Board of Directors

The Board of Directors duties are to develop short and long term planning objectives. These objectives while meeting the needs of the members should also reflect the credit union philosophy. They monitor the financial condition of the credit union, insure compliance with bylaws and state and federal regulations. It is also their task to insure adequate ongoing education for volunteers and staff.

Members:

Mary Lynn Collins: Long before permaculture and sustainability became trendy buzzwords, I was interested in our connection to each other and to the Earth. To me, permaculture is more than backyard gardening. How do we maintain people and cultures while sustaining the planet? Is it possible to convince people that they can have rich, full lives without destroying the environment? Do we tell them or do we show them?

My formal education includes a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of Connecticut and a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from Emerson College in Boston. While in graduate school, I worked at a mutual fund company and learned about the financial markets and how to explain them in easy to understand language. This led me to my current career.

Professionally, I consider myself a financial educator. I have over 15 years of experience training on a variety of topics in the corporate world. I’ve spent many years teaching the pre-licensing training for a variety of stock broker licenses. I have banking experience through my position as training director of First National Bank of Santa Fe. I’ve taught college courses on public speaking. Now I’m focusing on financial literacy and feel I have found my true calling.

I am looking forward to working with the PCU board and members to help us all reach our financial goals while living the principles of permaculture…and showing others that they can do it to.

Donal Kinney: I am a self-employed CPA, assisting clients in tax preparation and planning. I hold degrees in Economics, Business Administration, and Accounting. For over fifteen years, my consulting practice has been focused on ecologically conscious businesses.

Ten years ago, I served on the Organizing Committee of the Permaculture Credit Union, including a leadership role in applying for the Credit Union’s Charter. I have served two prior terms on the Board, including four years as Treasurer.

I took my first Permaculture Design Course in 1992, and completed the basic Design Course in 1993. I have taken several additional Permaculture Design courses, and numerous trainings in ecology, organic farming, sustainability, and personal development.

My family and I live on a small farm in Dixon, NM. Most years, we grow and sell produce at the farmers’ markets. My wife is a public school teacher. My two sons are 6 and 8. We strive for an ecologically conscious lifestyle.

My interest as a Board Member is to keep the Credit Union focused on providing the lowest possible loan interest rates, in order to make Permaculture projects affordable. To accomplish this, I feel that the PCU must be focused on operational efficiency. I also believe that it is essential to generate a profit from operations, so that the PCU is self-sustaining, and growing our ability to lend. Our internal operations should set an example in terms of energy and resource use.

John McAndrew: I began volunteering with the PCU's Marketing and Communications Committee last year after the PCU financed my new solar panels. I worked fifteen years as a sales rep for HarperCollins Publishers in California before moving to Santa Fe, where I earned a Master's Degree from St. John's College. My undergrad degree, from Cornell College, is in Religion and Philosophy.

I think action without an underlying philosophy is like a ship without a captain or rudder, and philosophizing without action is simply no good to anyone.

I led the local meetings for the Dean campaign until after the general election. Before the election I conceived of and implemented, with help from friends, the Eager Voter Project in New Mexico, in which I drove to all 33 counties and posted flyers in English and Spanish, instructing voters where and when to vote early. While at HarperCollins, I launched a campaign to get the company to use recycled paper, lease more fuel-efficient cars, and so on. My interest in serving the PCU continues this desire to apply a worthwhile philosophy, in this case Permaculture, which mandates care of the earth, care of people, moderation of consumption and population, and the return of surpluses to serve the care of the earth and people. I look forward to working with the board and for the members to achieve those goals and to grow the PCU sustainably, and am honored to find myself in a field of such worthy candidates.

Brendan Miller: My personal mission is to promote permaculture and sustainable communities. I do this by working as a project manager building energy-efficient, mixed-use, infill real estate developments here in New Mexico. But that's just a complicated way of saying that I am trying to knit communities together socially and economically, make them more walkable and bikeable, and do it in a way that conserves land and requires as little energy and resources as possible to operate.

One of the biggest challenges in building the kind of sustainable homes and communities we'd like to live in is that the people that control the money - the banks - do not understand what we are trying to do or believe that it will work. That is why the Permaculture Credit Union is so important: PCU does understand and does believe, and proves it!

As a Director of the Permaculture Credit Union, my priorities would be to 1) grow our membership base and assets to give more loans, and 2) ensure that PCU stays a national leader in providing innovative loans for permaculture and sustainability that mainstream banks are not providing. A variety of banks are starting to provide "green" loans, which is wonderful and certainly partly a result of the work done by PCU. PCU may not be big, but the ripples effects of its leadership are. That is why it is important to keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

I have a business degree from MIT, and a public policy degree from Harvard. I have been a student of permaculture and sustainability for a long time. I have taken a permaculture course from Scott Pittman at EcoVersity, as well as a course on raising goats, and look forward to talking more courses there. I was born in New Jersey but moved to Santa Fe after getting engaged to my fiancee, Tamara Bates, who went to the College of Santa Fe. I have lived in the Northeast, the Southeast, the Northwest and now the Southwest and love the variety of landscapes and people across the United States.

Arina Pittman: Arina is a teacher and practitioner at her Lots of Life in One Place Permaculture Gardens and Bee Yard. Her experience includes working as the executive director of EcoVersity, a school of sustainability in Santa Fe, and design and installation work on permaculture projects. Arina teaches dryland gardening, food forestry, food preservation and animals in permaculture.

Hugh Roberts: My commitment to the philosophy of cooperatives in general and credit unions in particular occurred over fifty years ago when I became a founding member and the first treasurer of the employees credit union at Sterling Drug Company in Windsor, Ontario. In 1993, as a United Methodist minister in Northern New Mexico, I became aware of socially responsible investing and the concept of doing well by doing good. I moved my personal savings into socially responsible mutual funds, and was subsequently able to persuade a denominational missions fund of which I was treasurer to move its reserve cash into a socially responsible money market fund. In January 1999, I designed and led a workshop on how we can serve God through the way we invest and use our money. I became involved in sustainable agriculture in 1976, when I partnered with John Jeavons (author of "How to Grow More Vegetables...") to organize the first International Conference on Small Scale Food Production, which I chaired. That conference persuaded the American Society of Agronomy to officially recognize organic agriculture, and specifically biointensive food production, as scientifically sound. I chaired a five year follow-up to that conference in 1981, and the Soil, Food and People Conference at the University of California, Davis, in 2000. I am currently Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Sustainability Fund, a California-based non-profit organization created to be a funding intermediary between major foundations and small non-profits working in sustainable agriculture.

Wesley Roe: was born in Hamilton Canada in 1950 to parents who were environmentalists, union members and supporters, political activists and credit union members. He was encouraged to be involved in community service. Education: High School and two years McMaster University studying Urban Planning. He opened an Alternative Health Clinic in Santa Barbara, CA in 1981 where he worked as a colon therapist and iridologist until 1988. He then moved to Hawaii and began living in Waa Waa on the Big Isle working in the small community growing food. He moved to Los Angeles in 1993 where he took Permaculture Design Courses with Bill Mollison and Scott Pittman. Wesley moved back in Santa Barbara in 1997 and with a group of people from the Design Course in Ojai, CA, helped to organize the South Coast Permaculture Guild. He was also involved in organizing the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, a nonprofit organizationin Santa Barbara that runs Permaculture Programs in the community and organizing grassroots Book Tours for Permaculture and Natural Building authors in CA and Arizona . He has opened a health clinic that was totally renovated using non toxic green building products in Santa Barbara in June of 2003 . As soon as he found that a Permaculture Credit Union was being formed he volunteered his assistance and has been an active board member for the last 3 years. Wes is married to Marge Erickson who has provided amazing financial and emotional support to allow him to do this important community work.