BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Beacon Hill Village is a member-driven organization governed by a dedicated board of directors. Not only are our board directors active members of Beacon Hill Village, they are also engaged in the community at large participating in a variety of other civic activities.

In addition, the Village Council, our staff, strategic partners and volunteers collaborate to achieve our mutual goal of growing older better in the homes and neighborhoods we love.

Barbara Berkman, President
Barbara is a retired research professor at Boston College School of Social Work and the Rehr/Fizdale Professor Emerita at Columbia University School of Social Work. She has directed 23 federally and foundation supported research projects focused on issues in geriatrics and health care and is a former president of the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research. She has a DSW/PhD from Columbia University, a MA from the University of Chicago and a BA from the University of Michigan. She is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and of the Gerontological Society of America.

Bill Clendaniel, Vice President & Treasurer

A native of Woodstock, VT and Sorrento, ME, Bill has spent the last 45 years working to preserve, improve and make accessible to the public the cultural resources of Massachusetts. A graduate of Williams College, Oxford University and Harvard Law School, Bill spent 9 years as the Deputy Director of The Trustees of Reservations and 20 years as the President & CEO of Mount Auburn Cemetery. He has served as an officer, trustee or director of Historic New England, Massachusetts Historical Society and Friends of the Public Garden as well as numerous other professional historic and/or landscape preservation groups. He has lived in Boston for 24 years in the South End and now the Back Bay.

Jean Sipe, Secretary
Jean is a retired bench scientist and peer review administrator, with a 50-year span at either the National Institutes of Health or Boston University School of Medicine. Jean earned an M.S. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Washington and a PhD. in Chemistry from the University of Maryland. She worked as a bench scientist at the National Institutes of Health and was a faculty member in the Boston University School of Medicine. For more than twenty years, while at B.U. and N.I.H., she served as a founding Associate Editor of "Amyloid: The Journal of Protein Folding Disorders". She continues to serve as a part time peer review consultant to federal agencies. Jean is a resident of the West End and joined Beacon Hill Village in 2017; she currently serves on the BHV Communication and Development Committees and contributes to the New Yorker Hour affinity group.

Sally Brewster
A resident since 1967, Sally is one of Beacon Hill’s best-known and most respected real estate agents. She raised her three children on Pinckney Street, and now has ten grandchildren. Active on nearly all Beacon Hill Village committees, she has also served throughout the community on the Boards of Hill House, the Mass Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and on the BHCA Zoning and Licensing committee. Sally holds a B.A. from Mt. Holyoke College.

Davida Carvin
Davida graduated from BU with a degree in mathematics and then worked for 5 years at Stone & Webster Engineering Company as a FORTRAN and COBOL programmer supporting engineers who were building nuclear power plants. She then joined Polaroid Corporation and for 19 years was a marketing research analyst responsible for research on international and domestic consumer products. At Polaroid, she served on a panel assigned to review policies and practices and recommend changes relating to women in the workplace. She also served 4 years on the Polaroid Foundation awarding funds for underserved communities in greater Boston. Davida and her husband were pioneers in Boston’s Waterfront where she resides today. She joined BHV 10 years ago and during that time she has been very involved with Village activities. She currently co-hosts The New Yorker Discussion Hour and is a BHV Ambassador. Davida is now chair of the newly created Membership Recruitment Committee.

Joanne Cooper
Joanne is a retired geriatric social worker and nursing home administrator. She co-founded the Geriatric Resource Centre in 1979, a private consulting service and home care agency. Moving to Boston in 2002, Ms. Cooper became active as a volunteer for a variety of organizations, including the Museum of Science, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary , and the Doric Docents, where she conducted tours of the State House, served on the Board and was Editor of the monthly newsletter. A member of Beacon Hill Village since 2012, she is active in a variety of committees and chairs the Member Services Committee.

Charley Davidson
Charley Davidson and his wife Elaine have been BHV members since 2009. He began his career in Cleveland at Ohio Bell when it was the “Phone Company” and moved to Beacon Hill after meeting his wife, a lifelong Bostonian, at an AT&T training course. Since his retirement from Verizon in 2003, Charley has been an active volunteer, including Massachusetts General Hospital and providing computer support to various organizations, including BHV members.

Michael Goldberg
Michael is a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon who retired after 50 years of clinical care at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and Seattle Children's Hospital in Seattle WA. His practice focused on the diagnosis & management of children with genetic syndromes, complex birth defects, and rare bone diseases. He is Professor Emeritus at Tufts University School of Medicine, and the first Scholar-in-Residence at The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare, a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing compassionate healthcare and caregiver well-being. Michael has held leadership positions in the American Academy of Pediatrics and Pediatric Orthopaedic Societies both here and abroad. Michael is an alumnus of Cornell University and State University of NY, Downstate School of Medicine. He completed clinical residencies at both Columbia and Harvard. Michael served on the Board of The Home for Little Wanderers in Boston, and the Board of Camp Korey in Washington State, a camp for children with life altering medical conditions. He and his wife Fran have been BHV members since 2016 participating in a number of committees and affinity groups.

Allan Hodges
Allan completed a 50-year career in urban planning and environmental impact analysis in 2014 when he retired. The last 34 years were with Parsons Brinckerhoff’s Boston office as Director of Planning. With that global engineering and planning firm he planned transportation infrastructure projects throughout the U.S., including the Big Dig in Boston for which he was Environmental Documentation Manager. Allan is active in community and professional groups in Boston and Newport, RI. He has a B. Sc. Degree in Community Development from Southern Illinois University and a Master in Urban Planning Degree from Michigan State University. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners of the American Planning Association. Allan was President of BHV from 2020-2023.

Susan McWhinney-Morse
Susan was director of product research for two major advertising agencies and director of development at the Beaver Country Day School. A resident of Beacon Hill since 1964, she is a driver behind the Village movement and a founding director of Beacon Hill Village. Susan has been president and chair of the BHV board, president and chair of the Beacon Hill Civic Association, and is the current president of 250 Cambridge Street, a small philanthropic organization serving the needs of the neighborhood.

Franklin B. Mead III
An architect and management consultant in design and construction, Frank is a founding director of Beacon Hill Village, former president and chair of the Beacon Hill Civic Association, co-founder of Beacon Hill Seminars and a Beacon Hill resident since 1961. He currently serves on the Boards of The Friends of the Public Garden and Light Boston. He formerly chaired the Designer Selection Board of Massachusetts and served as Consul for Sweden in New England for over 12 years. Mr. Mead has a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University and holds a Master of Architecture and a Master of Urban Design from Harvard University.

Luis Fernando Requena
Born in Bolivia in 1942, the second oldest of five siblings, Fernando left Bolivia at 24 with a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering, and went to the Univ. of Cincinnati for a Masters in Environmental Engineering. He moved to Boston in 1968 and married Margaret Preston. He worked with Camp Dresser and McKee (now CDM Smith) until 2015 in the US, and overseas. In 1979, he moved to the South End and had several overseas assignments first in Central/South America and later Brazil, Israel, Puerto Rico and Vietnam. While in Boston, he took leadership roles as President of the Worcester Square Neighborhood Association and Trustee of University Hospital (which later merged with Boston City Hospital to form the Boston Medical Center). Fernando also served as VP of the South End Historical Society and Board member of the Boston Preservation Alliance. Living in Boston, Fernando & Margaret have made friendships that have continued through time. One major reason for joining BHV was to meet new people and make new friends.

Gordon Richardson

Gordon became active in and a Director of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay (NABB) shortly after moving into Boston in 1991. As Chair of NABB's Groundwater Committee, he led a city-wide program to inform other neighborhood associations & residents of threats posed by falling groundwater levels. The program prompted then-Mayor Menino to form the City/State Groundwater Working Group, which as constructively addressed the issue since 2005.
From 1977 until his retirement in 2016, Gordon provided consulting services addressing impacts of new technologies in commercial & industrial markets. He was on the consulting staff of Arthur D. Little for 22 years, after which he founded TechRich Consulting.
Gordon's educational background includes a B.A. from Amherst College, graduate courses in Ocean Engineering & Electrical Engineering at the Univ. of Rhode Island, and completion of the M.I.T. Program for Senior Executives at the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management.

Karen Cord Taylor
Karen Cord Taylor is a news reporter, columnist and author. She founded The Beacon Hill Times in 1995 and later The Charlestown Bridge and The Back Bay Sun weekly newspapers, which she sold in 2007. Prior to that she was a freelance writer, creating newsletters, corporate materials and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles as well as authoring four books, including Blue Laws, Brahmins and Breakdown Lanes: An Alphabetic Guide to Boston and Bostonians. She has been active in many civic ventures including serving on the board of The Children's Museum, the Beacon Hill Civic Association, the Beacon Hill Garden Club, the Beacon Hill Circle for Charity and WalkBoston.

Maureen Yoder
Maureen is a Professor Emerita at Lesley University in Cambridge. Her field is educational technology and she continues to present at conferences, nationally and internationally, primarily on current and emerging technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, as well as photo and video editing. She received a B.A. from George Washington University in Washington D.C., earned a Masters degree at Lesley University, and a doctorate in Media and Technology at Boston University. During her career at the University, she was the Chair of the Budget and Planning Committee, and, in 1996, was the founding Program Director of one of the first fully online master's degree programs in the country.

BEACON HILL VILLAGE FOUNDING DIRECTORS

David B. Arnold, Jr.
(1922-2015)
Sally Brewster
Susan Bridge
Rachel Claflin
J. Atwood Ives
Frank Mead
Susan McWhinney-Morse
Nancy Myers Coolidge
Elizabeth Owens
Robert Owens
(1946-2022)
Robert Perriello