Bill Blachly and his wife, Alice, moved to Vermont in 1956.  In the late 1960s he began directing elementary school children in Shakespeare and Sophocles at the New School in Plainfield, a private experimental school.  He also directed plays at the Plainfield Little Theatre including a summer repertory series.  In the late 1970s Bill became interested in renovating the Barre Opera House, and was instrumental in its successful reopening in 1982.  In the summer of 1983 he converted a barn on his East Calais property into the Unadilla Theatre.   With only one exception, he has produced and directed plays there every summer since.  Unadilla specializes in Classical drama and thought-provoking theatre.  The long list of productions includes Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw, Beckett, Mamet, Gilbert & Sullivan, and many more.  At times Unadilla has hired professional actors from New York City and Boston, but it has primarily been a community-based theatrical company.  Over the past 30 years Bill has helped nurture the talent of countless Vermont actors.

David Schütz was hired as Vermont’s first State Curator in 1986. A graduate of DePauw University, he arrived in Vermont in 1979 as a research assistant on a project to establish a curatorial and restoration plan for the Vermont State House.  With others, he founded the Friends of the Vermont State House to advocate for and raise money to accomplish those plans.  For nearly twenty-five years he supervised the careful restoration of the building and the conservation of its collections.  In his current position, David also has responsibilities relating to the preservation of nearly 200 historic structures owned by the State of Vermont.  Additionally, his work includes curating rotating art exhibitions in the Governor’s Office, the Supreme Court and the State House.  David has been active in local theater and on the boards of many community organizations over the years.  He lives with his wife and Welsh corgi in Calais.

Jay Dick is the Director of State and Local Government Affairs at Americans for the Arts where he is responsible for building working relationships with State and Local Arts Advocacy and Service Organizations and Elected Officials alike.  With the mandate to positively affect the policies that promote State and Local funding and expansion of the arts, Jay works closely with the fifty State Arts Advocacy Captains, Local Arts Groups, the State Arts Action Network and Council to accomplish this goal.

Prior to joining Americans for the Arts, Jay was an Account Manager at Capitol Advantage (Capwiz) where he was responsible for building working relations with clients to enable them to fully utilize their online legislative action centers which results in strong grassroots advocacy programs.  Previously, Jay was the Manager, Member Advocacy at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) where he was responsible for overseeing activities relating to organizing and implementing initiatives and member legislative involvement

Prior to SHRM, Jay worked for The Society of Plastics Industry (SPI) in their public policy department focusing primarily on federal and state legislative issues.  Jay spent the 1996 campaign cycle in his home state working as the Field Director for a congressional campaign in Iowa’s 3rd District.  From 1993 to 1996, Jay worked for Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey as a Legislative Assistant and briefly for Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa as a staff assistant.

He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Arts Council of Fairfax County, Arts for Los Angeles and his community homeowners association.

Chris Morrow, President of Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, VT, is the beneficiary of nepotism and spends most of his time trying not to screw things up.  The vagaries of the book business keep him busy.  He is a graduate of Oberlin College and U of Michigan (Natural Resources), was in the Peace Corps in Thailand and now is trying to figure out what the bookstore will look like in the coming decades. He lives in Weston, VT with his wife, two kids, father-in-law, 3 cats, 2 dogs, one rabbit, 32 sheep, 8 geese and dozens of chickens.

Neville Vakharia directs the Cultural Data Project, a Web-based data collection, management and reporting tool created to allow cultural organizations to benchmark results and streamline the grants application process, inform grantmaking strategies, and provide a powerful state-by-state tool for cultural policy research and analysis. An emerging national model, the Cultural Data Project is used by thousands of cultural organizations and more than 100 funders throughout the country, with continued growth each year. On behalf of Pew and as the project’s administrator, Neville oversees the operations and strategic expansion of the initiative, including the cultivation of new partners, creation of training programs, coordination of research activities and technical development.

Prior to joining Pew, Neville was director of technology services and programs for the Arts & Business Council of Greater Philadelphia, where he helped create and launch Technology Connectors, a program designed to support the technological capabilities of the region’s arts and cultural organizations. He also has more than 10 years of experience in the corporate sector, working in new product development, marketing and global product management for W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc., manufacturer of GORE-TEX products.

Neville holds two international patents and has developed several new products and technologies. He served as an adjunct faculty member in Drexel University’s graduate arts administration program. He earned both his bachelor of science degree in materials engineering and his master of science in arts administration from Drexel University.

Anita Walker has served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) since April 2007. Walker is the Commonwealth’s highest ranking cultural official, overseeing a $14 million budget that supports a range of grants, services, and programs for the arts, humanities, and sciences in every community in Massachusetts.

Walker has raised the visibility of the creative economy as a driving force for growth and prosperity in Massachusetts. With support from the Boston Foundation and MAASH, she led advocacy for the Cultural Facilities Fund, which has invested $24 million in arts and cultural building projects statewide since 2006. The program has resulted in 577 new jobs and nearly $840 million in new investment in Massachusetts. Her leadership has also helped MCC secure new funding for cultural organizations and local cultural councils statewide. Walker is a leading member of the new Massachusetts Creative Economy Council, which is charged with fostering the growth of the creative sector.

Under Walker’s leadership, MCC has put a spotlight on the role that creativity and arts education play in student achievement and success. She led a successful effort to include the arts as part of the Massachusetts Board of Education’s recommended core curriculum for high school students. She launched the Creative Minds initiative, through which MCC invested more than $3 million in new funding to support arts education in school and in communities. She created a partnership with Bank of America to launch the Big Yellow School Bus program to help schools pay for field trips to cultural organizations. In 2008 Massachusetts Education Secretary Paul Reville named Walker to his 21st Century Skills Task Force, which called for hiring 1,000 artists and scientists to foster creativity and innovation in the public schools.

Before coming to Massachusetts, Walker was director of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs for seven years, serving simultaneously as executive director of the Iowa Arts Council, administrator of the State Historical Society, and the state historic preservation officer.

Walker is a native of California and a graduate of Arizona University. She lives in Newton, MA with her husband and two sons.