Leadership

President

Mon Cochran was elected President of the SIT Board of Directors in January 2023. Mon is a writer living in South Orleans on land his family has inhabited for more than a century, across the Narrows from Sipson Island. He grew up on the Cape, went to Orleans public schools, and received his BA from Harvard in sociology. His PhD in developmental psychology is from the University of Michigan. Mon is a professor emeritus at Cornell University, where for 35 years he taught and conducted research in applied child development. Since retiring, he has shifted his educational focus to helping children and adults understand and take action on climate change. He is an adjunct educator with the Center for Coastal Studies. Serving on the board of Friends of Pleasant Bay (2014–19, including two years as board president), Mon led the effort to purchase Sipson Island for conservation; he returned to the Friends board in 2020. “I have a strong personal commitment to the welfare of Sipson Island and Pleasant Bay,” he says. “The SIT board and Tasia Blough have done extraordinary work in the past three years to bring us where we are today. My primary goal as president will be to advance our Removal and Renewal campaign with all deliberate speed.”

Vice President, Fundraising Committee chair

Peg has spent time in Chatham since she was a child, moving to Orleans full-time in 2020. An experienced marketer and fundraiser for nonprofits, she is especially interested in the outdoors, the arts, and community development. She has held jobs with Capital Link, a consulting firm supporting health centers; Hale, an outdoor education nonprofit; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She currently works as a strategic marketing officer for Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation, a community development financial institution. Most days she can be found walking on Nauset Beach, planning her next trip, or working on an art project.

Treasurer

Peter joined the SIT board in February 2023. A graduate of UMass Amherst in Economics, he served in the US Air Force as a navigation instructor. He later earned an MBA and CPA certification, and worked for most of his career in the insurance sector: in the Accounting department at Aetna and in Financial Services at Aetna and Travelers Insurance, among other posts. He was COO and CFO at Noble View Insurance, a start-up independent agency in Great Barrington, where he lived for many years. He has also served as Treasurer for the Town of New Marlborough, Mass. On retirement in 2016, he and his wife moved to Brewster, where they had long vacationed. They love hiking and exploring the local trails, especially the area around Pleasant Bay, where they get out on the water with friends and neighbors. Peter looks forward to contributing his financial expertise to the work of Sipson Island Trust and to serving on the board.

Clerk

Kathy has been engaged with Pleasant Bay since the early 1980’s: “I brought my children to Jackknife Cove, where they learned to explore, sail, boat, fish, and in general learn to appreciate the beauty and fragility of the bay.” For the past 14 years, she has called the Harwich shore of the bay her home. She has been active on the Harwich Real Estate & Open Space Committee and Community Preservation Committee for more than a dozen years. In 2018, she joined the board of Friends of Pleasant Bay and was immediately recruited for the fundraising campaign to acquire Sipson Island. She has also been an active member of the Harwich Conservation Trust, supporting HCT and volunteering in the office. Currently she directs her family’s foundation. “Local community philanthropy is my major goal. To that end I’ve been involved with Habitat for Humanity, HAC, Homeless Prevention Council, and the Community Development Partnership. A bit of real estate remodeling has kept me busy as well.” Kathy is honored to support SIT’s progress as a director on the board.

Director, Island Operations Committee chair

Peter is a retired contractor sharing his time between Orleans and the Boston area, where his company, Skinnerhill Construction, specialized in high-end residential renovations. He has spent much of his life on and around the water: childhood summers living on a boat in the Boston Harbor, boating on Great Bay and Vineyard Sound from a home in Falmouth, and now living on Arey’s Pond with his wife, artist and photographer Lisa Cohen. Since moving to Orleans, they have spent hours walking and photographing in nearby conservation lands and learning about our local ecosystems. Tracking the Cape’s coastal habitats over a lifetime, he has been discouraged by habitat loss and degraded water quality but heartened by the return of ospreys and bald eagles, and the recovery of the striped bass. Joining SIT as a volunteer in 2022, Peter quickly made himself indispensable: running the SIT skiff, maintaining trails, taking great photographs, and lending his professional expertise to the Removal and Renewal Task Force. He looks forward to the ongoing work of restoring Sipson Island to its natural state.

Director

A graduate of Harvard College who holds a JD from Hastings Law School, Tod has been practicing labor and employment law since 1993 and is a partner at the Boston firm of Pyle Rome Ehrenberg PC. Early in his career, he represented the Teamsters, AFTRA, and various public-sector unions in California, later returning to New England to continue his labor and employment practice. He also litigates cases before arbitrators, state and federal courts, the National Labor Relations Board, the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations and the Civil Service Commission. He and his wife live in Brookline and vacation at the Cochran family home on Pleasant Bay.

Director

A native Cape Codder, Anne grew up in Orleans on Cape Cod Bay and sailed with her father and siblings out of Rock Harbor and Namskaket Creek. Family excursions included visits across town to relatives in South Orleans, near Pleasant Bay and Sipson Island. Before retirement she was principal of Appraisal Services of Cape Cod & the Islands (1983–2016). She has served as chair of the Cape Cod chapter of the MA Board of Real Estate Appraisers, on the board of assessors for the towns of Orleans and Bourne, and on the board of directors of Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC). As a real estate appraiser on the Cape and Islands for 33 years, Anne viewed many properties for valuation, including parcels for acquisition by conservation trusts. This experience contributed to her commitment to protecting our local land and waters.

Director, Land Management Committee chair

Betsy was born on Stony Brook Road in Brewster and now lives in Orleans. Her family followed a path to Connecticut, but Cape Cod remained her life anchor. After earning her MBA and working for twelve years at Aetna Life and Casualty, in supervisory and management capacities, in 1986 Betsy started Land Line Design to provide design and plant installation services, expanding into construction-project management services for large estates. She earned a degree from UConn in Landscape Design and was drawn to the restoration of natural communities. Betsy has served on the board of Orleans Pond Coalition, with the Orleans Marine and Freshwater Quality Committee, the Orleans Dredging Committee, and taken part in turtle programs at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. All this work enlarged her understanding of our unique sandy peninsula. Her goal is help SIT rewild Sipson Island through enhancing existing biotic communities and reestablishing communities that existed historically. Improving these ecosystem services will benefit plants and animals and provide educational opportunities to people around Pleasant Bay.

Director, Communications Committee chair

Diana moved to the Cape from San Francisco in 2008 with her husband, Orleans native Greg DeLory. She began her publishing career in New York and edited many books on natural history and environmental issues during a long tenure with Sierra Club Books in San Francisco. Later she co-owned a book packaging firm, Walking Stick Press, producing publications for the Trust for Public Land, among other clients. Currently she operates Parlandau Communications, providing writing, editing, and consulting services for web and print. She has served on the board of Orleans Conservation Trust since 2014 and the SIT board since its founding.

Director

Garner, whose family long resided in North Attleboro, Mass., attended Middlebury College. He is retired from a fifty-year career in his family business, LeStage Jewelry Manufacturing, and has a long record of service with nonprofits, including serving on the board of the North Attleboro YMCA and as the first board chair of the Hockomock Area YMCA. Having explored the Cape and Pleasant Bay since the 1940s, he and his wife, Marilyn, moved to East Orleans full-time after retirement. He has sailed small boat on the bay and large ones on the ocean; these days he mostly sticks to striper fishing.

Director

A 13th-generation Cape Codder, Susy teaches Adventure Education at Nauset Regional Middle School, focusing on sharing lessons about the history, environment, and Indigenous presence on Cape Cod. Her work revolves around giving students the tools to examine the human journey, particularly Indigenous narratives, breaking down bias and revising difficult history with the next generation of engaged thinkers and citizens. In 2019, she completed a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching at Victoria University in New Zealand. She is currently engaged as a consultant to the National Museum of the American Indian to revise lessons around the first Thanksgiving and works as a summer scholar for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her work has been featured at national conferences and in instructional videos.

Director, Governance Committee chair

Alice is a retired medical technologist, having worked in several major clinical laboratories, mainly in the fields of chemistry and blood transfusion—including nearly 20 years at Cape Cod Healthcare. She also helped to operate her family’s drapery hardware business. After a ten-year hiatus in New Hamshire, she and her husband moved back to the Cape and live in South Orleans on Pleasant Bay, where she sails and swims. In New Hampshire, Alice coordinated volunteer services for American Red Cross blood drives in the Mount Washington Valley. Until recently she was a director on the board of the Friends of Pleasant Bay.

Director

.Chad has worked in finance since his mid-twenties, in a variety of roles including economic research, investment banking, finance and accounting, cash/liquidity management, trading, portfolio management, and fintech. He earned an MBA in finance from Cornell and has been a Certified Financial Analyst since the early aughts. For the past twelve-plus years, he has worked for the asset management firm Baupost, based in Boston, where he has been applying his background and knowledge in finance to create improved workflow processes and technological innovation. Chad describes himself as a creative problem solver, “but, bottom line, I am most certainly a numbers guy.” He was drawn to serving on the SIT board based on many years’ experience of enjoying the lands and water around Sipson Island and Pleasant Bay. “I have a great fondness and appreciation for the area and will very much enjoy and value playing a role in maintaining and improving the island's natural state and inherent beauty.”

Director

Don fulfilled his dream of never leaving the Cape when he and his wife, Janet, built their home in Brewster in 1992. They sail an 18-foot Marshall catboat, Summers Pride, on Pleasant Bay. A local builder, Don has served for 12 years on the board of directors of Friends of Pleasant Bay; he was board secretary for two years and served on the Education and Grants Committee for seven years, chairing it for four. He also worked with the committee that oversaw the design, construction, and certification of the solar-powered floating classroom Friend of Pleasant Bay and was active with the Friends in the purchase of Sipson Island. He looks forward to continued work on the bay and to helping SIT complete the task of returning the island to its natural state while providing public access.