The Board of directors

Monica Lehner, HEF Board President, received her BA from Wheaton College in 1984 and received her MA from the School for International Training in International/Intercultural Administration in 1990. She subsequently worked in the US, Kenya, and Italy in the non-profit education sector in a variety of capacities. For three years she chaired the board of the Well School in Peterborough, NH. She headed the Well School’s fundraising committee and started the school’s annual International Cultural Festival.

As a community activist, she played an instrumental role in conserving ~1,000 acres in Greenfield, NH. She completed her term as President of the Board of the Monadnock Conservancy but continues to work in land and community conservation in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. She currently serves on the board of MacDowell, a residency program for artists from around the world. She served as a mentor for Voices of Our Future, an on-line training program in digital journalism giving a voice to women from communities around the world. She worked as a mentor with under-privileged students from Beacon Academy in Boston, Massachusetts.

Kathleen Bollerud is a retired psychologist who specialized in executive coaching and leadership development. She has consulted to a wide variety of public and private organizations throughout the United States. She was an executive coach for Duke Corporate Education (Fuqua School of Business), a leading provider of executive education programs worldwide.

Kathy has been a teaching fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Medical School. She is a recipient of the Cleveland International Fellowship from Stockholm, Sweden. A community activist, she has volunteered with Monadnock United (a citizen action group), United Way, Monadnock Music, the American Red Cross and Historic Harrisville, a National Historic Landmark site.

In 2013 the women of Chakouri and Kathy developed the vision of Himalayan Naari, a sustainable woolen craft business to generate income and improve the women’s quality of life. There are currently 100 knitters and weavers in two mountain communities getting livelihood through Naari.

Jeff Williams has travelled to volunteer at the Himalayan Public School multiple times in the last nine years. He brings the school, and HEF, a wealth of experience in education, having spent thirty-five years in public schools, working with young people ages 10 to 24. Jeff oversees the scholarship program for students at HIC.

Jeff worked in the school district in Wellesley, Massachusetts for thirty years as a social worker and as the Department Head of Middle School Special Education. In that capacity, Jeff developed parent education programs, bereavement programs for youth and their parents and conducted teacher training. He has taught about mental health issues in public schools to guidance counselors and school psychologists. Currently Jeff is working as a therapist in several schools in Boston.

Jeff was trained as a Clinical Social Worker at Boston College. He has worked in psychiatric hospital and community mental health settings, as well as conducting a therapy practice for a number of years. Jeff has served on the board of the Boston Living Center, a community service agency for individuals with AIDS. He volunteers in the Boston Public Schools with second graders. Working with and advocating for young people has always been at the heart of his career.

Betsy holds a MA Ed. from Antioch NE University. As an educator, she has worked in many different educational settings through the years, from rural New Hampshire schools to inner city schools in West Chicago. She has been a classroom teacher, reading instructor, and special ed teacher. The most important thing she learned as a teacher was the importance of finding ways to make connections with students through respectful and thoughtful means.
When Betsy came to Chakouri HIC Principal Devbala Bisht asked her to share her knowledge and understanding of methods of education with teachers and to look at ways to integrate these into their daily teaching. She then also reorganized the school library, making it more accessible to students to borrow books and helped to develop a school-wide reading program, which included creating classroom libraries for grades K – 6.
Betsy lives in Hancock, NH, where she spends lots time with family, teaches yoga classes, gardens, reads, knits, spins and weaves, and thinks about ways to continue supporting HIC educators and contributing to the education of these wonderful students.

Vaibhav Pai is a research scientist in the Boston area trying to explore, see, understand, and connect with the parts of India that he never knew while growing up there. As a hiker in the mountains there is a special place in his heart for mountain folks, mountain culture, their heartiness and resourcefulness. He is passionate and interested in creating well-rounded holistic educational opportunities for children with little to no resources in rural mountain areas for them to become well-rounded human beings, by developing relationships and helping local folks working on the ground for their community.

Pai works as a research scientist in the biology department at Tufts university and has been involved in the research and education (particularly underrepresented sections of society) field for 20 years. Born and raised in India he came to the United States in 2003 and received a Doctorate degree in biological sciences. He currently lives in Cambridge MA and spends lots of time with family and friends, hiking and being outdoors, and at work (which really is more of a hobby and joy than work)

Anish is a graduate of the University of Michigan Ann Arbor’s Master of Entrepreneurship program and is working to create sustainable value in ed-tech through social entrepreneurship approaches in India. His primary interest is in using freely licensed technology to innovative and disruptive ends in education. For the past four years, he has been involved with the One Laptop Per Child/Sugarlabs projects, working in the field in Uruguay and Paraguay, and was closely involved with Australia’s One- Education program. He is also one of the early volunteer contributors to the School Server Community project. He helps run a small pilot project in a village called Bhagmalpur, near Varanasi. Recently he worked to organize a MOOC (Massive On-line Open Course) for teachers and teacher-educators in the area of Open Educational Resources. He is facilitating the creation of an online state-funded Open Education repository containing multilingual digital content.