2012 Board of Trustees

Wijnie de Groot first learned of World Fellowship in 2003, when a friend suggested she join her for a week’s vacation in a ‘low-key and interesting resort’ in New Hampshire’s White mountains. Wijnie instantly loved WFC, and the following year she brought her family to let them share the same experience she had during that first visit. Wijnie has been a regular ever since. It is the combination of intellectual stimulation, relaxation in beautiful surroundings and feeling of community that especially appeals to her.

Wijnie currently works as a lecturer of Dutch at Columbia University, teaching Dutch at all levels to undergraduate and graduate students. She also works as a translator. She lives with her husband and daughters in Queens, NY. Their youngest daughter, still in college, spends her summers at WFC as a staff member.

Wijnie is a member of the German Chapter of Nature Friends, a European organization dedicated to the preservation of nature and the advancement of social justice. She enjoys getting together with friends and family, hiking, camping, and reading.

Joan began coming to the center in 1983. She most enjoys the community spirit, the natural world, and the political discussions. Joan is the co-owner of the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA, which was founded in 1963 by her father. The Odyssey is an independent bookstore which hosts over 125 author events a year.

Joan lives in Granby, MA, which is the town she grew up in. She lives with her husband, Jon Weissman, who is the Western MA Coordinator of Jobs with Justice. She has a stepson, a stepdaughter, and three granddaughters.

Over the years, Joan has been involved in the labor movement and various peace and social justice organizations. She is also involved with Pioneer Valley Local First and the South Hadley Farmer’s Market. She enjoys reading, cycling, hiking, and cooking.

Deirdre Jordan first visited WF 30 years ago at the suggestion of a friend, and she has been a regular ever since. The general ambiance, sense of community, and beautiful setting in New Hampshire’s White Mountains kept her coming back every year, not to mention the pressure of her young daughter at the time, who would beg her parents to go back to World Fellowship whenever vacation plans were being discussed.

Deirdre is a retired policy analyst who is now a volunteer tutor of adult literacy, which she describes as the best job she’s ever had. She also enjoys practicing yoga and tai chi.

Zenobia Mann first came to World Fellowship about 12 years ago. She most enjoys the intentional community created by the interplay of guests’ abilities, actions, ages and beliefs.

Zenobia is a teacher of Special Education. In addition to being on the World Fellowship Board, she is also a member of St. Paul’s Community Baptist Church.

Zenobia lives in New York City with her husband, son, and daughter, who along with her mother, brother, and nieces all enjoy WF.

In her spare time, Zenobia is involved with The Grail at Cornwall-on-Hudson, an international, interfaith women’s movement committed to change. Her hobbies include reading, swimming, and wandering around NYC.

Jeff Petrucelly was introduced to World Fellowship by friends 38 years ago, and has come every summer since.
Jeff is from Boston, and he and his wife, Pat Cantor, introduced their son Michael and daughter Karen at early ages to WF. Their whole family has loved the community, programs, and environment.

Jeff is an avid outdoors person—hiking in the White Mountains and all over the U.S. and Europe, swimming in Whitton Pond, biking to charity causes such as Bikes Not Bombs, and other activities.

Jeff is an attorney in his own small public interest, private law firm in Boston, and active in the National Lawyers Guild. He provides legal advice to WF.

Isabel was born in Ecuador, but moved to New York City as a child with her family where she has become a “native” New Yorker. She first heard of World Fellowship in 1997, while working at the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn. At World Fellowship she discovered a community of socially aware people with whom to enjoy the pristine beauty of Whitton Pond and the White Mountains.

Isabel has been a professor in the Department of Film and Media at Hunter College since 1991, a public institution with a mandate to serve the underserved of the city of New York. She has served on curriculum development in a department committed to the socially aware study and production of media. Her most recent publications are about the politics of 9/11, the Iraq War, and civic values in the U.S.

Isabel serves on the Program Committee, helping to craft the roster of intellectual, activist-oriented, and body work presenters for the summer. She is also on the Development and Outreach Committee.

Co-Chair Jessie Schnapp discovered World Fellowship in the womb, and finds that it’s just as good from the outside! Torn between practicing law and working with young children, Jessie has decided to do neither and instead coordinates an educator professional development program funded by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care. Born in NYC, raised in Cambridge, daughter to WF staff and board alumni Honey & Steve Schnapp; sister to staff alumnus Tania Peterson, Jessie enjoys time with her dog, Pearl. She most enjoys being at Whitton Pond and the communal meals at World Fellowship.

Liz started coming to WF for the diversity of its community. Her children loved the freedom to be themselves in a place of great natural beauty, so she, her partner and their two children have returned year after year. In 2011 the California contingent of her family tried WF for the first time and got hooked. They’re coming back in 2012 along with Liz’s father-in-law from New Jersey.

When she’s not working, Liz pursues her interests in many subjects, most recently onomastics (look it up!), genealogy and metaphysics. She has been an attorney for over thirty years, providing legal assistance to individuals, nonprofits and small business owners. In serving on the World Fellowship Board of Trustees, Liz continues her family’s long tradition of volunteerism and community service.

Laurie Stillman fell in love with World Fellowship when she came to speak on the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the summer of 1987. She and her husband, Robert Rosofsky, have been coming every summer since with their children as they were growing up. Laurie loves the food, the pond, and the fresh air – she feels extra alive at World Fellowship!

Laurie has worked in public health for 35 years, heading up a number of non-profit public health organizations, and is now the Chief Strategy Officer of a national non-profit public health and medical research organization in Boston called Health Resources in Action.

Laurie also serves on the Board of Directors of the Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers, a public charter school in Boston, and is involved in local and state politics. She loves taking long walks and likes to cook. She’s thinking of taking up piano.

She can tend to be a workaholic, and is the only person she knows outside her family that doesn’t have a smartphone!

Norma Wassel’s first time at World Fellowship was over thirty years ago when she came to visit her friends—founders of Physicians for National Health Care—who were there to present on this topic. She was living in California at the time, and upon returning to the east coast four years later, she and her family soon became regular summer guests.

A resident and cofounder of Cambridge Cohousing in Cambridge MA, Norma has been involved in community organizing, human services, administration, trauma intervention, and human rights work, both here in the U.S. and abroad, particularly in Central America and Eastern Europe after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In addition, she has developed and taught courses in administration, planning and social development in graduate schools. Norma currently oversees a division for Massachusetts’s public defender agency and as a social worker consults to a range of political groups and organizations.

Andrea first visited the Center in the fall of 1998 after completing the application for the co-director position with her husband, Andy Davis. Since moving to World Fellowship May 1, 2000, Andrea has enjoyed exploring the wild places between Whitton Pond and Mt. Chocorua and sharing the hopeful, forward-looking spirit of the World Fellowship community.

Andrea currently serves as an alternate on the Town of Albany, NH Planning Board and on the Board of Trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Eastern Slopes in Tamworth, NH. She has volunteered, served on Boards, and been employed with non-profits of many stripes over the past nearly three decades: White Mountain Waldorf School; American Friends Service Committee-NH; Guatemala Accompaniment Project; Witness for Peace international team; and was elected and served as a Washtenaw County (Michigan) Commissioner for a two-year term. Originally from lush farm land of mid-Michigan, Andrea treasures raising their daughter, Fiona, with Andy providing entertainment while working to improve the soil for growing organic vegetables in the Granite State. Andrea also loves to knit, enjoys long-distance self-propelled journeys (bike, walk, hike), and wants to engage with people who want to slow down and join in making the world a better place—for everybody.

Andy Davis was born in 1961 in Rochester, New Hampshire, and mostly grew up on the coast of Maine and on Long Island. During the 1980s he earned his living as a cook, struggled against a US foreign policy in the grip of death squads and mercenaries, hitchhiked 100,000 miles, and travelled whenever possible in Europe, Africa and Latin America. During the 1990s he spent three and a half years doing human rights work in Guatemala, where he met Andrea Walsh. They came back to the US and lived in an intentional community while casting about for a way to combine their values and livelihood; in the meantime he earned a living in carpentry and seasonal farm work, while also learning to grow food organically. Andy and Andrea got married in 1999, and Fiona Uniacke Davis-Walsh joined them in the world soon after. In 2000 the three of them came to live and work at the World Fellowship Center. Since 2001 he has channeled his senses of righteous indignation and magical realism into a passionate avocation as a storyteller.