ARTS
AVA Gallery and Art Center has announced the appointment of Shari Boraz as its new executive director. A fabric artist, Boraz has developed and overseen volunteer and public relations programs for several nonprofit organizations and worked in development roles at Dartmouth College and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
Colleen Paquette of Bradford has been promoted to assistant vice president and branch relationship manager at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust. She leads the retail banking teams at the bank’s locations in Bradford and Newbury.
First Seacoast Bank has announced the addition of Latonya Wallace to its retail banking team. She will serve as assistant vice president and branch manager of the office at 1650 Woodbury Ave. in Portsmouth.
Kennebunk Savings Bank has named Jodi Beth Landry manager of its Stratham and Newmarket branches. She has 25 years of experience in banking.
Todd Watson of Gilford has joined Franklin Savings Bank as vice president, commercial loan officer. He most recently was vice president, commercial loan officer at Bangor Savings Bank.
Brown & Brown of New Hampshire, Merrimack, NFP of Wolfeboro, Cross Insurance, The Rowley Agency and HUB International have each been given Top Employee Benefits Consultant awards for New Hampshire by Mployer Advisor, an independent platform for employers to research, review and evaluate insurance brokers.
Ariana Roy has joined Merrimack County Savings Bank as branch and business manager of its Integra Drive location in Concord. Prior to joining the Merrimack, Roy worked for TD Bank in Bedford.
BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Jeanne Varney Grover of Rochester and Alicia Frye of Barrington, co-founders of the Rochester Farmers Market and Vouchers for Veterans, have been named winners of the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce’s 2021 Citizen of the Year award. Named Business of the Year was the Rochester Voice, a digital daily news site operated by Harrison Thorp and Martha Soto-Galicia. The Business of the Year award is one of the Chamber’s most prestigious awards celebrating excellence in a business’s industry and in their community. Monarch School of New England was named the Chamber’s Non-Profit of the Year.
BUSINESS SERVICES
Talient Action Group has hired Marc Forrest to lead its digital services team. He previously was director of new technology and Web2Print Production at Business Card Express.
CONSTRUCTION
Ownership of Newmarket-based Doucet Survey LLC has officially transitioned from founder Bill Doucet to several long-term leadership team members: Steve Michaud, Jack Kaiser, Jeffrey Goldknopf and Matthew Fagginger-Auer.
Doucet will remain chief operating officer of the firm he founded 28 years ago. Today, it is among the largest dedicated land surveying firms in northern New England, with offices in Newmarket, Bedford and Keene, as well as Kennebunk, Maine.
Hooksett-based Procon is design-build contractor for Monarch Communities’ newest senior living facility, the Monarch Senior Residence, in Weymouth, Mass. The community will add 165 apartments to the Monarch portfolio when it opens in the summer of 2023, the company said.
LAW
Bradley D. Holt has joined Sulloway & Hollis as an associate. He focuses his practice on medical malpractice defense, litigation and dispute resolution, counseling and regulatory compliance.
The Manchester-based law firm of McLane Middleton has announced that attorneys Daniel T. Divis and Brandon M. Vallie have been admitted to the New Hampshire Bar. Divis is an associate in the firm’s corporate department and Vallie is an associate in the firm’s trusts and estates department.
HEALTHCARE
Goodwin Community Health in Somersworth and Families First Health & Support Center in Portsmouth recently welcomed three new primary care providers: Dr. Jessica Fortin, a family medicine physician; Emily Grattan, a family nurse practitioner; and physician assistant Lauren Koczela.
Heather Martin of Salem, a medical assistant for Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Manchester clinic, has been named the 2021 Ambassador of the Year for 20/20 MOM, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for maternal mental health care.
A new minimally invasive procedure for women who must undergo a hysterectomy is now being performed at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center following the first performance of the procedure in New Hampshire by Dr. Janine L. Keever, vice chair of obstetrics and gynecology at SNHMC. Keever is among a few surgeons in New England who have been specially trained on this innovative approach to hysterectomies and other common gynecologic procedures.
PUBLIC POLICY
The “Granite State Matters” podcast has been launched by tech entrepreneur and former state senator Jeanne Dietsch of Peterborough. The podcast, hosted by former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand and Teri Harkins of New Boston, can be heard at GraniteStateMatters. org or on major podcast platforms.
EDUCATION
White Mountains Community College has been chosen as one of 150 semifinalists for the 2023 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, a $1 million prize based on performance in student outcomes. WMCC was selected based on performance in student outcomes including graduation rates, equity and improvement over time.
Scrible, a San Mateo, Calif.-based research and writing platform for students, teachers and librarians, has announced a partnership with the New Hampshire Society for Technology in Education that aims to provide the state’s K-12 schools access to its software at a reduced price. NHSTE is a nonprofit that works to improve education through the use of information technologies.
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
Col’s Kitchen of Concord was recognized by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which named Col’s Peach Pie with a Crumble Top, an egg- and dairy-free confection, one of PETA’s Top 10 Vegan Pies of 2021.
MEDIA
New Hampshire Public Radio and the podcast company Stitcher have reached an exclusive national marketing agreement that includes the station’s most popular podcasts, including “Bear Brook,” “Civics 101,” “Outside/In” and “Document.” NHPR will be ramping up production of “Civics 101” from twice a month to weekly beginning in November.
The station is also developing a new project reported and produced by the journalists who created “Bear Brook.”
NONPROFITS
Bank of America has donated $40,000 to the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund in its work with the Manchester NAACP to launch the Community-Driven Economic Empowerment pilot program in Manchester in January 2022. The program’s goal is to bring people of color together as a community to create a more resilient local economy in which more of their businesses thrive.
Three new members have been elected to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests’ board of trustees: George Epstein of Silver Lake, chairman and co-founder of The Echo Group in Conway; Elizabeth Salas Evans of Weare, president and chief compliance officer of Cayena Capital Management; and CPA Patricia Losik of Rye.
Jennifer Colangelo of Manchester has been named director of human resources for the YMCA of Greater Nashua. She joined the YMCA team in April 2019 as human resources generalist.
Bank of New Hampshire has contributed $5,000 to the Children’s Literacy Foundation’s Year of the Book Program at Gossler Park Elementary School in Manchester.
NH Hunger Solutions, which advocates to end food insecurity, has named three new members to its board of directors: Cathy McDowell of Randolph, founding director of Family Planning and Education Center, Coos County Family Health Programs, the Gorham Community Learning Center and the Family Resource Center at Gorham; Jon Morgan of Brentwood, a former state senator; and Ray Burke of Concord, an attorney at NH Legal Assistance.
Concord-based NAMI New Hampshire, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of Granite Staters affected by mental illness and suicide, has hired attorney Holly Stevens as its first public policy director. Stevens has been working in health policy for the past five years in Concord and previously spent more than a decade in the mental health and substance use fields, primarily as a mobile crisis clinician in central Maine.
Safe Sports, which seeks to increase services and programs for area youth, has appointed James Hamel of Meredith as its director of development. Hamel previously spent several years with the international social entrepreneurship organization Ashoka and most recently was vice president of development at Lakes Region Community Services.
REAL ESTATE
SVN Masiello has announced the sale of 7 Field Lane in Belmont, a 4.94-acre investment property with a 15,000-square-foot building, to Houlton LLC for $967,500. Chris Pascucci of SVN Masiello Commercial represented the seller, Advanced Power Technology. The buyer was represented by Deane Navaroli of William & Reeves.
Mike Reed, president of Stebbins Commercial Properties, has announced the sale of the 30,000-squarefoot commercial building at 215 Canal St. in Manchester to Travis and Kyle York of Manchester. Seller was 215 Canal Street LLC of Manchester. Reed represented the seller, 215 Canal Street, and Don Eaton of Colliers International represented the buyer in the transaction. According to the Hillsborough County Registry of Deeds, the sale price was $2.3 million. Reed also represented the buyer, Queen City NK, and assisted the seller, SPS 2 Realty Holdings LLC, in another recent transaction, this one the sale of an 18,750-square-foot commercial building at 815 Elm St. in Manchester. According to the Registry of Deeds, the sale price was $1.75 million.
Jane Swett of Dalton has joined the Littleton office of Peabody & Smith Realty as a full-time sales associate.
TRANSPORTATION
Merchants Fleet, the Hooksett-based national fleet management company, announced that it has reserved 5,400 BrightDrop EV410s, the new midsize electric light commercial vehicle built for the delivery of goods and services over long ranges, as well as other service applications from General Motors. The company said it is the first fleet management company to commit to a BrightDrop purchase.
GOVERNMENT
Beverly Mesa Zendt has been named Portsmouth’s new planning and development director. She is expected to start work on Jan. 10, 2022. Mesa Zendt has 16 years of municipal planning department experience, most recently as deputy director of planning and community development for the city of Redmond, Wash. Prior to that, she spent three years as assistant director of planning and community development for Island County, Wash.
ENGINEERING
GZA GeoEnvironmental Inc. has announced that Aaron Smart has joined its Bedford office as a senior project manager in its geotechnical practice. Prior to joining GZA, Smart held senior positions with the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, overseeing geotechnical engineering for civil projects, and with private-sector firms overseeing commercial and residential development, dam maintenance and manufactured gas plant site remediation.
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