The Camden Conference is run by a very active volunteer Board of Directors, many of whom have had foreign service and international business experience.

Bland Banwell grew up in Washington DC and, in her words, “married into the world of the British, living in Kampala Uganda before and after independence and in Calcutta, India, as well as being in and out of England for close to forty-five years. All of these experiences have nourished a lifelong interest in international affairs.” Bland, has worked for over 35 years in area of fiber arts with the intent “to bring beauty and a touch of the unusual or unexpected to the things we use every day” She has designed and run art programs for the elderly. Currently, she sits on the Expansion Arts Committee of the Maine Community Foundation.

John Bird spent the last eighteen years of a forty-eight year career in the non-profit world as a leadership and management consultant to non-profit organizations across the country. He retired as President of a ten-partner firm, Educators’ Collaborative, in July 2007. Before beginning his consulting career in 1989, John spent 29 years in independent education, five years in full-time teaching, five years as a senior administrator and teacher, and 19 years as a head of school. John has also served as a trustee and board chair of several non-profit boards in the fields of education, health care, the environment, the arts, and religion. Locally, in addition to the Camden Conference, he serves on the boards of the Farnsworth Art Museum, the Lincoln Street Center for Arts and Education, and the Island Institute (which he chairs). John grew up in Rockland, Maine, received his B.A. degree from Bowdoin College and an M.A. from George Washington University. John and his wife of 47 years, Mary Alice, now live in Spruce Head, Maine. The Birds have three grown children and six grandchildren.

Bruce J. Cole is President of McNabb Marketing Resources, Inc., a Camden-based communications and marketing company. McNabb organizes technology exhibitions and conferences in North America, Europe and Asia, and operates in a number of markets including wind power, energy from biomass and waste, hydrogen and fuel cell technology, small modular reactors, offshore oil and gas, commercial maritime and recreational boating. Bruce has 38 years of experience in publishing, and in the organization and management of conferences and trade expositions. He has worked extensively with the U.S. Department of Commerce, helping U.S. corporations break into new markets worldwide and boost exports. He has led teams that have launched a number of new products in both the publishing and conference/trade show fields in both the U.S. and Europe. Bruce is past President of Diversified Communications’ (now Diversified Business Communications) publishing and trade show division. He has been the lead communications consultant for the National Marine Electronics Association since 1997. Bruce grew up in Western Oregon and has B.S. and B.A. degrees from Oregon State University and a M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of Minnesota. Past positions held by Bruce include President of the First Congregational Church (Camden), President of the Camden Rotary Club and Chairman of the Rotary Youth Exchange Program for RI District 7790 that includes Quebec and Maine. In this latter position he was instrumental in sending dozens of Maine secondary students abroad for a 10-month youth exchange experience, and for bringing into Maine dozens of students from all over the world. Bruce and his business partner and wife, Ann Gire Cole, have three grown children and one grandson.

Frederic W. Coulon is a retired Director of Risk Management, Cash Administration & Treasury Services for a business conglomerate comprised of multiple subsidiaries specializing in aerospace & industrial product mfg., food & drug distribution & related retail sales operations. He has held multiple assignments in the property & casualty insurance & marine defense industries. He earned a Bachelor’s in Business Administration and a Master’s in Business Administration, with Honors, from Boston University. In addition to being a U.S. Navy Veteran, he has served as a member of the Planning Board for the Town of Rockport, ME., as a Habitat for Humanity Affiliate Director of Land Acquisition and as a Family Selection Committee Member.

John Enright is the Treasurer. He has spent a productive career in strategic intelligence planning and information technology as a consultant supporting the Departments of Defense, Treasury, State and Justice. He brings skills in the effective use of modern technology to expand outreach and education. In addition to serving on the Camden Conference Board, he is also a Director of the Coastal Counties Workforce Board and a Board member and Treasurer of The Community School, the oldest alternative high school in Maine. While in the Washington, D.C. area, he was an elected City Councilman and an appointed Planning Commissioner for Northern Virginia. He is a veteran of the Air Force Intelligence Service and a graduate of Tufts University.

Will Galloway is the Director of the Watershed School in Rockland, Maine where he also teaches U.S., Chinese and European History. Prior to working at Watershed, he was a founding partner in the mediation firm of Charbonneau & Galloway, providing a wide range of conflict management services to individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations. Will studied British History at the University of St. Andrews in 1986, graduated from Bowdoin College in 1988, served in the Peace Corps in Thailand from 1988-1990 and earned a M.A.T. from Colgate University in 1992. In addition, Will was a teaching fellow at the secondary level through the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University from 2005-2007.

Brewster Grace recently retired as director of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva and as its representative for the World Trade Organization and the International Labor Organization. Prior to joining the Quaker UN Office, he served as Quaker representative in Southeast Asia and then in the Middle East. He has also worked as a correspondent for American Universities Field Staff in Southeast Asia and Geneva where he reported, respectively, on Southeast Asian politics following the Vietnam war and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. He is a graduate of Colorado College with a B.A. in Political Science and Colombia University with M.A.s in Public Law and Government and East Asian Studies.

Fred Hill is a former foreign correspondent and State Department official who established and managed the department’s first wargaming office. His Office of Special Programs conducted policy planning exercises and roundtable discussions on a wide range of security, political, economic and global issues for the Department and foreign affairs agencies from 1986 to 2006. Mr. Hill was Legislative Director for Foreign Affairs for Senator Charles McC. Mathias, Jr. (R., Md.) in 1985 and 1986. From 1965-1985, he was a correspondent and editorial writer for /The Baltimore Sun/, including tours as Bureau Chief in London and Paris where he covered Europe, southern Africa and parts of the Middle East. Fred is currently a columnist for the Bangor Daily News and President of Maine’s First Ship, a non-profit organization that seeks to build a reconstruction of the pinnace Virginia, the first ship built by English settlers in America at the Popham colony in 1607-08. Hill, whose ancestors ran a shipyard in Bath in the 1830s and 1840s, is a graduate of Bowdoin College (1962). He and his wife, Marty, moved to Arrowsic in 2006.

Jeffrey Howland attended the University of Maine in Orono where he graduated in 1995 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering Technology. During his time at the university he worked as a field engineer in an energy assessment program sponsored by the U.S Department of Energy. He has since held various technology management roles, primarily within the financial sector. Jeffrey is a member of the Camden Conference Technology Committee, where he serves as the Chairman. He currently curates MEperspective, a public affairs blog he created in 2011, and lives with his wife and two young children in Camden.

Bob Hirsch is the Board President. He retired in December 2004 as Global Managing Director for DuPont’s Intellectual Assets & Licensing Business. His primary markets were China, India and the Middle East and he was also responsible for DuPont’s New Venture Fund. He is currently an executive consultant in licensing and intellectual property commercialization, as well as in R&D and business management. He is a member of the boards of yet2.com, a global licensing corporation; redE4, a venture fund investing in technology-based startups; Vorbeck, a nano materials company; and Greenkote, an environmentally friendly coatings company. During a 30+ year DuPont career, Bob held a wide variety of executive positions, serving as R&D director for three businesses and running five global businesses. He holds a master’s degree in Engineering and Applied Physics from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Virginia. He has published numerous papers in a variety of fields of physics. Locally, Bob is on the Knox Waldo Regional Economic Development Council and the Many Flags/One Campus Foundation.

G. Paul Holman is Visiting Associate Professor of International Affairs at the University of Maine. He received his Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University in 1973 and his AB from Harvard. His principal teaching and research interests concern international security and the formulation of U.S. national security strategy. Paul’s courses include Global Politics, International Terrorism, and Eastern Europe Since the End of Communism. His many articles on national security have appeared in Naval War College Review, Strategic Review, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Argentinean Naval War College Review, Air Force Magazine, and U.S. Marine Corps Gazette.

Emily Lusher has worked in marketing and market research for over 30 years for corporations, small businesses and nonprofits. Much of her recent market research has been in the area of conferences and events such as trade shows including an extensive stint at IBM corporate marketing helping to evaluate and create priorities for the 2000 events they do each year. Other research has been in the areas of consumer products, high technology and travel and tourism. Currently, she is managing director for market research for Seismic Marketing based in NY. Emily was director of marketing for Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH as well as for a local arts center and function hall. Locally, she has provided marketing assistance to many Camden area nonprofits. Emily has a BA and MA from Harvard University and an MBA from Boston University.

Jim Matlack served as Director of the AFSC Washington Office from 1983 until 2003, during which time he traveled to Central America, Europe, and especially the Middle East and hosted foreign visitors and delegations. His earlier career included 12 years on the Board of Directors of the American Friends Service Committee and was part of the first Western NGO delegation into Cambodia after the defeat of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Jim holds degrees from Princeton, Oxford and Yale universities.

Betsy Mayberry currently works as a social services consultant in New York City. Prior to this, Betsy served as the Executive Director of Louise Wise Services, a child welfare agency, Director of Services at the Children’s Aid Society, another non-profit in New York City and as the Administrative Director of Operations of New York City’s public child welfare organization. A graduate of Cornell and Columbia, she and her husband, Jim Mushlit, have a house in Northport.

Ralph Moore retired in 2007 after 11 years’ service as Rector of St. Peters Episcopal Church in Rockland. He holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University, an M. Div. from Union Theological Seminary in New York and a D. Min. from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For thirteen years, he directed the Protestant Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He and his wife served five years in Episcopal Church projects in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, where their son was born. He is currently a teacher and trustee of the Watershed School in Rockland.

Pat Mundy retired to Spruce Head, Maine after forty-three years as a marketing consultant teaching corporate executives how to develop short and long term strategic business and marketing plans. He currently teaches American History at the Maine State Prison in Warren sponsored by the University of Maine and serves on the Board of the Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations.

Maureen O’Keefe moved to Maine with her family in 2004 after twenty-five years overseas where she served in a myriad of capacities, including as the National Tennis coach in Jordan, teacher of English as a Second Language for the British Council in Oman, middle school teacher in Peru, college English teacher in Sri Lanka, and member of several U.S Embassy charity boards.

Louis Sell served as Executive Director of the American University in Kosovo Foundation (AUKF) from 2003 to 2007, helping establish the American University in Kosovo, which opened its doors in October 2003. A retired Foreign Service Officer, Louis Sell worked for 28 years with the U.S. Department of State, including eight years each in Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union and Russia. He served as US representative to the Joint Consultative Group in Vienna, as Director of the Office of Russian and Eurasian Analysis, and as Executive Secretary of the US delegation to the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. From 1995 – 1996 he served as political deputy to Carl Bildt, the first High Representative for Bosnian Peace Implementation. In that capacity he attended the Dayton Peace Conference and participated in the first year of implementation of the Dayton accords. In 2000 he served as Kosovo Director of the International Crisis Group. He speaks Serbo-Croatian, Russian, and French. He has a B. A. from Franklin and Marshall College (1969) and an M. A. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Affairs. Mr. Sell’s political biography of Slobodan Milosevic, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, was published by Duke University Press in 2002. He is currently at work on a book on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. He serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Maine at Farmington and lives with his family in a 200-year-old house on a Christmas tree farm in Whitefield, Maine.

Robert Tracy, a Maine native with twenty-three years of operational and management experience in commercial, industrial and retail markets is a recognized leader with great insight and knowledge of the energy industry. Robert began his successful career in the early 1980’s and found his niche in the energy industry after nearly a decade in the agricultural industry. He started at Maverick Inc., a large independent petroleum dealer owning a chain of convenience stores in the Western part of the country. He returned home to Maine in 1996, joining Irving Oil, one of Canada’s largest employers in the energy services sector. During his tenure, Robert played a strategic role helping the company realize its growth objectives in the U. S. market. Since joining R. H. Foster in 2002, Robert’s sharp eye for spotting future consumer needs along with his desire to find new and better ways to serve his customers has served the company well. As Executive Vice President, Robert has led the company through various transitions including the development of a proprietary food program — FRESHIES®, the addition of many new convenience stores and several new heating oil company acquisitions, as well as opening a new energy services office in Ellsworth. Robert holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Southern Utah University and a Master of Business Administration from Utah State University. In addition, Robert currently holds several certifications in energy efficiency and environmental procedure. Robert has also had a strong interest in foreign policy especially how the energy industry may influence world economies standard of living and stability.