Lisette Cooper, Board Chair, is CEO and a managing director of Athena Capital Advisors, an investment advisory firm that serves sophisticated private investors. Lisette founded the firm in 1993 to help investors manage complex portfolios using techniques and strategies generally available only to institutional investors. Prior to founding Athena, Lisette served as Manager of Consulting Services for Barra Inc. and spent five years as a Vice President and Senior Strategist for Merrill Lynch. Above and beyond her Harvard PhD, financial expertise, and early experience as an academic scientist, Lisette is a pragmatic forward thinker. A dedicated yoga practitioner, she is eager to help Kripalu realize its potential to play a leading role in the dynamic fields of yoga, health, psychology, and spirituality. Lisette and her husband, Philip, live in Lincoln, Massachusetts. They have five children and are excited to be adopting an 11-year-old named Sarah.
Marcy Balter’s interest in health and wellness was awakened through her work as a speech pathologist with special needs children. Discovering a connection between diet, behavior, and sociability problems led Marcy to help create the Student Nutrition Awareness Council (SNAC) in her home community of Weston, Massachusetts. Marcy was trained at Kripalu as a holistic health educator and a professional-level yoga teacher. A dedicated student of adjunctive medicine, Marcy is a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in Manhattan and is a certified holistic health counselor. She and her husband Bruce are active in charity work in the Boston area. They are founders of the Wellness Community of Greater Boston, a day facility that offers free psychosocial support services to cancer patients and their family members. Along with serving Kripalu, Marcy is a former trustee of the Citi Performing Arts Center and a proud mother and grandmother.
Steve Dinkelaker is Owner and President of American Lease Insurance, an innovative insurance enterprise providing coverage for small-ticket equipment leasing, financing companies, and their customers nationwide. Credited with “inventing” lease insurance, Steve founded the first agency to offer lease insurance in the early 1980s and remains an energetic industry leader. Alongside his business success, Steve is a longtime student of philosophy. His interest in human potential was first kindled in the 1960s and 70s during his undergraduate and graduate years at the University of California, and he has more recently begun exploring yoga and holistic living. Steve is married to Ruah Donnelly, an attorney and author with a lifelong passion for New England gardens. Supporters of various horticultural and conservation organizations, Steve and Ruah live in Conway, Massachusetts, surrounded by a vibrant community of native plants.
Marcia Feuer is Director of Public Policy at the Mental Health Association in Nassau County, New York, where she works to promote recovery, fight discrimination, and foster a better understanding of mental illness through lobbying and grass-roots advocacy on behalf of children, youth, adults, and seniors. After raising her two children, Marcia returned to school to obtain a law degree but found her work in a municipal law practice to be unfulfilling. Advocacy work has proven to be more aligned with her values of social justice, inclusion, and activism. A deepening relationship with yoga and meditation led her to Kripalu. Marcia and her husband, Jonathan, live in Great Neck, New York, and foresee a gradual transition to their second home in the Berkshires.
Steve Glick is the founder and former CEO of Applied Energy Management Inc.(AEM), a nationally recognized engineering firm that specializes in the design and execution of energy saving projects in large commercial, industrial, and institutional facilities. Prior to AEM, Steve earned his MEd and PhD in psychology at Temple University and taught in Philadelphia inner city schools. A Kripalu resident during this time, Steve used the Kripalu community as the subject of his doctoral thesis. Steve’s Kripalu experience proved pivotal, spurring him to leaving academia and start AEM, where business results became a testing ground for his personal growth. Steve’s guiding intention in entering business was always to become successful and give back to others. As a Kripalu Board member, Steve is doing just that.
Sarah Hancock was a software engineer for IBM, Programart, then Compuware, Inc. Leaving the software world allowed Sarah to turn her attention from business to family and philanthropy. Sarah has been supporting good causes since childhood, something that may be a factor in her contagiously upbeat nature. Sarah’s longstanding interest in yoga and meditation was always accompanied by a sense that scientific research would one day establish their efficacy as well as result in wider acceptance of yoga’s practices and philosophical tenets. Learning of the research partnership between Kripalu’s Institute of Extraordinary Living and Harvard University, Sarah immediately signed on as a supporter. Kripalu will soon benefit from Sarah’s financial expertise, honed in her professional work as well as her service to many community nonprofits. Sarah lives with her two children in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Timothy Henry has 20-plus years of national and international experience as a strategy execution and leadership consultant working closely with executives to define and address business challenges. While Timothy’s initial focus was developing practical approaches to execute company strategy, his ongoing study of what makes organizations successful led him to examine organizational culture and identify the factors that support health and superior performance. Timothy’s professional growth continues with his role as a founding member of Conscious Capitalism, a movement of business leaders at the forefront of defining business models for how companies can “do well and do good.” Timothy earned an MA from Oxford University in philosophy, politics, and economics with a specialty in international economics. Timothy’s passion for learning and self-development is not limited to his academic or career interests. He’s been a Kripalu regular for many years and a depth student of many approaches to psychological and spiritual growth. Timothy lives with his young son and daughter in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Joan Kopperl has been an active public servant in the Berkshires for most of her life. She is a founding director of the Berkshire South Community Center, which opened the doors to its new building in 2002, and a longtime Board Member of the Stockbridge Bowl Association. In the 1970s, Joan chaired the Shadowbrook Committee which successfully fought a state plan to turn Shadowbrook, the building Kripalu now occupies, into a state prison. When she lived in New York City for a time, she served on the Board of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center while earning a master’s degree in clinical social work at New York University and Fordham University. At various times, she has worked for the Berkshire Country Day School, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, served on the Lenox Planning Board, and is presently a trustee of the Robbins de Beaumont Foundation. Joan and her husband, Paul, live in West Stockbridge, just over the hill from Kripalu.
George White is a communications consultant who has served universities, nonprofit organizations and grant-making foundations. Recently, he consulted for the West African News-Media and Development Centre on a project designed to help journalists improve coverage of climate change issues. Prior to his West African consulting work, George served for more than six years as assistant director and editor at the UCLA-based Center for Communications and Community, an institute dedicated to journalism, community development and communications research. The center operated under a ten-year contract with The Annie E. Casey Foundation and George helped it complete its mission in 2009. Before joining the UCLA center, White was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He received recognition from the Times for his contributions to team coverage of the Los Angeles riots and the Northridge earthquake, reporting that earned the paper the 1993 and 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News. George has served as a consultant for a variety of major nonprofit institutions—the Ford Foundation and The California Wellness Foundation among them—on projects designed to inform and empower disadvantaged communities. He maintains a regular yoga practice that helps him stay inspired and focused.
