DIRECTORS:
Margaret (“Peggy”) Burke
Board Member
Has more than 40 years of experience in senior leadership positions at not-for-profit cultural organizations. Having served as Curator of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, she was later Director of Museums and Properties at Historic New England (SPNEA); Executive Director of the Maryland Humanities Council; and Director of Foundation Development at WGBH. Most recently, she served as Executive Director of the Concord Museum, from which she retired in 2018 following the successful completion of a $13M capital and endowment campaign; a comprehensive renovation program; and the construction of the Rasmussen Education Center. A graduate of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, she received her Ph.D. in American Art from the University of Delaware.
Virginia (“Dinny”) McIntyre
Board Member
Is a retired member of the Concord Select Board (2004-2010) and has led or served on numerous Concord municipal and not-for-profit boards. She studied American colonial history and law at Harvard, and, after clerking for Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Robert Braucher, practiced for a number of years at the Boston firm of Palmer and Dodge. As a member of the Select Board, her efforts focused on ways of easing the increasing financial burdens on long-term residents of Concord. She currently serves as chair of Concord’s Tax Relief Committee, raising funds to distribute to applicants for assistance in paying their real estate taxes. Dinny is an avid news consumer and has noticed with concern the diminution of civic engagement following successive sales of the Concord Journal to larger media networks. Her efforts on behalf of The Concord Bridge will focus on fundraising and not-for-profit governance.
Alice Kaufman
President
President of the Concord Bridge, has a 35-year career in the government sector, having worked at the local, state, federal and international levels. She has extensive experience in policy development, program management, and public sector finance. She began her career as a cub reporter for a local newspaper and has since served as public affairs director and communications director in government and for non-profits. Her interests and work have been in environmental and public health areas, where she has created winning public engagement campaigns. She is currently the board chair of the Millennium Institute, an international NGO advising nations on sensible policies for achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals using systems thinking to solve sustainability and development challenges. In Concord, she has served on the Select Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals and is currently on the Municipal Light Board.
Janet Silver
Board Member
Janet Silver is a literary agent at Aevitas Creative Management, where she is a Senior Partner. Janet has been a publishing professional for more than four decades, working with a wide range of general interest books for adult readers. She began her career at the former Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, where she rose from editor-in-chief to executive management as Publisher, overseeing acquisitions and working closely with editorial, finance, production, contracts, marketing, publicity, and sales. As a literary agent, Janet represents writers of literary fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, and poetry.
She has served on the Concord Cultural Council and volunteered for the Open Table food pantry and 826 Boston in Roxbury, tutoring students K-12. Janet holds an M.A. in English literature from the University of Chicago, and she has been fortunate to be part of the Concord community for forty years.
Deena Whitfield
Board Member
Deena Whitfield has years of experience as a consultant, board member, and administrator in the world of education and non-profit organizations. She is a founding member of Kerem Shalom and a former synagogue president. Before her retirement in 2013, she spent 10 years as a partner in an executive search firm that focused on finding senior-level administrators for colleges, universities, and non-profits and 10 years in college admissions as an Associate Dean of Graduate and Adult Baccalaureate Admissions at Lesley University and as Dean of Admissions at Brandeis University. After retirement, Deena served on the Board of Open Table for six years, and three years as chair, and continues to be active in the organization.
In the past, she has served on the Board of Trustees of Emerson Hospital, as President of the Concord/Carlisle Community Chest, and as President of the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts. As League President, Deena did extensive public speaking throughout the state, managed over one hundred local Leagues, and was the spokesperson for several state-wide ballot initiatives.
Jack Clymer
Treasurer
Treasurer and Clerk of The Concord Bridge, retired as Senior Counsel from the Boston office of Nixon Peabody LLP in 2019 after practicing law since his graduation from Harvard Law School in 1965. Jack’s practice was focused on estate planning for individuals; the formation, management, and administration of charitable organizations and their endowments; and family businesses. During his years of practice, he was a member the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, lectured frequently, and wrote articles for continuing legal education organizations in the estate planning, estate administration, and trust, endowment and charitable fields. He also served for several years on the board of The Lawrence Eagle Tribune Publishing Company. A resident of Concord since 1967, Jack has served on its Planning Board, Municipal Light Board, Historic Districts Commission, Select Board, and on various Town committees. He is currently a member of Concord’s Tax Relief Committee.
Alan Lightman
Board Member
Board member, is a novelist, essayist, physicist, and social entrepreneur. He was educated at Princeton and at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. He has served on the faculties of both Harvard and MIT, where he is currently Professor of the Practice of the Humanities. Alan played a major role in establishing MIT’s “Communication Requirement,” which requires all undergraduates to have training in writing and speaking each of their four years. In his thinking and writing, Alan is known for exploring the intersection of the sciences and the humanities, especially the dialogue between science, philosophy, religion, and spirituality. Alan is the author of five novels, two collections of essays, a book-length narrative poem, and several books on science. His novel Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. Alan is also the founding director of the Harpswell Foundation, which works to advance a new generation of women leaders in Southeast Asia.
Andrew Peddar
Board Member
Has a 23-year career in the global Fintech industry. He’s lived and worked in the UK, South Africa, Canada, and the US running businesses that supply the world’s largest financial companies with critical solutions. He began his career focusing on client services and large-scale implementations, before building his executive career focusing on marking products scalable and profitable on the global stage. He is now drawing on his entrepreneurial spirit and global experience by working with two start-up companies: one focusing on making investing a long-term goal for young retail investors, and an loT company that focuses on bringing intelligence and actionable insights to the world’s energy and communications providers.
Radha Jalan
Board Member
Radha Jalan is a long-term resident of Concord, having moved to the United States from Calcutta to be a traditional Indian wife in America. But, because she could not work on her husband’s student visa, she became a student herself and completed a graduate degree and a PhD from the University of Florida. Raised to be a wife, her life and contributions have been anything but traditional.
Her interests and pursuits have been wide-ranging: chair of the Concord-Carlisle Human Rights Council, trustee of Nashoba Brook School, and a board member of The Umbrella.
As an educator, she’s used this background to stand up for what she believes is important and right. Her interests have been in cross-cultural understanding and breaking down stereotypes and barriers.
She has been a much sought-after mentor for women crossing institutional and cultural barriers in marriage and careers as new and assimilating immigrants to America.
She comes from a business family and is an entrepreneur in her own right. When her husband died unexpectedly, she took over the reins as CEO of the hydrogen energy technology company ElectroChem and ran the company until 2023. With no formal training in fuel cell technology, she received recognition and awards for her contributions to the field of hydrogen energy.
