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Board of Directors
2026-2027 Board Members
Rick Bernstein – Rick earned a BA degree in psychology from Boston University and a Master’s degree in health services administration from Arizona State University, followed by an administrative residency and post-graduate fellowship at St. Anthony Medical Center in Columbus, OH. After a 36 year career, including 18 years as CEO of his own consulting firm, he retired to MDI along with his wife, Heather, in 2021. Rick is on the board of directors for Community Health & Counseling Services, volunteers with the Jesup Library, and sponsors Pay it Forward initiatives with the YWCA of MDI and with other community organizations. You can often find Rick on the beautiful trails of MDI.
Art Blank – Art lives in Bar Harbor with his wife Debi. He served as President/CEO of MDI Hospital since 1999 until his retirement at the end of 2020. Prior to accepting this role, he served for nearly two years as president of the MDI Community Health Plan, and director of Physician Practices for the Mount Desert Island Regional Health Care Corporation. Throughout his career he advocated for development of rural health systems and universal access to care. Prior to moving to MDI, Art worked as a senior consultant for Northland Health Group, and as executive director of Northeast MSO in Bangor, ME. Art is currently Chair of the MDI YMCA Board of Directors, Vice Chair of the Board of Healthy Acadia and is a member of the MDI Rotary. He has served as Chair of the Board of the Maine Hospital Association and Chair of the Good Will-Hinckley Home Association. Art has a BA in business administration from Boston University. He and Debi enjoy travel, spending time with children and grandchildren, and spending time outdoors.
Lisa Crockett – After one year of college, Lisa moved to NYC and began a five-year stint at the Museum of Modern Art. She began her Antarctic path in 1980, working in a support capacity, and later as a scientist at McMurdo Station. During graduate training at the University of Maine with Dr. Bruce Sidell, she studied metabolic cold adaptation in Antarctic fishes while working at Palmer Station (1986-1991), where she met her husband, the oceanographer Pat Hassett. Lisa became a faculty member at Ohio University and taught biological chemistry, animal physiology, and the physiological ecology of climate change. During their years in Athens (Ohio), Lisa and Pat worked for more than 20 summers as investigators at the MDI Biological Lab. Between 2011-2017, Lisa co-led an international team in Antarctica to work on the physiological and biochemical underpinnings of thermal tolerance in Antarctic fishes. Now retired, Lisa has continued recent work funded by the National Science Foundation to explore the value of a digital hub for an Antarctic biorepository to enable more researchers access to valuable Antarctic specimens. She and Pat taught their first class at Acadia Senior College (Antarctica: Exploration, Governance, Natural History, and Challenges) in the winter term of 2024.
Virginia Drewry – Virginia Drewry earned a BA in religion from Williams College, studied ethics and sociology of
religion at Yale, trained as a community organizer in the DC area, and worked in neighborhood stabilization and on state and national equal rights campaigns before completing a law degree at the University of Virginia and practicing law in New York and DC. Although she grew up in the Upper South and has deep family roots there, Virginia has also long felt the pull of New England. She and her late husband happily continued his family’s tradition of spending part of each summer on or near MDI, ultimately building a home in Brooksville. She is a member of the ASC Racial Justice Reading Group and is active in environmental, educational, and social justice organizations.
Jeff Dunn (President) - Jeff Dunn is a retired pediatric cardiac surgeon and hospital administrator. Born in Brooklyn, Jeff grew up in Albany, New York. He earned his BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his MD from Albany Medical College of Union University. He completed surgical training in general surgery and cardio-thoracic surgery at the University of Michigan and served as Senior Registrar of pediatric cardiac surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London. He served as Professor and Chief of Cardiac Surgery at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children and Temple University in Philadelphia. After retiring from surgery, he held executive leadership roles in a major multihospital system. Jeff and his wife, Linda, moved permanently to Mount Desert Island in 2015 after spending summers in Maine for 40 years. He has served on the boards of the Jackson Laboratory, Maine AllCare, and the MDI Hospital Quality and Safety Committee, and is active with Acadia Senior College. He enjoys watercolor painting, traveling, and reading trashy mystery novels of no social value. Jeff and Linda have two children and three grandchildren.
Patsy Fogarty – Patsy has a Master of Social Work (MSW) degree from Columbia University and had a long career in human services, originally in psychosocial counseling and then in executive positions for United Way. After retirement, she served on the board of the Darien Council for Aging and on the board of SoundWaters, an environmental education organization, both based in Connecticut. She and her husband Ed moved to MDI in 2006 where she became active in her church and on the board of the Southwest Harbor Public Library, which she eventually chaired until becoming chairman of the Maine Seacoast Mission. More recently she has been active with the Westside Food Pantry, the Library, the Mission, and the board of her Wellesley class, of which she is co-chair.
Dixie Hathaway (Secretary) – Dixie grew up in Missoula, Montana, and has lived in Iowa City, Baton Rouge, and Ithaca, New York, where she completed her law degree at Cornell. Dixie retired from her work as legislative counsel for the Comptroller of New York State, and before that for the New York City Comptroller. Her work primarily involved drafting and advocating for bills dealing with New York's pension systems, local government functions, and State Finance law. She regularly walks and hikes in Acadia National Park, and volunteers with the Bar Harbor Historical Society, Serendipity (BH Food Pantry), and the Wild Gardens of Acadia.
Janice Kenyon moved from Vermont to Southwest Harbor in 2013. She and her family have been coming to MDI and Swans Island for many years and always wanted to move here permanently. Janice has a degree in Computer Science/Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has developed municipal software programs and worked on database and web applications including development of the Digital Archive software for cultural heritage organizations on MDI. Janice and her husband George created and marketed a web application that let users create interactive maps for web sites. She served as Administrator for Acadia Senior College for about eight years before retiring from that role, and brings firsthand knowledge of ASC's operations, community relationships and mission to the board. Janice is a Master Gardener and volunteers at Sweet Haven Farm in Seal Cove. She also volunteers for the Southwest Harbor Public Library, at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden and for MDI Wheelers. In her free time you can find her hiking, biking, kayaking, gardening or quilting. Most recently she has been learning to play the cello.
Dan McKay – Dan practiced law for over 40 years at the Maine law firm of Eaton Peabody and served for 17 years as its managing partner. He concentrated his practice on the representation of business entities and financial institutions in a variety of transactional matters and served as general outside corporate counsel to clients of all sizes in a variety of business sectors. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Maine Seacoast Mission, and is a member of the board of directors of the Heron Foundation, a private foundation with national reach and a mission to empower positive change in underserved rural communities. He also serves as chairman of the Town of Mount Desert Economic Development. Dan lives in Northeast Harbor with his wife Nancy.
Ellie Pancoe – Ellie is a New Englander born and bred. She has a BA in comparative literature from Mount Holyoke College and earned her Master of Social Work (MSW) from the University of Maine. She was a therapist with MDI Hospital's Behavioral Health Center and later settled into a very satisfying private practice. She continues her professional commitments by serving on the board of Acadia Hospital. Now retired, you can find Ellie in her quilting studio, or behind her camera somewhere in the Park. She has co-taught a course on Football for Women for ASC, and has taken numerous classes.
Michael Pancoe – Michael Pancoe is a retired diagnostic radiologist with 48 years of experience. He earned his medical degree from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in 1977 and completed his residency at the University of Virginia Medical Center. Before retiring, Dr. Pancoe practiced in Bangor, Maine. He and his wife, Ellie, lived in Pretty Marsh before relocating to Bar Harbor in 2024, where they now reside on Otter Cliffs Road. They have two daughters. Michael is an avid map collector and sailing enthusiast. He serves as Vice Chair of the MDI Historical Society and is also a board member of the Temple Beth El Cemetery on Mount Hope Avenue in Bangor.
Alan Rosenquist is a retired neuroscientist who lives in Southwest Harbor with his wife, Cora Olgyay, a Landscape Architect. He enjoys serving as the Chair of the Curriculum Committee for Acadia Senior College, as well as volunteering for Friends of Acadia at the Wild Gardens of Acadia and the Membership Table at Jordan Pond House. Alan received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and then joined the University of Pennsylvania where he became a Professor of Neuroscience in the Medical School. At Penn Med he also served as the Associate Dean for Basic Science Education, and the Associate Dean for Animal Research. He was also Chair of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). At Penn, Alan was the recipient of many teaching awards from medical students and residents. He served on multiple NIH Study Sections and NSF grant review panels. He was an Associate Editor for the journal, Cerebral Cortex, and was a Visiting Professor in Belgium, Italy and France. His research was focused on the mammalian visual system and recovery of function after brain injury.
Jack Russell – Jack was born and raised on Mount Desert Island, attending school here through his freshman year in high school. He later attended Phillips Exeter, Marlboro College, Brown University, and the Union Graduate School at Antioch. He was active in the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s and moved to Detroit in 1971 where he became an expert on the American auto industry and was staff to the Detroit City Council and the Michigan Senate. Since then Jack has continued to direct his energies to a half-century as a community organizer, policy analyst, organizational leader, and single-shingle consultant. Since returning to MDI in 2006, he has worked on conservation, written on national and local politics and regional history, and in 2016 was co-chair of Acadia Centennial Task Force. Jack has offered several ASC courses on Acadian and Island history, Walden, and Moby Dick, and offered several Food for Thought and Coffee Clash presentations.
Kathleen Slack – Kathleen retired from teaching at Mount Desert Island High School in June 2018 after teaching Family and Consumer Science for 29 years in Maine, Ohio, and New Jersey. She was born in Dover, NH, and grew up in Lynn, MA. She was educated in Catholic schools and graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a member of the Conservation Commission for the town of Southwest Harbor and serves on the Women’s History Month Committee at the Southwest Harbor Library. She has also served on the ASC Racial Justice Committee.
Michael Smith earned his B.S. and M.S. in Industrial Engineering at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He served as Executive Director of the Accelerated Master's Program in Systems Engineering (AMP) from 2004-2017 and continues to serve both AMP and the Systems and Information Engineering Department on a part-time basis. He served on the Industrial Engineering faculties at Oregon State University and the University of Missouri-Columbia before joining Science Applications International Corporation (now Leidos) where he was a Senior Scientist from 1983-2004. Mike continues to be active professionally as an independent consultant and as an "on-call" professional for Leidos where he engages in multiple programs in support of the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Operations. Mike and his wife, Amanda, and their four children vacationed on Mount Desert Island almost every year since their first visit in 1983. In 2022, they purchased a cottage in Somesville built by John Somes in 1879. They are active at St. Andrew and St. John Episcopal Church in SWH where Mike is a member of the vestry and church treasurer and Amanda is the volunteer coordinator for the West Side Food Pantry. They both volunteer for Friends of Acadia.
Jim Vekasi (Treasurer) – Jim moved to MDI in 1991 to work in Acadia National Park and it has become home. Since retirement in 2011, he has been active in Acadia Senior College, Southwest Harbor Public Library, and Wendell Gilley Museum. His Civil Engineering practice in the private sector, Peace Corps, and National Park Service took him to Michigan, the Kingdom of Tonga, Colorado, Montana, and Maine culminating with twenty years managing the construction and maintenance program in Acadia National Park. He is an avid bird carver and plays mandolin and sings as often as possible with various folks including the bands Leavin’ Tulsa and Big Moose.