COA alumni up for prestigious James Beard Awards

Two College of the Atlantic alumni are among the 2025 semifinalists for one of the nation’s most coveted honors in food.

Max Overstrom-Coleman ’03’s Wolf Tree, in White River Junction, VT, is in the running for Outstanding Bar, while Havana, founded by Michael Boland ’94 and his wife, Deirdre Swords, and located in Bar Harbor, ME, is nominated for Outstanding Restaurant.

The James Beard Awards, often referred to as the “Oscars of the food world,” recognize excellence in restaurants, chefs, authors, and journalists, and serve as a benchmark for the best in American dining and food storytelling.

Havana and Wolf Tree are semi-finalists in national categories, with high-end competitors such as Benu in San Francisco and The Dabney in Washington, DC in the restaurant category and Chicago’s Kumiko and Miami’s Café La Trova in the bar category.

Wolf Tree, in White River Junction, VT, was founded by Max Overstrom-Coleman ’03 with a focus on community sustainability that was nurtured at College of the Atlantic.

Boland and Overstrom-Coleman share a human-ecological, entrepreneurial approach, as well as a passion for cultivating community that stems from their days at COA.

“One of the most important things for this bar is taking care of the community,” Overstrom-Coleman says of Wolf Tree. “From that perspective, it’s right on par with some of the ethos of COA—focused on community sustainability, giving people a safe place to come to be with the people they love.”

Boland too draws from the well of experiences he had during his COA years.

“As a student, living year-round including in the summer on Mount Desert Island gave me a great sense of connection to the community both on the campus and in the surrounding towns,” says Boland, who now serves on the COA Board of Trustees. “While I focused on biology mostly, I always maintained a connection to the hospitality sector of MDI and found it suited me. We started the restaurants with sustainability firmly in mind and have tried to continue that all along.”

Overstrom-Coleman also began as a scientist at COA, and enjoyed an early career in marine ecology before becoming rooted in the hospitality industry and founding Wolf Tree.

Havana, founded by Michael Boland ’94 and his wife, Deirdre Swords in Bar Harbor, ME, stems from Boland's great sense... — Havana, founded by Michael Boland ’94 and his wife, Deirdre Swords in Bar Harbor, ME, stems from Boland’s “great sense of connection to the community” that he picked up at College of the Atlantic.

“I named the bar Wolf Tree, as not only a vestige of Vermont’s agrarian past, but how wolf trees function from a community building process, that they become hubs of the communities they serve, and that is how I wanted this bar to function,” he says.

Boland, who was named 2023 Restaurateur of the Year by Hospitality Maine, has opened restaurants with partners or alone in Portland, Bangor, Northeast Harbor, Winter Harbor, Bethel, Newry, and even on an outer island, the Islesford Dock Restaurant & Gallery on Little Cranberry Island. His has been a career of connecting with people, he says, from the time he was a student until now.

“I guess the biggest takeaway—cliche I know—it’s all connected, and that’s the essence of human ecology,” he says. “From the alums that run fantastic farms like Mandala, COA Beech Hill and COA Peggy Rockefeller to name a few, to the restaurants that buy some of that production, to the guests who dine with us—summer residents, year round residents, and visitors alike—it’s all one big circle.”

The Restaurant and Chef Award nominees will be announced on Wednesday, April 2, and winners will be celebrated at the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards ceremony in June at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.