Executive Director
Board of Directors
Advisory Council
Past Board Members
 

Helen Gagel, Executive Director

Helen Gagel joined North Shore Village as executive direcor in September 2009. In that role she is responsible for building membership, managing service delivery and securing resources to ensure the Village's long-term sustainability. A long-time Evanston resident, Ms. Gagel has extensive experience in nonprofit community-based and advocacy organizations.

Prior to joining North Shore Village, Ms. Gagel spent 15 years with the Chicago Manufacturing Center (CMC), a public-private consultancy devoted to strengthening and growing the capacity of small and mid-sized US-based manufacturers. As Vice President of External Relations, she was responsible for media relations and corporate communications; government relations, and board development. She played leadership roles in the development and implementation of policy initiatives in workforce development and sustainability. Ms. Gagel managed key stakeholder relationships and represented CMC with local, regional and national manufacturing policy organizations.

Ms. Gagel's earlier career posts include the Northwestern University/Evanston Research Park, the Illinois Council of Home Health Services and the Chicago Commission on Human Relations. She also served as a VISTA volunteer in Reserve, Louisiana.

Community Service: Ms. Gagel has held numerous member and/or leadership positions with community, advocacy and policy groups. Evanston-based organizations include: League of Women Voters, Child Care Center, United Way, Leadership Evanston, Foster Reading Center and the ETHS School Improvement Team. She served on the Executive Committee of the Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council, the Technology Commercialization Task Force of the Economic Development Council and was a director and officer of the Industrial Council of NearWest Chicago. Her current volunteer work includes serving as president of the board of Chicago a cappella, a premier vocal ensemble that performs in Evanston, Chicago, Oak Park and Naperville. She is a board member of the Woman's Educational Aid Association, which provides tuition support for high-need women students at Northwestern University.

Ms. Gagel is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She has three daughters: Theresa Collins, teacher of literature and writing at Chicago's Francis Parker School; Catherine Squires, Cowles Professor of Journalism, Diversity and Equality at the University of Minnesota; and Leah Squires, PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Boston University.

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North Shore Village Board 

Libby Hill
Co-Founder/President
Libby Hill served as an adjunct faculty member in the Geography and Environmental Studies Department of Northeastern Illinois University from 1994 through 2008. She also worked for Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, now CMAP, teaching Geographic Information Systems throughout NIPC's six-county region. She was a member of Evanston's Plan Commission during the 1980s, developing energy-efficiency plans for the City of Evanston. For 22 years, she was librarian at Roycemore School in Evanston. Since 1990, she has been the volunteer steward of Perkins Woods, Evanston's small woodland segment of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. She has held various positions in the Evanston North Shore Bird Club. She is a columnist for the Evanston Roundtable, a local free newspaper. For several years, she volunteered in the adult literacy program at Evanston Township High School. She is the author of The Chicago River: a Natural and Unnatural History. She and her husband, a retired professor of psychology at Northwestern University, have lived in Evanston since 1957, and they raised two daughters here.

Susan Doctors
Secretary
Susan Doctors holds a B.S. in Psychology and Sociology from Simmons College and an M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. She has executive human resource management experience of exceptional breadth and depth as a result of nearly two decades of work with Official Airline Guides, Inc. The positions she held included Director - Human Resources Development and Vice President - Human Resources. She was Vice President of Human Resources and Administration for the Medicus Corporation, and served in a similar capacity as a consultant for Software Development Systems. She has had a Human Resource consulting practice for more than 15 years, providing interim Human Resources services, executive coaching and general management consulting to small businesses. In both corporate positions and consulting assignments she has been responsible for strategic planning, assessment of key staff, employee and corporate communications, affirmative action, employee relations and counseling, training, benefits and compensation. She has been actively involved in the integration of acquisitions, divestiture of companies and the due diligence process.

Lynda Ancell
Treasurer; Finance Committee Chair
Lynda Ancell has served as Trust Operations Officer at First Bank & Trust of Evanston since 2007. She joined the bank in July 2002 as Vice President/Manager of Mortgage lending. Her previous experience includes 13 years as a mortgage broker at CDK Mortgage in Evanston and 4-1/2 years at First Commercial Bank in Chicago as a vice president in the Commercial Lending Department. Much of her community service activity focused on the public schools, serving on the PTA boards of Lincoln and Nichols Schools and Evanston Township High School. She was elected to two terms on the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Board of Education, including one term as President of the Board. Ms. Ancell has resided in Evanston since 1966 and has raised three children here.

Judy Chiss
Programs Committee Chair
Judy Chiss has twenty-two years of experience as a classroom teacher, teacher trainer, and supervisor of student teachers. She served for twelve years as Executive Vice President of Education and Exhibits at the Chicago Children's Museum. In that role she was responsible for program development, strategic planning and budget development, oversight of three site expansions, and oversight of the museum's community outreach and volunteer departments. She was a founding member of YMEC, a nine-member museum collaborative that developed and shared exhibits with member museums. She served as a project advisor for the American Library Association, the Minnesota Children's Museum, and MidAmerica Arts Alliance. An active community volunteer in Evanston, she has served on the Evanston Library Board and the McGaw YMCA Board of Directors.

Barbara Wilder Dershin
Marketing Committee Co-Chair
As President & CEO of the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Chicago, Barbara built the organization substantially, expanding its Direct Services Social Work and public education Programs from the initial six to serve 17 Illinois counties. She created a network of 18 support groups and developed resources for educational programs with information distributed to all Illinois schools and libraries, and led national efforts to increase funding for epilepsy research which tripled NIH funding. Her prior experience includes six years with the Five Hospital Homebound Elderly Program, where she developed resources for a model agency that focused on homebound elderly with chronic conditions. For many years Barbara was a manager in the publishing industry, working for Rand McNally in various capacities (assistant editor, advertising management, printing services manager, product development, marketing manager, sales planning manager, and commercial sales manager). She began her career as a teacher in the inner city of New York moving to the barrio in California and concluding in a private school in New Orleans. Barbara raised her own three children and partially raised two young orphaned relatives. She was founder of the Pomona Valley Junior Ballet, President of the Women's Commission for the American Jewish Congress, and was named Executive of the Year in 1996.

Michael Donnelly 
Mike is Vice President/ Business Development-Commercial Banking in the small business division of North Shore Community Bank and Trust Company in Wilmette. He is responsible for developing new business relationships, including retail deposits and credit needs; underwriting all loans for approval; and managing a $6,000,000 loan portfolio. Mike joined NSCB in 2000 as a branch manager. Prior positions include branch manager and assistant vice president, 1St Bank and Trust of Evanston, and a 14-year career at Harris Bank, where his responsibilities ranged from personal and commercial banking to security and real estate. Mike is active in a number of Wilmette business and civic organizations. He is a charter member of The North Shore Optimist Club and Le-Tip International. He is a past president and board member of the Wilmette Chamber of Commerce, a founding member of the Wilmette/Kenilworth Rotary Club, and a member and former treasurer of the Wilmette Morning Harbor Rotary Club. Mike attended Mesa College in Grand Junction, Colorado and Kendall College in Evanston. He is a resident of Glenview.

Martha Evens
Martha Evens is a Research Professor of Computer Science at Illinois Institute of Technology. She received an A.B. in Mathematics from Bryn Mawr College, spent a year in Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship, received an A.M. in Mathematics from Radcliffe College in 1957, and three children later, earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Northwestern University. She has been involved in research on lexical-semantic relations for the last twenty years as part of the IIT Lexicon Project. This work led to a number of papers and a book on lexical relations. She also edited a book entitledRelational Models of the Lexicon for Cambridge University Press. Evens and Joel Michael of the Department of Physiology at Rush have recently published a book on natural language and tutoring, called One on One Tutoring by Humans and Machines. In 2000 she retired from active classroom teaching, but she is still working with M.S. and Ph.D. students in her laboratory at IIT. She has lived in Evanston since 1964. In the 1960's she helped start Evanston Meals at Home, now based in Wilmette.

Eston Gross
Alliances Committee Chair
Eston Gross's professional career has been in new product development, planning and acquisitions, research planning and financial administration in the chemical field, having worked for Kodak, DuPont, Armour Industrial Chemicals Co., Chicago, and the Dutch chemical, fibers, coatings and pharmaceutical company Akzo, when it purchased The Armour Company. His job responsibilities with Akzo became increasing international, culminating in 1986 with an opportunity to transfer to Akzo corporate headquarters, Arnhem, Netherlands as Coordinator, Acquisitions and Divestments in Strategic Planning Group. Eston and his wife Sandy lived in the Arnhem area until he took early retirement in 1990 and they returned to their Evanston home in 1997. He then joined Stevenson & Company, Evanston-based merger and acquisition advisors, as one of the Managing Directors and is still associated with Stevenson. Eston grew up in St. Paul MN, received a B.S. in chemistry from University of Minnesota and then an M.S. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin.

Carol N. Kanter Ph.D. ACSW
Carol Kanter has been a psychotherapist in private practice since 1974. Since the early 1990's she also has become known for her poetry. Her first poem appeared in Iowa Woman in 1995. That same year she won first prize in Poets and Patrons' International Narrative Poetry Contest. Subsequently she has had poems published in numerous periodicals and poetry anthologies. She also has had two chapbooks published, Out of Southern Africa in 2005 and Chronicle of Dog in 2006, as well as And Baby Makes Three in 1983. With her husband, Arnie Kanter, she co-authored No Secrets Where Elephants Walk, a collection of poetry and photographs about the couple's travels in Africa. She has a B.A. in Biology from Brandeis; an M.A. in clinical social work from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Northwestern.

Mari Terman
Governance Committee Chair
Mari Terman has served as a Village Trustee of Wilmette, IL since 2005. She chairs the Municipal Services Committee, and is a member of Administration and Finance Committees. She chaired the Board of Health and the Senior Resources Commission between 1985 and 2000. Mari and her husband David moved to Wilmette in 1968. They raised their three children here, two of whom live in the Chicago metro area. Mari is a retired hospital administrator whose interests focused on the sociology of health care delivery and quality of services. She is a 49 year member of the League of Women Voters and a docent at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Michael Weston
Development Committee Chair
Mike Weston is former Vice President and General Counsel for Northwestern University. He joined Northwestern in 1973 as chief staff attorney, then served as Vice President for Legal Affairs. He also served as Interim Director of the university's Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in 2002. He is now affiliated with Academic Search, Inc., as a Senior Consultant performing executive searches for colleges and universities. Mike's community activities include 10 years on the board of Youth Organization Umbrella, Inc., including a term as president and service as chair of the Campaign for YOUth. For the Evanston Public Library, he chaired the committee to raise funds for a new children's facility and served on the Fund for Excellence Committee. Mike is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Michigan Law School. He and his wife MaryAnn have lived in Evanston since 1973 and have two adult sons.

Cheryl Wollin 
Membership Committee Chair
Cheryl Wollin has lived and been involved in Evanston since 1968. A teacher of history and political science at Oakton Community College for the last thirty-two years, she is on the executive committee of her IEA union. She also served two terms on the Evanston City Council, representing the Seventh Ward (1989-1993) and the First Ward (2005-2009). She has served on the board of the League of Women Voters of Evanston, and advocated successfully at the state and national level for the League to take a position in favor of abolition of the death penalty. As an alderman, she represented Evanston nationally as Vice-Chair of the First Tier Suburbs Council at the National League of Cities, the University Cities Council, Women in Municipal Government, and the Human Development Policy Committee. As President of the Evanston Public Library Board of Trustees, she worked together with the city council and the community overseeing the construction of a new main library building in 1994. After six years on the Library Board, she was appointed to the Public Art Committee. She enjoys travel, and has visited Cuba, Italy, France, and several art trips with Art Encounter (operating out of the Noyes Cultural Art Center). 

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North Shore Village 
Advisory Council

Joan Barr-Smith, former Mayor of Evanston

Woods Bowman, Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in Public Services at DePaul University

Nancy Canafax, former President Wilmette Village Board

Jesse Peterson Hall, President and CEO of North Shore University Health System-Highland Park Hospital

Jay Lytle, Managing Director, First Bank and Trust of Evanston; and former Mayor of Evanston

Lorraine Morton, former Mayor of Evanston

Elizabeth Tisdahl, Mayor of Evanston

Bernice Weissbourd, Founder of Family Focus

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Past Board Members 

Harriet Friedlander, NSV co-founder, is also a founder of the Evanston Farmer's Market, which became a model for markets in metro Chicago. She helped initiate a community project in alternative energy at the Evanston Ecology Center, and is a long-time member of the Institute for Learning in Retirement, now Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Northwestern University. A graduate of Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, she worked in textile research at the University of California, Berkeley. She has produced original pieces of fiber art and joined with other artisans to create "Handcrafters," a retail outlet.

Stanley Gerson, D.D.S., M.S., Ph.D., served as Professor of Oral Pathology at the University of Illinois College of Dentistry. He is a former member of the Evanston Preservation Commission and served on the Business Plan committee of North Shore Village.

James M. Holland, M.D., is Professor Emeritus of Urology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and Emeritus Associate Dean, and vice president of the Northwestern Emeriti Organization. He served as a staff urologist at Evanston Hospital from 1966 until his retirement in 2004. He was president of the Professional Staff from 1989 to 1990 and chair of the Executive Committee of the Professional Staff from 1990 to 1991. Dr. Holland also served on the Examination Committee and as an oral examiner for the American Board of Urology.

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