Margaret Patricelli

Chair of the Board

Margaret Patricelli is currently President and Chief Executive Officer of the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.  Since its creation in 1997, the foundation has focused on programs designed to assist low-income neighborhoods in Hartford, Connecticut.  It played the leading role in creating the innovative TeacherDollars program now in broad use in Hartford public schools, as well as funding the GospelFest at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts for five years featuring an all-Hartford 40-church gospel choir, and providing the initial funding for Hartford’s Crime Stoppers Program. Margaret has previously worked in health planning at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, marketing and communications at Connecticut General and CIGNA, and public affairs at ConnectiCare, where she created the ConnectiCare Foundation. She is active in numerous local, national and international philanthropic activities, having served on the boards of the Mark Twain House and Museum, Foodshare, Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, Hartford Ballet, and the Simsbury Public Health Commission.  Margaret currently serves on the boards of Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Shining Hope for Communities – Kenya, and the Friends of Simsbury Public Library.  She has made several trips as a volunteer health worker in rural communities in Haiti. Margaret is a graduate of Goucher College, and has a Masters in Public Health from UCLA.

Matt Chanoff

Matt Chanoff is co-manager of Profounder LCC, a seed stage investment fund established in 2008. He is a co-founder of Damballa and Pramana, two early stage Internet security-related companies in the Atlanta Area. As founder and president of Chanoff Consulting, Inc., Mr. Chanoff has worked with over thirty early stage companies, helping them to design business models and strategies and develop marketing and implementation strategies. He has drafted more than forty business plans, used to raise at least $20 million in early stage investment and over $50 million in Series C and mezzanine investment. As a consultant, Mr. Chanoff has designed and implemented broad-scale market assessments and market-entry strategies in the United States, China, and Southeast Asia for Fortune 500 companies in several industries, including electronics manufacturing and components, high-tech materials, software, investment, and professional services. Mr. Chanoff’s non-profit work includes board positions with Brandeis Hillel Day School and The San Francisco Children’s Art Center, and active involvement in many educational, community development, human rights, and poverty alleviation programs in San Francisco, Kenya, Rwanda, and Israel. Mr. Chanoff holds a Masters of Arts degree in International Economics and Politics from the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

Timothy Dibble

Tim is a founder and Managing General Partner of Alta Communications, a Private Equity Firm headquartered in Boston, MA. In that capacity, he sits on the board of numerous traditional and online media as well as communications companies. He began his career in 1986 at the Bank of Boston in the Acquisition Finance Division, structuring and monitoring the performance of management buyouts in cash flow industries. Tim received a degree in Economics from Wesleyan University 1986. In addition to serving on Shining Hope for Communities’s board, he is Chairman of the Board of both Year Up (yearup.org) and The Big Brothers of Massachusetts Bay, and is on the Development Committee of Right to Play.

Robert Patricelli

Bob Patricelli is a businessman and philanthropist in Greater Hartford, Connecticut.  Bob received his B.A. from Wesleyan in 1961 and his LLD from Harvard Law School in 1965.  Bob served on the Wesleyan Board of Trustee for 15 years, ending in 2005. In 1965, Bob was chosen as a White House Fellow and then embarked on several jobs in the federal government, serving as minority counsel to a U.S. Senate subcommittee, Deputy Under Secretary for Policy at the Department of HEW, and as Administrator of the Urban Mass Transit Administration.  He was Vice President of the non-profit Greater Hartford Process from 1971-75, which was devoted to community development activities in the region.  Bob’s business career started at Connecticut General in Bloomfield.  He became over time head of CIGNA’s health care businesses before starting a new career as an entrepreneur with the founding of Value Health, Inc. in 1987.  Under his leadership, Value Health became a Fortune 1000 New York Stock Exchange company, and Bob went on to found and is still CEO of both Women’s Health USA and Evolution Benefits, based in Avon. Bob is or has been involved in numerous boards and commissions at the local, state and national level.  He is a member of the MetroHartford Alliance board of directors and chairs its Neighborhood Development Committee, is chairman of the Bushnell, and a member of the boards of Northeast Utilities, the Ocean Exploration Trust, and the CT Science Center.  He has served in the past as chair of the CT Business and Industry Association, and as a member of the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the University of Hartford, Hartford Hospital, and Dance CT.  His public policy passion is health care reform, and he co-chaired the CT Health Insurance Policy Council in 2006-07 and serves as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Joshua Posner

Treasurer

Joshua Posner has developed affordable housing over 25 years in a wide variety of settings in New England and other parts of the United States.  Mr. Posner founded Rising Tide Development LLC in 2001 to focus on the creation of new small-scale, mixed-income residential communities in Massachusetts.  Prior to Rising Tide Development, Mr. Posner played a number of senior roles over 12 years at The Community Builders, a leading regional and national nonprofit developer of affordable housing.  He has specialized in the construction and rehabilitation of community-based housing, the preservation of affordable housing nearing the end of its regulatory period, and the redevelopment of large-scale dilapidated public housing projects in various locations around the country.  In 1998, Mr. Posner served as President of Cornerstone Housing, a private development firm focused on public housing revitalization, and from 1999 through 2000, he served as Vice President of Development for Trinity Financial, Inc. in Boston.  Earlier in his career he founded and led a community development corporation in Brockton, Massachusetts (1972-77) and played a senior role in the growth and operation of Massachusetts Fair Share, a statewide community organization focused on economic justice and community improvement (1978-83.)  Mr. Posner has been engaged in a variety of community activities, including currently serving on the Board of the Cambridge Health Alliance and the Cambridge Health Alliance Physicians Organization. CHA is a $1.2 billion enterprise consisting of three hospitals, 12 community health centers and an insurance company covering the health needs of 160,000 low and moderate income members.  He is also a member of the Board of Shared Interest, a US-based nonprofit that provides financing to microfinance institutions and emerging black-owned enterprises serving low income people in South and Southern Africa.  He is a former Board President and Director of The Guidance Center, the largest mental health and family support social service organization in Cambridge and Somerville.

Robert Rosenthal

Robert Rosenthal is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University. He teaches and writes on housing, homelessness, community research, and the use of music in social movements.  He’s the author of Homeless in Paradise and co-author of the forthcoming Playing for Change; he’s currently working on an edited collection of the papers of Pete Seeger.  Mr. Rosenthal has worked for the past twenty years with community groups in Middletown, CT, including as one of the founding directors of Wesleyan’s Center for Community Partnerships.