s publications and programming reach more than 300 million people worldwide each month. A former top-ranked Wall Street analyst, Henry is often a guest on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and other networks. He has contributed to The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times, Fortune, New York, the Financial Times, and other publications. He has written extensively about technology and investing and is the author of “The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual: A Consumer’s Guide to Investing.” Henry received a B.A. from Yale University. He was born in New York.
Dave Colmar
Dave has lived in the Northwest Corner since 2010 and is a tech/marketing consultant and website designer with his own company founded in 2001. Previously he worked in film, living in Los Angeles and Europe. Dave is a graduate of Amherst College and Stanford University.
Meg Downey
Meg Downey spent most of her career as a journalist, starting out as editor of the Millerton News. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Downey was executive editor of the Poughkeepsie Journal and managing editor of the Tennessean in Nashville. Downey has won more than 40 national journalism awards, including the Edward J. Meeman Award for Environmental Reporting. She has been an editor and contributing writer for more than a dozen books, among them “The Hudson Valley, Our Heritage, Our Future” and “West Point, Legend on the Hudson.” In her career she has also been a magazine editor and a television news cohost and additionally served as chief marketing officer for the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. She taught a journalism writing and ethics seminar at Vassar College for nine years. She is active as an environmentalist and serves as chair of the Hudson River Valley Greenway Communities Council and co-chair of the Maurice D. Hinchey Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area. She is also a member of the board of the Hudson River Foundation for scientific and environmental research and the Leadership Council for the Botanic Garden of Smith College, among other organizations. A graduate of Smith, Downey lives in Millerton, New York, with her husband, Edward, an attorney. They have two sons.
Noreen Doyle
Noreen retired to her home in Salisbury in 2019, having lived and worked in London from 1990 to 2019, and prior to that in NYC and Houston TX. In her executive career, Noreen worked for many years at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development set up in 1991 to finance the introduction of the private sector in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, eventually retiring as First Vice President and head of the Banking Department. Before joining EBRD in 1992, Noreen held a number of positions at Bankers Trust Company (now Deutsche Bank) specializing in natural resources and leveraged finance. Noreen is currently on the board of the Berkshire Opera Festival, Great Barrington, Mass. And a trustee of Dominican Academy, NYC. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Noreen has a BA from the College of Mount Saint Vincent, Riverdale, N.Y., and an MBA from Tuck School at Dartmouth.
Rob Fish
A Connecticut native, Robert Fish, attended Avon Old Farm School where he was editor of the yearbook and captain of the varsity swimming team. After graduating from Rollins College in Winter Park, FL, he founded, in 1991, the design firm Robert V. Fish & Associates, which specialized in residential architecture in Hartford, Fairfield and Litchfield Counties and won dozens of design awards. In recent years, Rob’s practice has focused on Litchfield County. He has served multiple terms on the boards of Sharon Land Trust and Sharon Playhouse. A resident of Sharon for 23 years, he now makes his home in Salisbury.
Dick Hermans
Dick Hermans was born and raised in Milan, NY. After college, where he majored in journalism, he returned to the area and co-founded Oblong Books & Records which he now co-owns with his daughter, Suzanna. He has lived in Pine Plains since the late 70s along with his wife of over 40 years, Priscilla Herdman. Dick has served on the Pine Plains School Board and currently serves on the town Planning Board. He co-founded the New Pine Plains Herald and serves on that digital newspaper’s board. He has been a leader of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail Association since its founding and he has a weekly Saturday morning folk radio program on WKZE.
Jonathan Landman
Jonathan is a retired editor and news executive, most recently at Bloomberg and previously at The New York Times and other newspapers. He edited opinion columns at Bloomberg on politics, economics, law, public policy and finance and created an explanatory journalism product for the news department. At the Times he served as culture editor, metro editor and, for five years, manager of the newsroom’s transformation from print to web. Jonathan is a graduate of Amherst College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and was an Amherst trustee from 2003 to 2009. He is now a member of the board of the Cornwall Chronicle. He lives in West Cornwall with his wife, Bonnie Vangilder, a retired TV news producer.
Jamie Lehrer
Jamie most recently worked as Development Director at the Off-Broadway theater company The New Group for 10 years. Before that, she held the same position at the Lyric Hammersmith in London. After attending Vassar College, her working life began in publishing as an editor and writer in Lausanne and London. Her children’s book, “The Magic Costumes,” was published in the U.K., U.S. and Australia, and translated into Spanish and Portuguese. She has lived in Switzerland and Singapore, but mostly in the U.K., where she and her husband, John O’Brien, raised three children. Jamie now lives in North Canaan where she has had a home for over 20 years. She is a member of the board of the Salisbury Forum.
Scott Siegler
Scott Siegler is an American television executive and media investor. He was VP of drama and then VP of comedy programs at CBS, Senior VP at Warner Bros television and participated in the startup of TriStar Television Studio, Netscape Communications, Pandora Media, and Granada America, and was one of the first Hollywood broadcast executives to anticipate the entertainment potential in digital media. He has served on the boards of The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and The Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan investigative journalism organization in Washington, DC.
Larry Walsh
Larry is vice chairman of the Hawthorn Group, a Virginia based public affairs firm, where he serves as consultant to corporations, trade groups and not-for-profit organizations on public policy and legislative issues and crisis preparedness. He is a former Managing Director of Risk Consulting at Marsh. He was a long-term member of the board of Youth INC, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of young people in New York City, and continues to serve on its Sustaining Board. In the past, he has served on the board of the Connecticut Audubon Society and on the Business Committee of the Wildlife Conservation Society. He is a member of the Lotos Club in New York City, one of America’s oldest literary clubs, and the Sharon Country Club. He and his wife, Gael Doar, live on the family’s farm in Millerton, N.Y.