Board + Advisors

Board of Trustees

• Melony Swasey, Chair
• Eric Warasta, Treasurer
• Edward Forte, Secretary
• Jamie Day
• Betty Herschman
• Ling Luo
• Fifile Nguyen
• Meredith Wallace

Board Profiles

Melony Swasey (Chair) is a residential realtor, affiliated with Unlimited Sotheby’s International Realty, based in Brookline and Boston. She initially settled in Boston to work for a small non-profit that funds social-movement organizations of small farmers, women and youth in economically and environmentally fragile parts of the world. With a degree in urban planning from Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning, Melony is passionate about environmental sustainability. Her interests in practical design and community development lend well to the Eliot School's commitment to the applied arts and racial equity, and to its growth as a Boston institution.

Eric Warasta (Treasurer) is Principal and Portfolio Manager at Moody, Lynn & Lieberson, LLC, where he manages client portfolios and provides research coverage of the industrial and consumer cyclical sectors. He is a member of CFA Society Boston, through which he serves as a mentor to Suffolk University in the annual CFA Institute Research Challenge. Earlier positions include Cambridge Trust Company, where he was portfolio manager for the Equity Income Strategy, and the Macroeconomic Analysis Division of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Edward Forte (Secretary) is principal and founder of Forte Architecture + Design, a professional architectural and design services firm serving commercial, retail, government and residential clients in the northeastern United States and beyond. An architect with over 30 years of professional experience, he is a graduate of the Boston Architectural College and has studied urban design, planning and restoration architecture at L'Universita' della Sapienza, in Rome. He is active with Boston Centre/South Main Streets, which named him Volunteer of the Year in 2014.

Jamie Day is Head of Global Art Direction for IDEXX. Previously a consultant on marketing, Creative Director at LiteBoxer and Associate Creative Director at MullenLowe, throughout his career, he has created award-winning work for a wide variety of national and global clients across many forms of media, including broadcast, digital, outdoor, brand experience and social content. He is passionate about art, design and the creative process. Jamie lives on Holbrook Street, across the street from the Eliot schoolhouse, and his wife, Deirdre, sits on the Eliot School’s Advisory Council and Marketing Committee. Their young children attend classes at the Eliot School.

Betty Herschman is a major donor advisor with Movement Voter Project (MVP). Over the course of her 20+ year career as a policy advocate, development and communications specialist, and educator, she has directed international advocacy for an Israeli activist NGO focused on the city’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; helped build the organizational capacity of seminal Boston-based organizations responding to domestic violence and disparities in health care access; and taught in the Boston Public Schools. Betty holds an MPA from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and an MAT from Boston University. Her involvement in the Eliot School is rooted in her belief in the personal, political, and healing power of art for young people and the need for racial equity in access to art and craft education, making, and markets.

Ling Luo works in the financial services industry and has been employed by Fidelity Investments since 2006, primarily supporting  institutional clients and corporate functions. Ling moved here in 2000 for school and graduated from Boston College's Master of Science in Finance program.

Fifile Nguyen is a strategic planner with expertise in design thinking, service design and innovation management. Before joining the Eliot School board, she served on its Advisory Council, creating a Community Insights Study to help with strategic planning. Fi was a member of our sewing faculty from 2013-17, during which time she worked with a team to develop our fashion curriculum and skills pathway. At the same time, she worked as Marketing Coordinator at Cengage Learning and then Marketing Manager at John Wiley & Sons, academic publishers. She temporarily left Boston to attend the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management, where she earned an MBA in Business Design. Today, she works independently and in partnership with Nonfiction Design as a design strategy consultant for clients in education, government, health tech and electronics-based technology.

Meredith Wallace has worked at Brigham and Women's Hospital for over a decade and is the Executive Administrator for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology overseeing all operational, financial, academic and research affairs for the department and leading the Women's Health Service Line. Previously, she worked in healthcare strategy consulting and clinical research, and interned at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Meredith has a Masters in Public Health focused on Healthcare Administration and Policy from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Biology and Neuroscience from Williams College. Aside from work, Meredith enjoys being outside and active - spending time in mid-coast Maine in the summer, skiing in Vermont in the winter, or hiking around Boston with her husband and children. She has served on the Eliot School's Advisory Council from 2019 to 2022 and as a member of the Governance Committee before joining the Board.

Board Emeriti

• Bridgit Brown
• Neema Chaiban, Goulston & Storrs, LLC
• Bob Cunha
• Joanna Damp, Liberty Mutual
• Braulio Felipe, Dept of Property & Construction Management, City of Boston
• Charles Fox, Charles Fox Architect
• Karen Haas, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
• David Hodes Friedman, Dept of Architecture, MIT (emeritus)
• Curdina Hill, Clearways to Freedom
• John Iappini, Marathon Associates
• Carolyn Ingles, Shattuck Hospital (retired)
• Aaron Krakow, Krakow & Souris, LLC
• Ramón Martin, Brigham & Women’s Hospital
• Marilyn Mase, Artist; Wentworth Institute of Technology
• Bonnie McBride, Sportsmen's Tennis & Enrichment Center (retired)
• Kevin Moloney, Barron & Stadfeld, PC (retired)
• Terry Murray, Eliot Street Capital
• Margaret Patterson
• Dana Rashti, AllWays Health Partners
• Martha Rizzoli, Citigroup (retired)
• Onur Sergici, Hancock Whitney Bank
• Terry Power, The Power Company
• Joy Silverstein, Fresh Hair Salon (retired)
• Mary Smoyer, Boston Public Schools (retired)
• Melvin Tutiven, Rockland Trust Bank
• Jessica Welch, Lowell, Blake & Associates

Advisory Council

• Henry Allen, Discount Foundation (retired)
• Drew Bagdasarian, DRB Associates
• Lev Breydo
• Soul Brown, Rhode Island School of Design
• Geoff Chasin, Cardinal Logistics Management
• Estefania Ciliotta, Northeastern University Center for Design
• Cornell Coley, Coley Communications
• Katie Connolly, Newton Wellesley Hospital
• Deirdre Day, Channel Maven Consulting
• Luiza de Camargo, Junior Achievement of Northern New England
• Lee Englert, Steppingstone Foundation
• Kathryn Fenneman, Grub Street
• Julio Fuentes
• Melissa Gallin
• Meryl Glassman, Dignity Matters
• Devin Hill, JP Morgan Securities
• Andrés Holder, Boston Children's Chorus
• Andrea Howard, West End House
• Alex Jacobson, Jameson & Thompson Picture Framers
• Jesse Johnson
• Janet Kawada, Massachusetts College of Art & Design (retired)
• Toni Loiacano, TMLW, LLC
• Marisa Luse
• Michelle Madera, Cambridge Public Schools
• George Mallett, Artists for Humanity (retired)
• Kris Manjapra, Dept. of Studies in Race, Colonialism & Diaspora, Tufts University 
• Lolita Mayadas
• Matt McArthur, The Record Co.
• Michelle Millar Fisher, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
• Anita Morson-Matra, Mayor's Office of Arts & Culture
• Nicole Murray
• Michael Reiskind, Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council; Jamaica Pond Association
• Teresa Rodriguez, Somerville Public Schools
• Antoinette Russell, Eaton Vance Investment Counsel
• Abigail Satinsky, Tufts University Art Galleries, School of the Museum of Fine Arts
• Paul Spinale, Islington Capital Partners
• Jan Spitz, Norman B. Leventhal Map Center (retired)
• Corey Stallings, South Street Youth Center
• Sandra Storey, Jamaica Plain & Mission Hill Gazettes (retired)
• Robert Tuchmann, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LP (retired)
• Norman Yu, IMB Partners

Organizational affiliations for identification only