Christopher Caouette
Greenfield Cooperative Bank announced that Christopher Caouette has joined the bank as the new senior vice president – credit officer. He will be based in the main office at 62 Federal St. in Greenfield. “We are thrilled to add someone with Chris’s experience and reputation to the team,” said Tony Worden, president and chief operating officer. “I believe he will be an excellent addition to Greenfield Cooperative Bank.” Having spent the majority of his career in the Pioneer Valley, Caouette arrives with more than 30 years of banking experience, most recently as vice president, credit officer at another area bank. He holds an MBA in finance from UMass Amherst and attended the Massachusetts Bankers Assoc. BankExec program – School for Financial Studies, where he finished second among 10 competing bank groups.
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The Advertising Club of Western Massachusetts’ trustees of the Order of William Pynchon announced their selection of two local residents, Helen Caulton-Harris and Victor Rojas, as recipients of this year’s Pynchon medal. Caulton-Harris has served for decades as a tireless advocate for low-income residents, underserved neighborhoods, and communities of color. As director of the city of Springfield’s Health and Human Services division, she led the charge in making COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites widely available to all city residents. Rojas serves as director of technology for the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Holyoke and a role model for the city’s most vulnerable young people, connecting them with life-changing academic opportunities. During the pandemic, he worked to connect underserved students to internet access and led the effort to deliver thousands of meals and snacks to students who would otherwise receive them at school. Due to a postponed event in 2020, the Advertising Club announced its upcoming event will be a combined celebration for Pynchon recipients from 2020 and 2021. Last year’s recipients, Janine Fondon and Elizabeth Wills-O’Gilvie, will also receive their medals at the upcoming ceremony. The presentation of the Pynchon Medal and celebration will take place on Thursday, Oct. 7 at the Log Cabin in Holyoke. Event details and ticket information can be found at adclubwm.org or by calling (413) 342-0533.
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Ryan McEleney
American Eagle Financial Credit Union (AEFCU) announced the appointment of Ryan McEleney as senior vice president, chief people officer. As CPO, McEleney will lead the advancement of talent-management and human-capital-development strategies, as well as cultivate workforce plans and programs that align with the organization’s overall business objectives. He will serve as a member of the company’s executive leadership team, reporting directly to the president and CEO. American Eagle’s current president and CEO, Dean Marchessault, announced earlier this year that he will retire at the end of 2021, at which time the credit union’s current Senior Vice President and Chief Lending Officer Howard Brady will assume the role of president and CEO. McEleney brings nearly 20 years of human-resources and training experience to American Eagle, most recently serving as senior vice president, director of HR Analytics & Technology at Webster Bank. He previously held positions in the areas of incentive compensation, HR strategy, and talent and culture programs. He has been a featured speaker at HR Leaders, the HR Leadership Summit, Innovate Work, Future of Work, and HR for Financial Services, to name a few, and has also been a guest lecturer at Southern Connecticut State University. McEleney is a senior certified professional from the Society of Human Resources Management. He earned his bachelor’s degree in general studies from the University of Connecticut and graduated from the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning in 2015. He has a Six Sigma green belt from Central Connecticut State University in addition to both his leadership certification and his culture certification from the Disney Institute. He also has an advanced facilitation certificate from the Langevin Institute. He currently serves as director and co-chair of the diversity, equity and inclusion committee for the Governor’s Prevention Partnership (GPP). He also co-founded, and now serves as a director of, Walk with Us, an organization supporting families impacted by brain cancer.
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Francine Berman, renowned data scientist, researcher, and co-founder of the Research Data Alliance, will join UMass Amherst’s College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) faculty this fall as a research professor and Stuart Rice Honorary Chair. She will work across the UMass campus to build and lead a new initiative in public-interest technology. A leading researcher in the field of data science, Berman has focused her past work on the societal, ethical, and environmental impacts of information technology. Most recently, she has been working to ensure that the internet of things develops in ways that are beneficial for human society and the ecosystem, topics she explored as a 2019-20 Katherine Hampson Bessell Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She currently serves as the Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. At UMass Amherst, Berman will lead a new initiative focusing on public-interest technology. The initiative will blend teaching and research with hands-on practice and provide students, alumni, and the community with tools to reap the benefits and minimize the risks of the technological world we live in. This initiative will span the university’s Amherst and Mount Ida campuses, leveraging the Newton location for outreach and student experiential learning. Berman’s academic expertise has translated to an extensive career in public service. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she was appointed to the National Council on the Humanities in 2015. In recognition of her service-focused work, she was selected by the National Academy of Public Administration for inclusion in its 2020 class of Academy Fellows. In 2012, she co-founded the Research Data Alliance (RDA), a community-driven international organization that builds global infrastructure to enable data sharing and data-driven research. Since its launch in 2012, RDA has attracted nearly 12,000 members from more than 130 countries and has built data infrastructure in use by groups and projects all over the world. Berman has also served in academic leadership roles, including as vice president for Research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and director of the National Science Foundation’s Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, a consortium of 41 research groups, institutions, and university partners with the mission of developing national infrastructure to support data-intensive and computationally intensive applications. Berman is a fellow of the Assoc. of Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science. Before joining RPI, she taught at Purdue University as an assistant professor and at the University of California San Diego as a professor. She earned her master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Washington.
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Timothy Murphy
Skoler, Abbott & Presser, P.C. announced that one of its partners, attorney Timothy Murphy, was recognized by his peers as a 2022 Lawyer of the Year in Springfield for his work in Labor Law – Management. Only a single lawyer in each practice area in each community is honored with this award. In addition, Murphy is recognized in Best Lawyers in America 2022 in three fields: employment law – management, labor law – management, and litigation – labor and employment. Focusing his practice on labor relations, union avoidance, collective bargaining and arbitration, employment litigation, and employment counseling, Murphy has been included in The Best Lawyers in America every year since 2013 and was Lawyer of the Year in 2015, 2019, and 2020. In 2017, he was named “Man Enough to Be a Girl Scout” by the Girls Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts. He also sits on boards of directors for several area organizations, such as the Human Service Forum and Community Legal Aid, and is a member of the World Affairs Council.
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Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin announced that seven of its attorneys were listed in The Best Lawyers in America 2022, and two were also named a Lawyer of the Year. They include Shareholder Michele Feinstein, recognized in the fields of litigation – trusts and estates, elder law, and trusts and estates; Shareholder Gary Fentin, banking and finance law and commercial transactions/Uniform Commercial Code law; Shareholder Carol Cioe Klyman, elder law and trusts and estates (she was also named a Lawyer of the Year in the field of trusts and estates); Managing Partner Timothy Mulhern, corporate law and tax law; Shareholder Steven Schwartz, bankruptcy and creditor debtor rights/insolvency and reorganization law, business organizations (including LLCs and partnerships), closely held companies and family business law, as well as corporate law (he was also named a Lawyer of the Year in the field of business organizations); Shareholder James Sheils, commercial transactions/Uniform Commercial Code law; and Shareholder Steven Weiss, bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights/insolvency and reorganization law. Best Lawyers listings are published in dozens of countries around the world. The 2022 edition includes more than 67,000 attorneys in 148 practice areas, covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and inclusion in this year’s publication is based on more than 9.4 million detailed evaluations of lawyers by other lawyers.
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Bulkley Richardson announced that 13 lawyers from the firm were recently selected by their peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America 2022. These lawyers were recognized in 20 unique areas of practice. They include Peter Barry, recognized in the fields of construction law and healthcare law; Michael Burke, medical malpractice law – defendants and personal-injury litigation – defendants; Mark Cress, banking and finance law, bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights/insolvency and reorganization law, and corporate law; Francis Dibble Jr., bet-the-company litigation, commercial litigation, criminal defense – white-collar, litigation – labor and employment, and litigation – securities; Daniel Finnegan, administrative/regulatory law and litigation – construction; Scott Foster, business organizations (including LLCs and partnerships); Kevin Maynard, commercial litigation, litigation – banking and finance, and litigation – construction; David Parke, corporate law and mergers and acquisitions; Melinda Phelps, medical-malpractice law – defendants and personal-injury litigation – defendants; Jeffrey Poindexter, commercial litigation; John Pucci, bet-the-company litigation, criminal defense – general practice, and criminal defense – white-collar; Elizabeth Sillin, nonprofit/charities law and trusts and estates; and Ronald Weiss, corporate law, mergers-and-acquisitions law, and tax law.
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Mark Fuller, who has served as interim chancellor of UMass Dartmouth since January, was named permanent chancellor. He has served in the interim capacity since January, following nine years as dean of the UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Management, which rose to national prominence under his leadership, and three years as UMass Amherst vice chancellor for Advancement. Fuller spent 12 years in the UMass system prior to being named interim chancellor in January, including nine transformative years at Isenberg, which is now ranked as the number-one public undergraduate business program in the Northeast by U.S. News & World Report. Isenberg’s online MBA program rose to the top ranking in the nation, and third in the world, according to the Financial Times. With an alumni base of 60,000 (similar to that of UMass Dartmouth), the annual giving to the Isenberg School increased from $2 million to $10 million on Fuller’s watch. As vice chancellor for Advancement for three years, he was a key player in redesigning UMass Amherst’s Advancement activities and building greater coordination between alumni communications, engagement, and fundraising. Prior to joining the UMass system, Fuller was a professor and department chair at Washington State University for nine years and began his career in academia with eight years at Baylor University. His research interests are especially relevant to today’s world, including technology-supported learning, distance education, and teamwork in technology-mediated environments. His teaching interests include executive education, leadership, information-systems strategy, e-commerce, change management, and project management.
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