Board of Directors
Peter Neill
Peter Neill is an author, journalist, editor, and non-profit manager focused on maritime culture, education, and advocacy. He has published three novels, edited anthologies on American sea writing, urban experience, and maritime museums of the world. He is the founding director of the World Ocean Observatory, was director for twenty years of the South Street Seaport Museum, New York, Director of the Ocean Classroom Foundation, and taught literature and creative writing at Yale. He also hosts two programs on WERU Community Radio: World Ocean Radio, a weekly 5-minute available as podcast subscription, and syndicated to over 80 radio stations in the US and abroad, as well as a monthly program, Conversations from the Pointed Firs, hour-long interviews with authors and artists who invoke “the spirit of Maine. He moved to Sedgwick in 2005 where he lives with his wife, artist Mary Barnes.
Andrew Norris
Born and educated in the UK, Andrew Norris has worked in finance since 1973. As an investment banker he worked for clients in Europe, the Middle East, SE Asia, Latin America and the USA until 1998. From 1998 at Lazard Asset Management he managed global equity portfolios for institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds from around the world. Andrew moved permanently to the US in 1993, and became a US citizen in 2014. In 2024 he founded his own asset management business which he runs from Blue Hill with a partner in New York. Andrew and his wife Alexandra and their daughter Lola live in South Blue Hill. Andrew and Alexandra are building year round rental housing for local residents with area builder Curtis Jaffray. Their goal is to try to help strengthen the economy in the Blue Hill peninsula.
Stephen Hindy
Stephen Hindy is co-founder of Brooklyn Brewery, a pioneering craft brewery that has established an international beer brand. His evolution as a craft beer maker began in the Middle East, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press and Newsday from 1979 to 1987, covering the hostage crisis in Tehran, the Iran-Iraq War, the civil war in Lebanon and the Israeli invasion of that country in 1982. Hindy was abducted in Lebanon in 1981 in an incident in which UN peacekeepers were tortured and killed. Steve was sitting behind President Anwar Sadat of Egypt when he was assassinated in Cairo in 1981. He returned to New York, started working at Newsday and making beer at home. Three years later, he and his neighbor in Brooklyn, Tom Potter, a Yale grad and Columbia MBA, started Brooklyn Brewery. Steve and his wife Ellen now live year-round in Brooklin, Maine.
Jeanne Bourgault
Jeanne Bourgault is the President and CEO of Internews, an international nonprofit dedicated to cultivating local, independent news and information initiatives that build the civic health and resilience of communities across the US and globally. Historically, Internews supported independent local news media in more than 120 countries around the world, with significant programs in countries such as Afghanistan, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Ukraine. Over a decade ago, Bourgault expanded the organization’s work to the United States, with a focus on supporting community-led civic media projects. Prior to joining Internews in 2001, Bourgault worked internationally in countries undergoing dramatic shifts in media and political landscapes. Early in her career she spent six years with the U.S. Agency for International Development, including three years at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in the early 1990s. She once spoke very rusty Russian and is proud to have learned QuickBooks in her service as the treasurer of her local Village Improvement Association.
Arianna Smorawski
Arianna Smorawski and her husband own and operate Roaring Lion Farm and Market in Sedgwick. The farm operation consists of raising grass-fed cattle, heritage pigs, sheep, poultry and a small vegetable production for the primary needs of the farm’s market, which also serves as a restaurant. Arianna was born in Providence, Rhode Island and settled in Maine 14 years ago. She received her bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College in an independent major of Development Studies, a political and anthropological study of developing nations. She was also Editor-in-Chief of the college’s newspaper, the Wheaton Wire. After graduating, she worked at the Taunton Daily Gazette, in the customer service and accounting branch for a time before leaving to work in restaurant management, along with traveling to assist in restaurant openings. Though her professional life has moved away from journalism, it remains at the forefront of her interests and passion.
Curtis Jaffray
Curtis Jaffray is a building contractor and lifelong resident of Blue Hill. He graduated from George Stevens Academy in 2002. Curtis studied criminal justice at Husson University for his freshman year of college, and then left to join the building trades. After starting out as a roofer, Curtis went on to form his own company, Jaffray Contracting, which he has operated for 20 years. He is known for his focus on creating year-round rental housing for local residents with project partners Andrew Norris and Alexandra Hammond, as well as for his commitment to George Stevens Academy where, in 2023, he came up with a plan to save the high school’s cafeteria roof, which was in danger of collapsing. Curtis arranged for an anonymous donor and donated all the labor for the project, valued at over $50,000. His efforts saved the cafeteria, which serves more than 200 students on a daily basis, from being forced to close. Curtis also serves on the board of Blue Hill Fair, and is head of the oxen pulling event. In his spare time, Curtis raises draft horses on his farm in Blue Hill with his wife and three daughters.