LEADING LADIES
AN INDEPENDENT SERIES • PART 7
WOMEN IN NONPROFITS
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
Nantucket's nonprofit organizations represent the heart and soul of the island. There are more than 150 of them, some fairly new and small and many well-established and expansive. These organizations are dedicated to both the young and the elderly, provide educational programs, health care, housing assistance, recreational programs and a host of other vital services. Here are a few of the ladies who lead our varied charities and their thoughts on why Nantucket is so receptive to influential women.

From top: Peggy Gifford, Sarah Wright, Joan Craig, Janet Schulte and Kitty Pochman PHOTOS BY ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

SARAH WRIGHT

Sarah Wright has been Executive Director of the Nantucket AIDS Network for five years, the latest in an all-female succession of directors since the agency was founded in 1989. Between its executive board and board of directors there are 16 members behind NAN's mission to be a center of excellence for HIV/AIDS and hepatitis programs that provide client services reflecting the individuality and diversity of Nantucket's community.

Programs offered by NAN include free HIV and hepatitis testing and hepatitis vaccinations, community education, youth programs, client advocacy, home-based care, case management and subsidized housing. Wright said the AIDS client profile on the island has changed in the last five years from being predominantly gay men to an increasing number of women, immigrants from several countries and people as young as their early 20s. She also said while within that period several clients lost their battle with the disease, the agency's client load has doubled.

"We don't judge people," said Wright. "Our doors are open no matter what choices people make in their lives."

By the end of the year Wright, who is a nurse, will step down as director and return to Nantucket Cottage Hospital where she was working when she was hired into her position.

"I am stepping out of a leadership role into a direct client service role. It's just time for me to reconnect in that role going back to Nantucket Cottage Hospital as a staff nurse," she explained, saying she would like to be remembered at NAN for providing confidential client-centered services that met the community's needs.

"I think Nantucket is an environment where you can be what you are. The boundaries you see in other communities around gender and sexual orientation seem to be invisible here," she said. "I think it's a place where people come after working in the corporate world with tremendous skills for the next passage in their life - to reconnect with a community and with themselves in a beautiful place. But they bring with them experience that is quickly absorbed into the leadership on this island, and they often drag their husbands with them."

PEGGY GIFFORD

The Community Foundation for Nantucket was founded two and a-half years ago, with Gifford serving as president of the 11-member board of trustees for two of those years. The organization also has a six-member advisory board. The CFN mission is to be a permanent philanthropic resource to enhance the quality of life for all Nantucket's people. It has a goal to assist in identifying local needs and institutional opportunities, and to promote cost effective giving. CFN distributes grants and fosters collaboration among the community's nonprofits.

CFN works by gathering information on the island's charity needs and then provides assistance in helping donors choose where they wish to give, and also shoulders the administrative duties of fund dissemination. CFN, which has established an endowment it hopes will continue growing through both year-round and seasonal resident contributions, awards grants from the endowment. It will be distributing grants by the end of this year.

"Our only business is to raise funds to help island nonprofits," explained Gifford, stressing that CFN is not in competition with other charitable organizations and will not hold fundraising events to benefit itself.

Gifford, who participated at the board level, sometimes as board president with several organizations before moving to the island, said while Nantucket is very supportive of women in leadership it is not an exclusive phenomenon.

"A lot of the men won't do it," she noted, laughing. "I think women are in it for a job, though I have seen many men do a good job as heads of nonprofits. Some people think that only men are capable of these things, but that's not true. I've had some very good women [working with me] and they have had good experience as I have had. It takes a lot of responsibility."

JANET SCHULTE

The Maria Mitchell Association, founded in 1903, has a 15-member Board of Managers. Schulte has served as Executive Director for a year and a-half, succeeding Kitty Pochman. The mission of the MMA is to promote Nantucket astronomer Maria Mitchell's legacy and to advance appreciation of the island's environment through research and education by using the island as a laboratory.

Programs are many, but Schulte highlighted the recent addition of a research telescope at the association's Loines Observatory that has increased the MMA's capacity to conduct observational studies of the skies. She also named the natural science department that performs research on scallops and the island's environmental biodiversity; the education department that takes research results and practices and translates them into age-appropriate programs for four to 90 year-olds; and the general expansion of all its programs.

"It is really exciting to be spreading our wings beyond the traditional children's populations," she said, adding that her goals are to encourage the association's continued development of community outreach and educational offerings, deciding on how to best use the association's buildings and improving its spaces for collections storage and exhibits. A primary goal is to make the Vestal Street campus a vibrant learning center for the science of Nantucket's natural world, she said.

"I've spent my whole career in femaledominated environments," said Schulte. "There are more college presidents and deans who are female now. But I think there is something about Nantucket that promotes respect. The respect for the natural world extends to the people who live here, and the notion that we are contained out here on this spit of sand means we have to depend on each other more. I think that promotes collaboration. Women are very good at collaboration - the notion that many hands means light work. That spirit of collaboration was one of the things that attracted me to Nantucket."

KITTY POCHMAN

Kitty Pochman was with the Maria Mitchell Association for 17 years, serving for 14 of them as Executive Director before stepping down a year ago with the intention of retiring. That did not last long. When the Nantucket Land Council finally raised the $14 million it needed to purchase a conservation restriction on the magnificent 270 acres of Linda Loring's property off Eel Point Road, Pochman was tapped this summer to be Executive Director of the Linda Loring Nature Foundation, an opportunity she could not turn down.

The new foundation, with a nine-member board of trustees, has as its central mission the goals to protect the property's open space and foster an understanding and respect for the natural environment by providing educational opportunities exploring the island's ecological relationships. Pochman said specific programs are still in the early development stages. She is working with recently hired Vern Laux, the foundation's resident naturalist and land manager, who is meeting with colleagues and school personnel to investigate what collaborative programs should be presented by the foundation. Further plans call for the establishment of nature trails, along with construction of a combined nature and visitor's center on the property, including a small exhibit area and educational space.

"It's a wonderfully diverse habitat, so there are excellent learning opportunities," said Pochman. "I thought I was going to retire [after Maria Mitchell] but this was too good to pass up - to be on the ground floor of a new organization and help to create it. Linda Loring has done a wonderful thing protecting this piece of land and I wanted to be part of developing that with her. My hope is that people will come to the Linda Loring Nature Foundation and feel the interconnectedness to our natural world and that our educational programs will go in that direction."

Speaking about women in leadership on the island, Pochman, as many do, referred to the whaling era when island wives and mothers had little choice but to join the business world for survival, and how the Quaker settlers took pains to educate their daughters as well as their sons.

"Nantucket has always embraced women. Nantucket is a wonderfully supportive place where people can develop all of their skills, whether it's men, women, immigrants or students," she said. "In my research in the nonprofits over the years I found it is a field where there is an extraordinary number of women working. I don't know if there has ever been a reason identified as to why that happens. I like working in the nonprofit environment because I like to be able to give back to my community and do something significant. Nonprofits enhance our quality of life. You feel really good about getting up in the morning and going to work."

JOAN CRAIG

Joan Craig has served as President of the Sherburne Commons board of trustees since its inception in November 1999, the same year a project manager was hired to begin preliminary work on what has now come to fruition as the island's first comprehensive senior citizen residential community. It was a concept first recognized as needed when Craig was on the board of trustees of Nantucket Cottage Hospital with Mimi Young.

"All over the world we were seeing elderly people downsizing, and that many elders here were having to leave the island because there is no real way to downsize here," Craig said.

Sherburne Commons has a 14-member board and a mission to build, own and operate an independent and assisted living community for Nantucket seniors of all economic backgrounds.

The development sits on 20 acres of land leased from the town off South Shore Road. It contains 20 detached cottages and 40 living units with apartments for those able to be independent, those requiring some assistance and those needing memory care services. The first residents moved in last February. There is a communal main building housing a dining room, private dining room, cafe, library, card game room, a multi-purpose room, a lounge, beauty and barber salon, and fitness room and, outside, garden areas where residents may plant.

All cottages and apartments have 24-hour emergency call service and all have dining, utilities, housekeeping, water and sewer service and trash collection, indoor and outdoor maintenance, transportation for shopping and medical appointments and 24-hour staffing provided within the monthly fee. When residents leave, for whatever reason, 90 percent of their investment in Sherburne Commons will be returned.

In Craig's view, women's acceptance and respect in Nantucket leadership roles has a lot to do with the island's past but also indicates the commitment being made in the modern day to enhance the island's offerings for a broad spectrum of individuals.

"It's following along in the tradition of the women who ran the community when the men were whaling," she said, adding, "I think everybody loves Nantucket and wants to be involved in doing whatever

they can do." I