Allison Hooper of Brookfield, co-founder of Vermont Butter & Cheese Company (now Vermont Creamery), and Sherilyn Peterson of Craftsbury Common, of counsel at the Seattle office of the law firm Perkins Coie, have been elected chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Sterling College Board of Trustees, effective July 1. Two other officers — secretary Wendy Koenig, a grassroots lobbyist in Washington, DC, and a higher education consultant, and treasurer Eric Becker, chief investment officer at Clean Yield Asset Management — were reelected to the board.
In addition, the board welcomed three new members at large: Ellen Falduto, chief information and planning officer at the College of Wooster; Steven Thurston Oliver, associate professor of secondary and higher education at Salem State University; and Jo D Saffeir, a natural resource consultant based in Maine.
Hooper, who was first elected to the board in 2014, succeeds Peter Chehayl as chair. She made her mark as one of the first artisan cheesemakers in the country, co-founding Vermont Butter & Cheese in 1984, and, over the years, winning more than 100 awards and bringing French-style cheeses, butter and other everyday delicacies to the American table. As president of the American Cheese Society from 2005 to 2008 and the founding president of the Vermont Cheese Council, Hooper has been a voice for and mentor to US cheesemakers. In 2015, she was named by Food & Wine, Forbes and Fortune magazines as one of the “most innovative women in food and drink.” In 2018 she was named to the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America.