Meet Our Board of Directors

Nicole M. McLaughlin, Esq. - President

Since 1986, Nicole McLaughlin has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to philanthropic organizations and the people they serve. While working for the City of Boston's Emergency Shelter Commission in the late 1980s, she served on the Board of Directors of Rosie's Place, a shelter for homeless women in Boston. At that time Ms. McLaughlin also provided relief staffing in a home for previously homeless women suffering from mental illness. Today she is the Development Director for The Plummer Home for Boys, a Massachusetts-based group home for adolescent boys offering a range of mental health clinical programs and independent living services. Prior to joining the staff at Plummer Home, she served on the Board of the organization for 7 years, including 4 years as Chair.

Between 1993 and 2009, Ms. McLaughlin provided legal counsel to a wide variety of nonprofit organizations, including public charities, private foundations and political action committees. From 1994 through 1997, she provided in-house counsel to the National Abortion Rights Action League. Among her many responsibilities were the review and editing of fundraising materials, including direct mail, telephone fundraising scripts, Internet fundraising pitches and foundation proposals.

From 1997 through 2000, she practice with the Washington, DC, firm of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg providing legal and strategic advice to a wide range of progressive foundations, charitable and lobbying organizations, associations, and political action committees on federal tax law, federal election law and general legal issues. Among the clients Ms. McLaughlin has served are a national association of substance abuse organizations and a group advocating for publicly funded preschools.

Ms. McLaughlin graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 1992 and from Wellesley College in 1986.

Gail Harmon, Esq. - Secretary

Gail Harmon is a nationally recognized authority on exempt organization law, having advised in this field for over thirty years.

She is a partner with the law firm of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg, LLP. As such, she provides strategic advice to a wide range of progressive foundations, charitable and lobbying organizations, associations, and political action committees on federal tax law, federal election law, and other legal issues. Ms. Harmon is a frequent speaker, writer and commentator on issues affecting the nonprofit sector and an active participant with the legal and nonprofit community in developing the law in this area. Among her publications: Being a Player, a guide to tax regulations governing lobbying by charities, co-author; Maximize Your Grassroots Power: Legal Guide to List Enhancement and Citizen Contact, co-author; E-Advocacy for Nonprofits: the Law of Lobbying and Election-related Activity on the Net; and Nonprofit Navigator, a newsletter (formerly called Tax Monthly for Exempt Organizations and Tax Monthly for Associations).

Ms. Harmon is member of the executive committee and board of directors of Population Services international. She is also a member of the board of directors of St. Mary's College of Maryland; Our Place in Washington, DC; and the DC Library Foundation. Ms. Harmon is a former president of the board of directors of the National Partnership for Women & Families.

Howard Hoople - Treasurer

Howard Hoople has been active in non-profit management for over 30 years. Since 1998 he has been the president of Balanced Solutions, Inc., providing creative business planning, financial and operations support to non-profit organizations throughout New England. He works with clients to discover practical solutions to their planning, financial and operational problems. In this way, he helps clients improve the way they use their resources to meet their objectives.

After graduating from Dartmouth College, Mr. Hoople began his career developing program planning, evaluation, and financial control systems for Project Place, a collectively managed social service agency that operated several innovative programs in Boston’s South End. He subsequently earned an MBA at Harvard Business School, and then worked at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston as Administrative Director of the Psychiatry Department. In that role he supervised financial and administrative operations for the multiple constituencies of a teaching hospital system, including clinical care, research and teaching. He collaborated effectively with all of these constituencies to create and redesign programs and systems, while increasing revenues and cutting costs.

Mr. Hoople continues his strong commitment to non-profit organizations, bringing all of this experience to bear in his consulting practice: insight into the application of traditional for-profit techniques in a non-profit environment, a sensitivity to the complex goals non-profits often present, and a track record of having successfully managed a large, complex non-profit system. The key contribution he makes is to help clients improve their use of limited resources to achieve their long-range goals.

Marina Broitman, PhD - Director

Marina Broitman is a doctor of clinical psychology, with expertise in mental health services research, pediatric psychology, the role of maternal depression in the mental health and functioning of children and families, and development of more family-focused prevention and treatment of maternal depression. She earned her B.A. in Behavioral Sciences and English at Rice University. Dr. Broitman then completed her Ph.D. in George Washington University’s Clinical Psychology Program, where her research focused on pediatric psychology, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Her clinical training included working with children with disruptive behavior disorders, depression and anxiety, and medical conditions such as HIV. She completed her clinical training in pediatric psychology at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children. As a graduate student, she served as study coordinator at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C., on research projects involving clinical trials for ADHD medications and psychosocial treatments.

During her tenure as a faculty member at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she conducted mental health services research, Dr. Broitman volunteered for the Mental Health Association of Montgomery County’s mental health hotline, where she helped people in crisis. Now an extramural scientist for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she oversees review of applications for grants from NIMH, referring them to appropriate study sections and managing the reviews and summaries from the meetings. Her work for NIH involves ensuring thoughtful and appropriate reviews of grants on subjects including serious mental illness, autism and other childhood disorders, and delivery of mental health care in both traditional and nontraditional settings. Many of these grant applications are for projects that seek to better understand mental health services, or, importantly, to translate knowledge of effective mental health treatments to better deliver these services to underserved populations.

Apart from her work, Dr. Broitman stays busy with her family, including her husband and two young children. She is passionate about social advocacy in her local community in the Washington D.C. area, and has worked on issues ranging from mental health parity, to universal health care, to awareness of the Darfur Genocide.

Joseph A. Shrand, MD - Director

Dr. Shrand is a practicing psychiatrist in the field of child and adolescent medicine. He was for many years associated with McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts (affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital). Currently he serves as Medical Director of CASTLE (Clean and Sober Teens Living Empowered) the first adolescent acute stabilization unit of High Point Treatment Centers. There, Dr. Shrand has designed a program that focuses on Attachment and Theory of Mind, two powerful developmental constructs that intimately drive social interaction.

After receiving a BA in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence College, Dr. Shrand studied at Harvard and Columbia to prepare for medical school, and he received his MD from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1990. In 1993, he completed his residency at the Institute of Living, a mental health center connected to Hartford Hospital and affiliated with the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Following his residency, he completed a two-year fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Training at McLean Hospital.

In the late 1990s, Dr. Shrand filled a variety of positions at McLean Hospital, including Director of Child and Adolescent Ambulatory Services, Director of Child and Family Therapy in the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Division, Assistant Child Psychiatrist, and Psychiatric Attending in the McLean Adolescent Partial Hospital.

He also served as Staff Psychiatrist in Child Psychiatry and as Child and Adolescent Psychiatry field back-up on the Emergency Service Team at Mass General and as Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Before entering the field of medicine, Dr. Shrand worked as a grant-writer for CARE, Inc., winning a grant of over $340,000 to help educate children in Belize. As the father of four children, Dr. Shrand takes time to be involved with educational reform in his home town and is a Board member of the Marshfield Education Foundation, as well as President of Marshfield Community Television, the local cable television station for public, educational, and government channels.

Jamie Jensen - Director

Jamie Jensen works as a freelance consultant to foundations and non-profits in the fields of education and youth development and provides strategic planning, research, technical advice, training, and written reports to meet a broad range of program and operational needs. Currently she provides strategic counsel and research support to the Ford Foundation's US-based Education Program. She is also designing and managing a professional exchange program for the leadership of 20 non-profit organizations that have partnered with educators to open 250 new schools in NYC. In the 1990's Ms. Jensen worked with the Rockefeller Foundation as the Assistant Director for the Foundation's School Reform program.

During her tenure at Rockefeller, Ms. Jensen worked with Foundation management, the Board of Trustees, officers from across the Foundation and independent evaluators to design, budget for, manage and present evaluations of multi-year, multimillion dollar domestic and international programs. She began her career in the youth serving field as a job developer, teacher and then part of the management team at Bridge over Troubled Waters, a Boston-based non-profit serving alienated adolescents, including runaways, homeless youth and single-and-parenting teens. Ms. Jensen's foundation clients have included: The Rockefeller Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies, The Doris Duke Foundation, The Erie County Community Foundation, The Lumina Foundation, The Tim and Michele Barakett Foundation. She has also worked with The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania, Say Yes To Education, NYC Outward Bound, The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, and the New York City Department of Education.

Ms. Jensen has a master's in Education from the University of Michigan and a BA from Wellesley College.

Barbara R. Stevens - Director

Barbara R. Stevens joined Isaacson, Miller in early 2000 after extensive experience in higher education, including 20 years in senior management roles at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Georgetown University. At Isaacson, Miller she has led the development of the firm's higher education academic search practice, including searches for college and university presidents, provosts and deans. A commitment to partnerships among different constituencies has been a cornerstone of her work. At Yale she worked closely with the officers of the university, leaders of the state and city government and community organizations to link university, government and community objectives. In her role as Chief of Staff to the President at the University of Pennsylvania, she spearheaded a number of university/West Philadelphia initiatives in the areas of economic development, education, and urban greening. She also served on the President's seven member Senior Planning Group alongside the Provost, EVP and Vice President for Development, which reviewed and developed the strategic plans for the University and addressed the major University-wide issues that needed resolution. She was a member of the university-wide planning team for Penn's first $ 1.0 billion campaign, the first in the nation. Later, she worked closely with three successive Presidents as Vice President and Secretary of the University, as the primary liaison between the President, the Board of Trustees and the Boards of Overseers of the university's 12 schools. In this role she served again as a member of the President's Senior Planning team, was responsible for internal and external communications, including press and media, and managed dean and presidential searches. At Georgetown University, she served the executive committee of the President's cabinet in its re-sizing and administrative improvement endeavors as head of the Administrative Excellence Project.

Growing from her work as a senior administrator at 3 large and complex institutions of higher education, her leadership of the New Haven Downtown Council, service on a range of non-profit boards and commissions, and role at Isaacson, Miller, Ms. Stevens has a deep understanding of civic organizations and the skills necessary to lead them. In many cases these not for profit organizations are the most challenging, responding, as they must, to three missions (research, teaching and service) and being responsible to a range of constituents who, at times, have differing objectives (faculty, staff, students, alumni, business, local, state and national governments).

Ms. Stevens attended Wellesley College and holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Meet our Executive Director and Community Manager.