Our Board

Daniel Seitz

President
Daniel Seitz has worked for 20 years in the field of complementary and alternative medicine education, accreditation and regulation. He currently serves as the executive director of the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education—the accrediting agency for doctoral programs in naturopathic medicine—and consults with colleges of complementary and alternative medicine on accreditation and program development.

Previously, he served as founding dean for the acupuncture and Oriental medicine master’s degree programs at New York Chiropractic College and as chair of the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. He is also former president of New England School of Acupuncture and former chief of the Acupuncture Unit for the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, where he set up the state’s acupuncture licensing board. Dan’s other volunteer activities include chairing the advisory board for the Kripalu School of Ayurveda.

Dan has a BA and MAT from the University of Chicago, a JD from Boston University Law School, and is currently an EdD candidate in the Higher Education Administration and Leadership program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. As a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Malaysia following college, Dan had the good fortune to live on traditional Malay, Chinese, Indian and Thai food, and since then he has been studying Mandarin Chinese as a pastime.

David Case

Vice President
David is the owner of Aspinwell, a multi-use village (formerly the Lenox Shops). For many years, David specialized in developing inner city affordable housing. He helped start “Cheese and Stuff” in Hartford in the 1970’s as well as being involved in he creation of a day care center and community gardens in a housing complex he owned in Arizona. In the mid-1990’s, he was the principal developer for an 800-acre master planned sustainable living community in Tucson, Arizona.

David has served on the Co-op board for the past six years. He states that, “it feels like meaningful work since well-run, people-owned businesses offer such hope and serve as an antidote to globalism.”

Erica Spizz

Secretary
Erica Spizz, a filmmaker, lives in North Egremont and has been a Director of the Co-op since 2004. She grew up on Long Island and first came to the area to attend Simon’s Rock. After graduating with a BA in 1999, she moved back to New York and worked at the smoked fish factory her grandfather had owned and operated in Queens for 50 years.

Erica has also worked in the grocery department of a Whole Foods Market where she was an active member of the organizing committee that enabled the store she worked at to become the first in the company’s history to form a labor union.

She returned to the Berkshires in Fall 2002 to enter a masters degree program in Nonprofit Management and Documentary Production. Her thesis project (co-directed with Laura Meister) was Sweet Soil: Local Farmers and the Berkshire Co-op Market which premiered at The Triplex in honor of the Co-op’s grand opening, has gone on to be screened at over 60 venues and film festivals, and was broadcast nationally last summer on PBS affiliates as a part of the Natural Heroes series.

Craig Swanson

Treasurer
Craig Swanson has a degree in interior design with experience in some of the largest design and architecture firms in NYC. He has owned and operated a restaurant and jazz club, a theatrical production company, worked on several small scale revitalization and real estate development projects including the completion of one of the first multi-family green renovations, and practice holistic healing and sustainable living.

Seven years ago, Craig pioneered Earthshade Natural Window Fashions. Today it remains the only national company offering truly natural, non-toxic, sustainable, and Fair Trade window fashions. As a national green business leader, Craig Swanson is an active member of the prestigious Co-op America, as well as The United States Green Building Council. Locally, he has donated two years of work as the Interior designer to the Town of Great Barrington Mason Library Building Committee.

Betsy Andrus
Currently I am self employed and working in the field of Interior design and consulting. This has branched off in many directions including, staging, and organizing, repurposing, life coaching and property management. All of these using the same skills of looking at a space/ situation with a fresh perspective and figure out the most harmonious solution, while keeping the environment in mind by trying to repurposing items and use elements around us.

Previously I have served many organizations in many levels of involvement. I was involved in many events for St. Mary's School and Church for the past 12 years, the annual Holiday Bazaar (co-chaired for 11 years), Spring Fashion Show, St. Mary's Auction, to name a few. I volunteered at the SPCA, I designed and created the sets for the last season of the Earth Angels Show, and of course helping my family and friends any way I can.

I have been a member of the Co-op for fifteen plus years, in this time I have experienced the many changes the Co-op has been through. I have seen the good decisions and the frustrations, the times the Co-op has flourished and been held back, like whether to move to Bridge Street, and in all of those occasions I have been encouraged and thankful for the people who kept driving this local business on.

I am a working mother of two teenagers trying to set a good example of giving back to the community. I want them to know it's important to support local business like their great grandfathers business H.B. Foster and their uncles business R.J. Aloisi Electric. It's important to keep community alive.

Lawrence Davis-Hollander
Lawrence Davis-Hollander is an ontological coach dedicated to helping people profoundly shift their ways of experiencing themselves and the world. Ontology is the science of being, and Lawrence’s work focuses on helping individuals and groups master the art and science of being and becoming. Using a powerful combination of dialogue, exploration, insight, language acts, movement, and goal-setting, Lawrence helps people to reach meaningful new heights in their lives and helps businesses transform traditional conversations and cultures. Whether in personal or business relationships trust, communication, moods and emotions, are among the many areas his work addresses.

He is author of The Tomato Festival Cookbook (2004)—based on his frequent consumption and use of heirloom tomatoes—published by Storey Press. He is a longtime member of the Board of Directors of the Berkshire Cooperative Association and formerly of the Eastern Native Seed Conservancy. With his life partner and fellow ontological coach, Margo Davis-Hollander, Lawrence has launched the practice, Dynamic Change. Together and individually, they are helping people find meaningful and practical new ways of being, relating and finding purpose in the world.

Crispina ffrench-Swindlehurst

I am currently spending some thoughtful time reestablishing myself as an entrepreneur. I am currently working on a teaching book of my creative work for Storey Publishing. In addition I teach day-long workshops in my studio in the heart of Pittsfield on a monthly basis. I am also an active fiber artist making and selling my wares at three annual studio sales a couple of other retail venues including my Etsy store (crispinaffrench.etsy.com) You can also learn about my current events on my blog (crispinaffrench.blogspot.com)

Previously, I ran a recycling manufacturing company that manufactured soft home furnishings, of my design, from recycled clothes. I founded the company (Crispina) in 1987 and sold it in 2003 to Nancy Fitzpatrick of the Red Lion Inn, in Stockbridge. I ran that company until May 1, 2008. We employed up to 40 people and sold to 350 accounts domestically and abroad.

I sit on the board of Artscape – the Pittsfield based entity that places public art throughout our city center. I am on the board of advisors for The Housatonic River Museum soon to break ground, also in Pittsfield. I have sat on the jury and at the founders' table of Hayman Pittsfield, helped initiate the powerfully successful Pittsfield 'Third Thursdays' and served on the board of the Southern Berkshire CDC. In addition to these official positions I am committed to community on an everyday, eye contact, smile and greet level, building neighborhoods of trust, honor, accountability and participation.

I would like to serve on the board of directors for the Berkshire Coop because the company mission speaks to my personal passion of community building around healthy food and living choices encouraging gentle impact in our fragile biosphere.

Tim Geller
I came to the Berkshires in 1984 as a Music Composition Fellow at Tanglewood. Still composing, I make most of my living developing affordable housing and economic development opportunities for low- and moderate-income families in the southern Berkshires, as Executive Director of the Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire. Other community development experience includes financing and small businesses support as the Portfolio Manager of the Western Mass. Enterprise Fund, and founder and President of the Berkshire Interfaith Community Investment Fund. Hobbies include outdoor sports, singing in choirs and raising organic chickens.

For me the Co-op personifies the community values and vision that give the world hope: eating healthy and from sustainable production, buying locally and intentionally with awareness of how consumption and profit weave into the fabric of our daily lives and stretch out into generations to come; celebrating diversity, inclusiveness and our interconnectedness as part of life’s bounty. With this grounding in the web of life, this corporate embodiment of our social, economic, environmental and spiritual selves, the Co-op brings great opportunity for us to respond proactively and creatively to the great challenges of our time, locally and globally. It would be a privilege to share my skills and experience in this process.

Sally Michael Keyes
My family and I moved recently to Great Barrington from Ohio and are enjoying the abundant nature of the area and the many cultural organizations here. Top on the list of our new stores, is the Berkshire Co-op, which is where we go for all our grocery staples. We also find that it is a great place to "meet the community" and would like to become more involved in this environment. My past work for cultural organizations, including Ruth Eckerd Hall Performing Arts Center, The Cleveland Orchestra and Jacob's Pillow, has been in patron and audience development, publicity, marketing and event planning. I am skilled at developing and nurturing partnerships with individuals and groups which build new and deeper communities within the larger community. As a member of the Co-op's Board of Director's I would be honored to help raise awareness of the organization, participation in it's activities and community engagement.