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Check out the new blog posts about the recent Heritance trip to the Republic of Georgia, which include video and photos.

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[ Her´it´ance ]

n. Heritage; inheritance. "Robbing their children of the heritance
Their fathers handed down." - Southey

Our name conveys our mission; we hope to help protect one of our world's endangered resources -- diversity.

Heritance Calendar
Heritance Blog

Last Site Update:
22 July 2008

Meet Our People

Board of Directors   |   Council of Advisors   |   Museum Professionals

Maureen Ward Doyle
PRESIDENT & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Maureen Doyle

Maureen has worked with various non-profit organizations, including the United Nations Development Program in Dakar, Senegal, and is one of the founders of Heritance. Her interest in museums and cultural sites began after graduating from Dartmouth College when Maureen set off on a two-year, round-the-world bike trip that took her through remote regions of North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and South East Asia. She went on to acquire Masters degrees in Business (Arizona State University) and Philosophy (from l'Université Marc Bloc in Strasbourg France), as well as certification as a French and Spanish teacher and a public school administrator, after which she worked as a public school teacher for 10 years. Maureen recently returned to the United States from Europe, where she spent six years with her husband and three daughters living on a barge, traveling, studying and writing.  

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Jean Bermon
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR Jean Bermon

Jean's work is featured in the Projects & Partners Gallery: please visit both the "Current Heritance Projects" list, as well as the "Related Projects" section

Having completed his studies in architecture in Strasbourg, France, Jean worked with a team at the CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientique) in Burgundy on the restitution of a medieval archeological site. His role was to create hypothetical computerized models of the original buildings. He was then invited to work with the Mécénat Science and Arts Foundation to design and implement traveling museum exhibits to be shown in numerous European capitals. He went on to found a consulting company of museum specialists with whom he elaborated many projects including: the renovations of the Ethnography Museum in Berlin; the Rheinnicher Landes Museum in Bonn; special exhibits such as " Retrospective of the Works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh" (Scottish Architect and Designer) in Glasgow, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles; "The Birth of Impressionism" in both Glasgow and Tokyo; and the Inception/Creation of the Neanderthal Museum in Dusseldorf. Jean continues to work as a consultant to Museums and Archeology sites all over the world, as well as teaching Design and Perspective at a Graphic Arts School in Strasbourg, France.

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Conrad Reining
BOARD OF DIRECTORS, COUNCIL OF ADVISORS (ECOLOGY) Conrad Reining

Conrad is the Northern Appalachians Director of the Wildlands Project (www.wildlandsproject.org), where he is responsible for coordinating efforts in the Northeastern US and Southeastern Canada, including conservation planning, outreach and fundraising. A major focus of his work from 2001-2006 was the development of a trans-border proposal for a network of linked conservation areas in the Northern Appalachians. He is now participating in a Two Countries, One Forest (www.2C1Forest.org) initiative to develop a comprehensive conservation strategy for the Northern Appalachians, and is collaborating in efforts to advance conservation in high priority linkage areas of the region. From 1991 to 1997, Conrad was the Washington, DC-based Director of Conservation International’s (CI) Guatemala Program. In that position he co-directed the design and implementation of CI’s conservation project, ProPetén, in Guatemala’s northern lowland region.

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Heli Tuomi Carlile
BOARD OF DIRECTORS, WEBSITE MANAGER, COUNCIL OF ADVISORS (DIGITAL MEDIA & VIRTUAL MUSEUMS) Heli Tuomi Carlile

Heli is a media producer with 20 years' experience in a wide range of cross-platform media, including film/tv, print and interactive. Based in the US and Canada, she has worked globally also in Russia, Ireland, Finland, New Zealand and Japan. Her corporate clients have included FedEx, Sony and Fidelity Investments, and in the non-profit sector she has developed projects for science education centers and museums in North America and Europe, and the Government of Canada (Canadian Heritage). Heli holds a degree in Film Studies from Queen's University at Kingston and an MA in Journalism from the University of Western Ontario (Canada); she has also studied at the Cyber-Architecture Unit of the McLuhan Program at University of Toronto, and at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. As VP Production for interactive design firm I-MMERSION, Heli oversaw the development of a global exhibit for the Canada Pavilion at Expo2005 (Japan), bringing together eight major Canadian museums and cultural institutions to share history and heritage with the world through online virtual museums. She is currently a digital media consultant (Agent9) and working on a new museum for the Government of Norway.

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Suzanne Dudley Schon
BOARD OF DIRECTORS, COUNCIL OF ADVISORS (FUNDRAISING) Suzanne Dudley Schon

Suzanne (Dudley) Schon, a graduate of Duke University, is a philanthropist whose contributions have been directed towards many organizations. She serves on the board of Child and Family Services in New Hampshire and is the co-founder of the Kevin and Suzanne Schon Foundation, which offers financial assistance to organizations supporting children, health, equal rights and education. Suzanne's mother, born and raised in Dominican Republic, was a passionate volunteer for The Smithsonian and The Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.. In addition to the benefit of growing up bilingual in Spanish, Suzanne feels that she inherited her mother's commitment and interest in museums and their effort to preserve and present art and culture. Besides serving on the board of Heritance, Suzanne is a producer, currently working on two multicultural films.

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Jeff Doyle
BOARD OF DIRECTORS, COUNCIL OF ADVISORS (TECHNOLOGY)

Jeff, a graduate of Yale University (Class of 1979), is the founder and manager of Toliwaga, LLC. He has worked as a software engineer, manager and entrepreneur for over twenty years. His experience in software development includes implementing the search engine for the Yahoo! Yellow Pages and the STELLA systems dynamics modeling language. Jeff has served as Vice President of Engineering at Vicinity Corporation, Vice President of Research and Development at Intermap, Inc, and Software Development Manager at PC Globe.


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Michael Yacavone
BOARD OF DIRECTORS, DIRECTOR OF OUTREACH Michael Yacavone

Michael is a consultant, coach, designer, and developer. His work spans education, high-tech, government, non-profit, and industry, often at the intersection of technology and organizational development. He has started three companies and played key roles in two VC-funded high-tech startups, working with both senior engineers and executives to deliver over a dozen software products. Yacavone is skilled at implementing the Carver Policy Governance model of Board leadership and has applied aspects of this model to teamwork in higher-education. Yacavone serves as a past president and Board member of the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society, Inc., a member-owned cooperative grocery business founded in 1936, now with five locations, 350 employees and annual revenue of $66 million. He is active in the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), and served as Recording Secretary for the SoL Council of Trustees.

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Christian Sapin
COUNCIL OF ADVISORS Christian Sapin

Christian Sapin is an archeologist and an art historian, and Director of Research for the CNRS (the National Center for Scientific Research in France). In addition to being a professor at the Universities of Bourgogne and Franche-Comté in France and Lièges in Belgium, since 1975 he has also been the director of a number of archeological explorations, including important medieval sites in Burgundy and Mont Saint-Michel. Christian is responsible for several research groups at the CNRS and the French Ministry of Culture. Author of La Bourgogne préromane (Picard, 1986) and the recently published Bourgogne Romane (PDF about book available here) - as well as over 200 articles on the archeology, architecture and decor of medieval religious monuments - Christian is also a noted lecturer on the monuments and paintings of the European Middle Ages.

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Louis Bec
COUNCIL OF ADVISORS Louis Bec

Louis Bec is a biologist and zoosystemician (a digital modeler of living systems). Born in Algiers in 1936, today Louis lives and works in Sorgues, France where he is developing a unique research method that interrogates the relationships between artistic, scientific and biotechnical fields. This method explores imaginary explanations of the world based on artificial life and what he calls "Technozoosemiotics". He has participated in dozens of conferences and colloquia around the world at museums and institutes, including the Pariscolloquium, Ars Electronica, Medialogia and ISEA. Louis is also founder and director of the Institute of Paranaturalistic Scientific Research and of CYPRES, the Intercultural Centre for Practise, Research and Interdisciplinary Exchanges in Marseilles, France. He is also preparing two exhibits: one called Mobile/Immobilized for the Montréal "Art, Technologies & (Dis)Abilities" conference (31 Oct - 4 Nov 2007) and another on extreme environments at Mutamorphosis in Prague (8-10 Nov 2007).

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Christian Creutz
COUNCIL OF ADVISORS (PHOTOGRAPHY)

Trained in photography at the Ecole Louis Lumière in Paris, Christian Creutz has been a professional photographer in Strasbourg for over 15 years. As an independent consultant he has served museums, as well as clients in business, public institutions and publishing. His museum experience includes the Mackintosh in Glasgow, the Museum of the Neanderthal in Düsseldorf, and the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Over the past few years, Christian has created a series of architecture photos for an institute of the Middle East. His work has led him to Turkey, India, Uzbekistan, Syria and Iran, where he has photographed prestigious historic sites of Islam.


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Mary Magavern Sachsse
COUNCIL OF ADVISORS Mary Magavern Sachsse

Mary Magavern Sachsse, a graduate of Dartmouth College, has been an active leader in non-profit organizations for over fifteen years. Her non-profit work includes school governance and improvement, political organizations, church leadership, and social service organizations. Currently she is serving as the Chair of the Norwich School Board, and also serves of the board of the nation's first inter-state public school district, Dresden. She was until recently the Vice Chair of The Family Place, Parent Child Center in Norwich, Vermont. As Chair of the Board of Deacons for the Norwich Congregational Church, she authored and shepherded an Open and Affirming Resolution, and is active in Vermont helping other churches explore issues around inclusion. Mary studied education and public policy, with a concentration in history, at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has also worked in development at Dartmouth College and in recruiting for a law firm in New York City. Mary spent many happy hours as a child wandering the halls of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, and has passed her love for museums along to her three daughters, Clare, Eva and Elizabeth. She lives in Norwich, Vermont.

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Philippe Denis
COUNCIL OF ADVISORS Philippe Denis

Philippe Denis is professor of History of Christianity at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and a member of the Dominican order. He is also the director of the Sinomlando Centre for Oral History and Memory Work in Africa, a research and community development centre aiming at retrieving the lost or silenced memories of local communities in South Africa. Philippe holds a PhD in History from the University of Liège, Belgium, and has a published widely in the areas of Reformation history, history of Christianity in southern Africa, oral history and memory work. He also has experience in NGO work with orphans and vulnerable children. Born in Belgium, Philippe has lived in South Africa since 1989 where he currently makes his home in Pietermaritzburg with the seven children he has adopted.

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Elizabeth Clarke
COUNCIL OF ADVISORS Elizabeth Clarke

Liz recently retired from IBM where she consulted in the areas of learning and development, business transformations and knowledge management. Before joining IBM, Liz taught Art and Museum Education at Syracuse University . She received her PhD from Cornell University in Curriculum & Instruction, Cognitive Psychology and Graphic Design. Her academic work in symbolic representation and the structure of knowledge is especially helpful in program and exhibit design. In her free time, when not wrangling her horses and grandchildren, she might be found coaxing the bushes on her fruit farm to produce more berries.

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Martha Jane Rich
COUNCIL OF ADVISORS Martha Jane Rich

Martha Jane Rich has been Head of School at Thetford Academy in Vermont for 17 years. Thetford Academy is a National Service-Learning Leader School and national headquarters for Operation Day's Work USA, a program that promotes international youth education and solidarity. Thetford Academy serves as a pilot site for Vermont's High Schools on the Move initative a member school in the Vermont Rural Partnership, a coalition affiliated with the National Rural Schools & Communities Trust, committed to supporting student voice and place-based education. She is also active in the Vermont Center of the National School Reform Faculty and is certified through that organization as a national facilitator for the collaborative approach known as Critical Friends work. As an administrator and facilitator, her primary interest is finding ways to foster a culture of shared responsibility for both students' and colleagues' learning. In 2006, Martha was named Vermont's Arts Education Advocate of the Year for her support of the arts in her school. She is also the longtime president of the Thetford Library Federation, which includes the town's Historical Society and its Barn Museum. Her previous work in education included teaching English in public schools in Connecticut and Vermont, and 14 years as Director of Secondary Teacher Preparation at Dartmouth College, where she also taught in the Women's Studies program. As a member of the Heritance Council of Advisors, she looks forward to supporting innovative international collaborations among educators and museum professionals.

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