Board of Directors

The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Good

President

The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Good is active in the Andover Public Schools as well as a variety of community groups. She is a clergyperson in the United Methodist Church, serving churches in Connecticut and most recently in Wellesley, MA. She graduated from the University of Colorado, Yale Divinity School, and Hartford Seminary. At the moment she is a mom and a fiber artist, an occasional preacher and retreat leader. She has been a volunteer with the Rosie's Place Craft Cooperative and Boston Interfaith AIDS Ministry.

Thomas K. Birch

Clerk/Chair of Governance Committee

Thomas K. Birch has his own general practice of law in Boston. He is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College and Northeastern University School of Law. He is currently on the board of the South Cove Community Health Center.

Austin de Besche

Austin de Besche has been a cinematographer for over thirty years and a director for half that time. He has photographed feature films (Return of the Secaucus Seven and Lianna for John Sayles), documentaries (including Emmy winners Voices of the Children and On Thin Ice), national children’s programming (Postcards from Buster for PBS), second unit television work (Cheers and St. Elsewhere), concert films, magazine shows, corporate films and television commercials. Awards include “10 Best Films of 1980” lists of the Los Angeles Times and Time Magazine Return of the Secaucus Seven. He is also an actor and performer in television commercials and corporate films, performed in plays, and in improv comedy. He is a member of the Boston Community Choir. He graduated from Dartmouth College, is on the faculty at Boston University, and is a member of the IATSE Local 600 and NABET Local 18 unions. Mr. de Besche recently produced, directed and photographed Pilgrimage into the Past, a documentary about a Holocaust survivor and his family. It has screened at several festivals, and was praised by documentarian Ken Burns as “a fascinating, terribly honest and challenging film . . . a great film.”

Barbara Harman

Barbara Harman is Executive Director of the Harman Family Foundation, which supports programs that bring education and the arts to underserved populations in Washington, Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. Through grants both big and small (the new Harman Center for the Arts in Washington DC; grassroots nonprofits in the metropolitan Washington region and elsewhere,) the foundation supports educational innovation and seeks to strengthen the arts community and the community itself through the arts. Ms. Harman is also President of the Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington, which in five years has emerged as the most wide-ranging philanthropy promotion initiative in the DC region. She is also on the Board of the National Council for the Shakespeare Theatre and is active in the arts community in DC and Boston. She is Professor Emerita at Wellesley College where she taught English for twenty-five years and wrote numerous essays and books on Renaissance and Victorian subjects. She received her BA from Tufts University and her MA and PhD degrees from Brandeis University.

Denise Jillson

Denise Jillson is local to the area, having grown up in Davis Square and has lived in Cambridge since 1975. She has worked in Cambridge for her entire career in manufacturing/engineering, sales and institutional development. She is perhaps best known for her political grassroots organizing, having spearheaded the successful 1994 legislation that abolished rent control from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She was the campaign wanager for Joe Malone’s 1998 bid for governor and helped spearhead the “Draft Mitt” movement in 2002.

Denise is vice president of the Executive Board of the Boston Minuteman Council, Boy Scouts of America, vice president of the board of the Community Charter School of Cambridge and president of the Rotary Club of Cambridge. She is the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association. Bachelor of Science, Lesley University.

Sarah Leaf-Herrmann

Chair of External Relations Committee

Sarah Leaf-Herrmann has 20 years of experience in communications, media relations and event management. While at the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops Orchestras, she ran the international press conference and announcement of the appointment of Keith Lockhart to succeed John Williams as Boston Pops Conductor. She began The Idea Co. in 1998, which provided public relations and fundraising counsel for small non-profit organizations in Boston, and was Director of Public Relations at the Four Seasons Hotel Boston, the only AAA Five Diamond and Mobil Five-Star hotel property in New England. She is past president of Boston Women Communicators and Chair of External Affairs for the Topf Center for Dance Education Board. Ms. Leaf-Herrmann is also a member of Women in Development of Greater Boston, Publicity Club of New England, The Ad Club of Boston, Public Relations Society of America - New England Chapter, Association of Fundraising Professionals, Women Chefs & Restaurateurs, and Amateur Chamber Music Players of America.

Sarah Newhouse

Sarah was a founding member of ASP and is a graduate of Hampshire College and the ART Advanced Theater Institute. She is the former treasurer of the Watertown Arts Council, and currently sits on the Board of Directors for StageSource. Her extensive acting credits include, for ASP: Macduff and Lady Macduff in Macbeth, King John, Princess/Jacquenetta/Longaville in Love's Labour's Lost. Viola in Twelfth Night; Cordelia in King Lear, Lady Anne in Richard III.

Other Boston area credits include Six Characters in Search of an Author, The King Stag, Macbeth, Picasso at the Lapin Agile at the American Repertory Theater, Desdemona—a Play About a Handkerchief at Boston Center for the Arts, King of the Jews at Boston Playwrights' Theatre, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball at Boston Theatre Works, La Vita Claire at Centastage, Shear Madness at the Charles Playhouse, Red Herring, Lost in Yonkers and The Miracle Worker at the Lyric Stage Company, Imperialists at the Club Cave Canem, The Square Root of Minus One at The Market Theater, Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It at The Publick Theatre, The Sweepers at Stoneham Theatre and Twelfth Night at Worcester Foothills Theatre.

Regional & NYC credits include American Stage Festival, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Gloucester Stage Company, Jane Street Theater, Manhattan Punchline Theatre, Samuel Beckett Theater, Synchronicity Space, and The Kraine, Film &TV: As The World Turns, Another World, MTV, Saturday Night Live, The Legend of Lucy Keyes, Dischord, Chain of Desire, Expired, and The Stupid Years.

Geoffrey Nunes

Treasurer / Chair, Finance Committee

Geoffrey Nunes is a graduate of Princeton University, ’52 (Woodrow Wilson School, honors), and Harvard Law School, ’57 (JD). He was an Officer in the U.S. Navy from ’52-’54. He had a private practice in New York City from ’57-’66. He was then the senior vice president, general counsel, for Lenox China, and executive vice president of the Millipore Corporation. He is currently a director of Reebok International. Mr. Nunes was an overseer at the New England Conservatory of Music from ’96-’02, and is currently on the board of visitors. He is a trustee at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and a trustee of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute.

Faith Parker

Faith Parker holds a BA from Wellesley College and a masters degree in human services management from the Heller School at Brandeis University. She worked for fourteen years in the human resources field managing corporate pension and executive benefit plans at area companies including Avery Dennison and BankBoston. In 2000 she retired from corporate life and co-founded the Parker Family Foundation, a private family foundation whose funding priorities include education, the arts, health care and the integration of technology into society. Faith was a founding board member of Norumbega Harmony, an acapella singing group specializing in early American hymnody, and served as their treasurer for five years. She currently serves on the board of trustees and as Clerk of the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA.

David Sandberg

David Sandberg is an attorney who was formerly in private practice and has been the general counsel of ITA Software in Cambridge since 2000. He is a graduate of Princeton University ('80) and the Columbia University School of Law ('84). He serves on the board, and as dramatic director, of the North Cambridge Family Opera Company, in many of whose productions he has appeared over the last ten years. He is the cantor of Temple Beth Shalom (the Tremont Street Shul) in Cambridge and was a founding board member of Kesher, the Cambridge community after-school Hebrew program. He is also an occasional GIlbert and Sullivan tenor.

Rick Teller

Rick Teller is a private investor. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, '68, and holds an MBA from Harvard University, '70. Rick is also on the board of the Music Maker Relief Foundation.

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