Chatham Marketplace

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Board of Directors
All meetings of the Board of Directors are open to the public. They are usually held on the third Friday of each month at 10AM in Pittsboro. Please email Tami Schwerin for more information.

The Chatham Marketplace Board of Directors uses a framework called Policy Governance to define the role and function of the Board and the General Manager. Policy Governance allows the Board to maintain complete accountability for the Co-op, but, insures that management decisions are left in the hands of the General Manager.

The principles at the core of the Policy Governance system are:
- Governance is a function of ownership, not management;
- Boards are the highest authority under owners;
- Boards operate by consensus and speak with one voice;
- Boards are accountable to owners for everything within the organization;
- Boards need to empower those to whom they delegate authority while remaining fully accountable for the use of that authority.

Under the Policy Governance framework, the Board has defined Ends Statements, policies outlining our Governance Process, policies outlining the General Manager's role, and policies defining the relationship between the Board and the General Manager. All owners are encouraged to read and understand our Ends and Policies.

Chatham Marketplace Ends Statement
Chatham Marketplace Governance Process
Chatham Marketplace Executive Limitations
Chatham Marketplace Board-General Manager Linkage

Our current Board of Directors:

from left to right: John Bonitz, Corinne Dunn, Tami Schwerin, (Sally Erikson, board facilitator), Tes Thraves, Melissa Frey, Kathleen Conroy, Tom Morris, Mary DeMare, Laura Lauffer

John Bonitz brings to his service on the Chatham Marketplace Board skills in policy development, marketing, and organization, as well as unique food-producer perspectives from his familyís farmstead goat cheese business. His career in various environmental professions began at his alma mater (UNC Greensboro) where he built an award winning campus recycling program. After establishing those systems, he spent a year with the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources, followed by graduate studies in environmental policy at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. He has helped to oversee effective government expenditures at the US General Accounting Office, and worked to promote cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. His experience in the private sector includes work as an environmental consultant, most recently in green building design and green project development in China. John currently manages a bed & breakfast inn on his familyís goat dairy farm. His parents are 15 year veterans in the rapidly growing field of sustainable agriculture and agri-tourism.
Kathleen Conroy is the President of the Chatham Marketplace Board of Directors. Kathleen grew up in Tarboro, North Carolina and graduated cum laude from Vassar College with a bachelor's degree in Religion. She was employed for eight years by EMJ America Inc, a computer distributor located in Pittsboro, North Carolina. As EMJ's Marketing Director she learned first hand the importance of flexibility of management in a small company. She was primarily responsible for capturing vendor/distributor co-op advertising funds and vendor market development funds. She developed marketing plans for all product lines and served as Product Manager for several lines. She oversaw the creation of quarterly EMJ publications, all advertising campaigns, all PR activities, and all tradeshow appearances. She was responsible for the launch of two e-commerce sites for EMJ. Prior to coming to EMJ, Kathleen worked in New York City recruiting and placing professionals in temporary positions in corporate offices, and selling staffing services to businesses in New York City. Currently, Kathleen is employed as a full-time mother. Since August 2003 she has volunteered her time to help Chatham Marketplace become a reality. She has provided PR services, maintained the Chatham Marketplace website, worked with the marketing committee to establish and maintain a Chatham Marketplace presence in the community and served for 3 years on the board. She also volunteers her time as a Leader for La Leche League of Chatham County. Kathleen and her husband have invested $5,000 in Chatham Marketplace.
Mary DeMare is Chatham Marketplace's General Manager and serves on the Board of Directors. Originally from Elba, a small town in Western NY State, Mary is the youngest of 7 siblings. Graduating at the top of her class of 32 people, she went on to receive a BA in Sociology from the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY. After trying out many jobs and many places to live, she found Newark Natural Foods. This thriving, 30 year old cooperative grocery store in Newark, Delaware was where Mary fell in love with the Cooperative business structure and the 7 Cooperative principles. Starting as a cashier, she quickly found her niche and became the Marketing Director/Membership Coordinator, a position she held for over two years. While in that position, Newark Natural Foods was voted “Best Health Food Store” in Delaware by Delaware Today magazine. Also during her tenure at Delaware, Mary was involved with the design and orchestration of a complete reset of the retail and warehouse space. Once the store reset was complete, linear shelf space was increased by 35 percent, a Customer Service Desk was added and store flow was greatly improved. In the fall of 2004 Mary took over as Interim General Manager, and ran the store while the Board did a national search for a new manager. After about 6 months of Interim General Managing, Mary saw the help wanted ad Tami Schwerin and Melissa Frey had written for an exciting new opportunity…starting a Co-op in Pittsboro, NC. Well, heck, she couldn't pass up the opportunity to give it a try, and all the stars were aligned such that she was offered the job! Mary started with Chatham Marketplace on June 1, 2005, and has been enjoying the store, the community and the biofueled-ride ever since.
Corinne Dunn is the Treasurer of the Chatham Marketplace Board of Directors. Corinne moved to Raleigh, NC in 1971 and graduated from high school there. Her parents moved to Chatham County in 1975 and she helped them run a horse farm there. She attended North Carolina State University and graduated with a bachelors of science in Animal Science. After graduation she moved around a number of years and worked in the banking industry and accounting office of a hotel. Upon returning to North Carolina she ran the office of a construction company in Moncure, NC. Corinne went back to school after the birth of her children and took the necessary classes needed to sit for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam. She received her CPA certificate in 1992 and has been practicing in Chatham County since 1989. Corinne was active for many years in her children's activities and sports as they were growing up. Among these she was involved in the PTA's at their schools and volunteered with their soccer teams. She was also on the Board of Directors of the Cary-Apex-Morrisville Soccer Association. Now that they are both in college she is involved with the SPCA of Wake County, on the Board of Directors of the 82D Airborne Division Historical Society and is very enthusiastic about working with the Board of Chatham Marketplace.
Melissa Houghton grew up in Michigan and holds a bachelor's degree in Environmental Policy. She has lived various lives in different places around the country such as Alaska, Arizona and the Pacific Northwest, eventually returning to Michigan to be near her family. She moved to North Carolina two years ago to take a business analyst position with a hi-tech company. She has since left that position and began a home improvement/painting business in addition to independent IT consulting. Growing up in the family logistics and warehousing business while her parents performed a 15-year renovation on an 1880's farmstead, Melissa learned from a young age the trials and rewards of hard work and the concept of DIY. Her father, an atypical Michigan farmboy, and her mother, a city-bred daughter of Polish immigrants, gave her unique perspectives and insights on the world at large. From this foundation grew a desire to live simply, help others, gather knowledge and give back at every opportunity. She volunteered with the Literacy Coalition of America and their Migrant Outreach program for 8 years, has assisted with the rehab of over 30 homes around the country, volunteered with various wetland reestablishment projects, and was an owner of the Food Conspiracy co-op in Tucson for five years. She is dedicated to the concept of light-footprint living, and sees the co-op as a local facilitator with great potential to leverage and spread the co-op concept in further directions, such as green-build (particularly reclamation and salvage), and a local economic transfer system. For fun, Melissa salvages “stuff” for reuse, works on her property, rides her horse, putters around her garden and seeks out new music.
Laura Lauffer has lived in Chatham County for 8 years and has worked in agriculture since 1988 when she joined the Peace Corps as a sustainable agriculture extension agent in central Africa. Upon her return to the USA Laura worked as a journalist then completed graduate school at NCSU in International Development and Public Policy focusing on environmental stewardship and non profit management. At graduation, Laura became Director of Carolina Farm Stewardship Association then located in Carrboro. Laura realized Chatham was the hub of sustainable and organic agriculture in NC and moved the office to its current location on the Court House square in Pittsboro. Laura has worked as consultant in sustainable agriculture for the past five years. Clients include Rural Advancement Foundation International- USA, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG). Projects have included a year long farmer survey to determine the cost of production of nine organic crops, developing social justice standards for agriculture production, working with farmers to protect their markets from contamination from genetically engineered crops and creating a working group to assess the efficacy of green labels in the marketplace. She works with the national leadership in sustainable agriculture as well as local and national producers conducting research, creating programs and developing standards. Through this work, Laura has developed a keen perspective on trends in sustainable, local and organic agriculture. In addition to her professional work, Laura is active in Chatham county causes, serving on the board of a local preschool, co-chairing the Pittsboro Playground committee, serving on the Social Services Foster Parent Committee as well as participating in local political campaigns. Laura is eager to bring her experiences and community contacts together to realize the dream of a community food co-operative in Chatham Marketplace. Laura has invested $2,000 in Chatham Marketplace.
Austin Lybrand moved to the Rock Rest community in Chatham County after graduating from law school in 1975. He lives in a passive solar home he designed and built himself and grows much of his food in a 30-year-rich organic garden. Austin began volunteering with Chatham Marketplace by working at information tables during the initial membership drive. He helped with stocking the shelves in the weeks before the store opened, and he now works weekly as a volunteer preparing sandwiches. Austin has long been an active environmentalist. He was involved in challenging both the construction of the first reactors at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant and also the location and design of the now-closed county landfill. He was instrumental in a hard-fought battle to secure compliance with sedimentation and erosion control laws during the construction of a large pipeline through Chatham County. He also worked with a group of citizens preparing the draft for Chatham County's first subdivision ordinance. He is on the board of directors of the Haw River Assembly and was appointed by the county commissioners to serve on the county's Green Building Task Force. During the 2006 county commissioner elections, he served as Treasurer (and in many other capacities) with the Committee to Elect Tom Vanderbeck. A Presidential Scholar, Austin did undergraduate work at Princeton, UNC-CH and the University of Lyon, France. He holds a law degree from Duke University and an advanced tax law degree, with distinction, from Georgetown. He practiced extensively in the areas of tax law, employee benefits, business planning, and commercial real estate. In addition, he managed a non-profit regional poverty-law program during the 1980's. Austin has also worked as a United States diplomat in South America, Europe and Washington -- in a variety of functions, including economic and political reporting, public affairs and press relations, the management of foreign aid programs, including food aid, human rights grants and the privatization of government-owned enterprises.
Tom Morris is the Vice President of the Chatham Marketplace Board of Directors and serves on the Finance Committee. He and his wife have owned land in Chatham County since 1999 and moved into their house in Pittsboro about five years ago. Tom believes that Chatham Marketplace will help strengthen and support the local economy by selling quality local produce and related products that are produced via sustainable techniques. Tom has lived in North Carolina since 1978, having lived in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Raleigh, and now Pittsboro. His undergraduate work was in biochemistry and creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill, and included a summer internship at the US EPA field station in Athens, GA, on the detection of organic pollutants in ground water. He received a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) degree from NCSU in 2001, concentrating on qualitative and quantitative techniques for policy analysis and business administration and project management in technology-oriented organizations. He has been employed at the UNC School of Public Health since 1982, first working as a technician in research into the contribution of automobile exhaust to photochemical smog production. For the past 20 years he has served variously as a computer programmer, a system administrator, and as Manager of Information and Network Security and Manager of End User Services (computer help desk services). End User Services is run as a receipts-supported, customer-oriented internal business, so he is familiar with financial budgeting, strategic planning, and organizational process and policy review.
Miki Schrider is the Bookkeeper and Office Manager for the market, and serves on the Board as one of the Employee Owners. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, Miki earned a couple of degrees in fine art many years ago. Her work experience has evolved from graphic design and advertising to project estimation and client service to production management to marketing to annual fundraising to capital fundraising and then to accounting. She has served two non-profit boards through administrative support and volunteer management, and is currently Secretary/Treasurer of the American Brown Leghorn Club. Miki and husband Don own a 7-acre farm in western Chatham County, where they raise rare and tasty breeds of sheep and chickens for their own table and those of friends. Miki lived in Chapel Hill for 21 years before setting out for Washington, DC, Maryland, and south-central Pennsylvania. She's glad to be back in this area. As a board member, Miki's particular areas of interest are: sustainability and the financial health of the co-op; its place in the community; and its accessibility to all residents of Chatham County. She will add a day-to-day practical perspective to policy governance.
Tami Schwerin is Ex Officio of the Chatham Marketplace Board of Directors after serving on the board for four years and President for three years. Since her time is coming to an end at Chatham Marketplace, she is beginning a non-profit, The Abundance Foundation that is focused on local food and sustainable energy. This will further the message and mission of Chatham Marketplace. She has just completed an industrial renovation project in Pittsboro in which she has transformed an abandoned chemical plant into usable office/warehouse/biofuels production space and also working with Piedmont Biofuels. She has been a resident of Chatham County for fourteen years, during which time she has traveled the globe in various technology sales and marketing capacities. She spent time as a sales representative for Blast Internet and EMJ America Inc. a computer distribution company headquartered in Canada, then became part of the team to start Blast Software in Pittsboro, North Carolina. She became Vice President of Sales and Marketing until taking time off to stay home with her children. During this time, she began art brokering and helped develop her husband's art career at Moncure Chessworks. A mother of two sons and step-mother of two daughters, she has a degree in Industrial Relations from UNC-Chapel Hill. Prior to serving on the Board of Chatham Marketplace, she has been on the Boards of The Chatham Arts Council, the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, and the Moncure Museum of Art. Tami has renovated a number of houses in Chatham County, including her own, and has an active role in Altadore Investments, a real estate and small business based LLC. For fun, Tami goes to Cathy Holt's yoga every week, goes to Town Board meetings and is learning film editing. Tami Schwerin believes in the local economics and community aspect of Chatham Marketplace and is thrilled to see it prosper. After hearing Melissa Frey's vision, Tami was ready to do whatever it takes to make this a successful venture. Tami has invested $10,000 in Chatham Marketplace.
Tes Thraves moved to Chatham in 1999, and lives not far from Bynum with her small menagerie of animals. She obtained her first Masters in Creative Writing and has been teaching college for the eleven years since, at small private colleges, a community college, and for the past six years at UNC Chapel Hill. She is currently nearing completion of both her PhD in Communication Studies and her second Masters in Folklore at UNC. She teaches writing, performance, oral history, and ethnography classes, and her research uses oral history to tell the stories of how small communities work toward social change in their larger society, specifically, how communities actively practice hope. Her current project, started in 1998, is with a Native American youth group in central Virginia. Sustainable agriculture has long been her passion, as well as part of her academic studies. She spent two years working on a collaborative project called “Stewards of the Land,” a multi-media documentary with six local, sustainable farmers, which exhibited on the opening night of the CSFA’s Farm Tour kick-off for two years running. Since moving to Chatham County, she has led a homestead life-style—complete with fiber and dairy goats, chickens, and bees plus dogs and cats; is a part-time student at CCCC Sus Ag program, and a member of CFSA. She is also active in social justice organizations in Durham and Chapel Hill. In May, Tes completed the non-profit management certificate program at Duke University and is in early development of a project toward increasing the economic and cultural diversity of the consumer base in our local sustainable food systems. Tes will also begin Yoga Teacher training in September of 2005. Chatham Marketplace’s commitment to the “economic and environmental well-being of the county and its citizens” make Tes eager to participate in supporting the development and growth of what she believes will be a thriving, progressive, and long-lived co-op.
Marian Wall is Chatham Marketplace's Main Buyer. After 30 years as an "independent" business owner, Marian was ready for a new direction. Her challenge was to integrate her passion for an organic, sustainable, environmentally responsible lifestyle with more shared responsibilities than she had with a sole ownership. Chatham Marketplace was the answer to her dreams. Marian says that reading the seven principles of a cooperative business was an unbelievable inspiration. Marian actively pursued a place on the founding management team of Chatham Marketplace as soon as she heard about the store from some close friends who had become some of the initial owners. Although the opening date was postponed a number of times, she persisted in seeking a position on the "ground floor" of this exciting new cooperative business. In the process she discovered that ancestors of her father were some of the founders of one of the first sustainable communities in our country. This community still exists and is preserved in the state of Iowa (the Amana community just outside of Cedar Rapids). The summer before she started working at Chatham Marketplace, she was fortunate enough to visit many Wall Family farms in the beautiful Iowa countryside. Marian is deeply grateful for the opportunity to be a member of the founding management team at Chatham Marketplace and a member of the Board of Directors. She believes that she will bring an element of long term experience in organics and a passionate commitment to the concepts of organics and sustainability. Marian also has an interest in bridging the connection between management and the extended staff of incredible employees at the Marketplace.

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