College of the Atlantic's Bar Harbor, Maine campus is overseen by a board of trustees comprised b...College of the Atlantic's Bar Harbor, Maine campus is overseen by a board of trustees comprised by over 40 people with diverse backgrounds and strengths.

Cynthia Baker, Sarah Currie-Halpern, and Laura McGiffert Slover bring a diverse set of skills and interests to the COA board, says chairman Philip Moriarty.

College of the Atlantic is fortunate to have an incredibly dedicated, engaged and generous board of trustees. We are very excited to welcome our three newest members, Laura, Cynthia and Sarah. Each brings a wealth of talent, experience and passion,” Moriarty says. “On behalf of all our trustee colleagues, I offer our hearty congratulations and a very warm welcome.”

Baker will serve as a parent trustee, a one-year term eligible for re-election annually. Currie-Halpern and Slover have been appointed to three-year terms. The board says goodbye to Lindsay Davies, who served as parent trustee for three years.

Among other recent activity on the COA Board, Tony Robinson transitioned to Emeritus and Lissa Hodder renewed for another term as Emerita. Amy Geier, Winston Holt, Jay McNally, and Tony Mazlish all renewed for another three-year term.

Cynthia Baker
Cynthia Baker is a Senior Development Director for Duke University. She has been a major gifts fundraiser for Duke for over 25 years, with primary responsibility for securing major gifts ($100k-$5M) from alumni and parents in the New York area for university-wide priorities. She runs Duke Financial Partners—a NYC-based network of 400 senior finance industry professionals—and is a founding leader of Duke WIN (Women’s Impact Network).

Cynthia BakerCynthia Baker Credit: Duke Photography

Baker also has held various strategic partnerships/development positions with the American Legacy Foundation, the non-profit FasterCures, and Fleishman-Hillard. During and after college she worked for Senator George Mitchell (D-ME) on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Baker was born in Cambridge, England and raised in Bangor. Her parents were professors at the University of Maine and her mother represented Bangor in the Maine State Legislature.

Baker lives in Washington, DC with her husband, Jon Zeitler, and sons Adam (College of the Atlantic), Jeremy (Lafayette College) and Thomas (Woodrow Wilson High School). The family has a summer home in Southwest Harbor. She serves as Vice Chair of the Board of The Avalon Theatre, a historic, non-profit cinema and art house in Washington.

Baker earned a B.A. and M.A. in History and Women’s Studies from Duke University.

Sarah Currie-Halpern
Sarah Currie-Halpern is Co-Founder of the waste reduction and diversion consulting firm Think Zero LLC, which helps corporations, building owners and institutions with waste reduction and diversion planning and implementation.

Before founding Think Zero, Currie-Halpern ran Solid Waste and Zero Waste Programs for the Mayor’s Office of New York City, where she helped develop the zero waste section of OneNYC and the waste section of the recent 80x50 plan. Her efforts and work at the Mayor’s Office were focused around implementing the zero wasteSarah Currie-HalpernSarah Currie-Halpern Credit: © www.jwheadshots.com
plan citywide by increasing beneficial use of organics; encouraging more waste reduction, reuse and donation within city agencies; increasing recycling and composting; reducing greenhouse gas emissions from waste; and developing or improving waste policies. She ran the multi-agency Zero Waste Steering Committee, co-lead the OneNYC Water Fountain and Bottle Refiller Task Force, developed and lead the Mayor’s Zero Waste Challenge, and pushed forward groundbreaking work around light pollution.

Chair of the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board and a Board Member of Earth Day New York and the R Baby Foundation, Currie-Halpern is deeply committed to environmental and social advocacy. A vegetarian since childhood and nature lover, she has a lifelong passion for
environmental preservation, waste reduction and diversion, community service, yoga & meditation, habitat conservation, traveling and the arts. She resides in Tribeca and Seal Harbor with her husband, two young daughters, and their two dogs and one fish.

Laura McGiffirt Slover
Laura McGiffert Slover is the President and Chief Executive Officer of CenterPoint Education Solutions, a nonprofit organization working to optimize educators’ experiences and pave the way to greater effectiveness and increased student achievement.

Laura McGiffert Slover Laura McGiffert Slover

Slover began her career in education as a high school English teacher in Colorado, where she saw first-hand the power of great teachers to prepare all students to achieve success regardless of their zip code. She then spent 16 years at Achieve, a bipartisan education reform organization that supports states in building systems of quality standards, assessments, and accountability. In
2009, as senior vice president, she led Achieve’s efforts to support the development of the Common Core State Standards, and in 2010 she helped launch and subsequently led the Partnership for Assessment of College and Careers, a consortium of states working together to develop a common assessment system. As a former teacher, she believes in the importance of regular information to power decision making for educators and families.

Slover earned her bachelor’s degree in English and American literature from Harvard, her master’s degree in education curriculum and instruction from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and her master’s degree in education policy from Georgetown. A native Washingtonian, Laura was a mayoral appointee to the District of Columbia School Board in 2007 and subsequently was elected twice to the State Board of Education. She remains engaged with the District of Columbia Public Schools, where her daughter attends third grade. She is a member of the national advisory board for the National Outdoor Leadership School and she is an Aspen Pahara education fellow.