Mary Jane Lyonnais is a Regional Planner specializing in Food Systems for the Upper Coastal Plain Council of Governments. Mary Jane received her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and her Masters of Public Health at East Carolina University. She spent the last 5 years in Northeastern NC as a Healthy Foods Coordinator for a District Health Department working to increase access to healthy foods in rural North Carolina communities. She now coordinates a Food Systems Economic Development Project to strengthen urban-rural connectivity through food in partnership with two adjacent Councils of Governments: The Kerr-Tar and Triangle J. Mary Jane is passionate about understanding the underlying causes and solutions for health and economic disparities in North Carolina and believes the food system to be a driving force to do so.
Speakers
Raised and educated in North Carolina, Steve earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology from Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, respectively. Since 2008, he has served independent schools in North Carolina as a teacher, coach, and administrator. In July 2022, Steve joined Greenfield School as its Assistant Head of School and Upper School Coordinator after working at Forsyth Country Day School (Winston-Salem) and Davidson Day School (Lake Norman). In addition to his administrative roles, Steve teaches a freshman course on navigating high school and preparing for college, which helps him to stay closely connected with Greenfield students. Steve is married to Jen, who teaches fourth grade at Greenfield School, and the couple are parents to Braydon (5, Class of 2036), Addyson (3, Class of 2038), and Jackson (1).
Steve Fine, president of the Melanoma Education Foundation, attended colleges in theBoston area, receiving a doctorate in chemistry from Northeastern University. He thenmoved to Pennsylvania, completing a year of postdoctoral research at LehighUniversity. After 5 years as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Lafayette College inPennsylvania, he moved back to New England where he served in technical andmanagement positions in high tech chemical companies.
In 1989 he started a consulting practice in the technology of high purity chemicalmanufacturing, concurrently serving for 3 years as Vice President of Technology forACSI, a West Coast manufacturer of semiconductor chemicals.
Shortly after his son, Dan, died of melanoma in 1998 at the age of 26, he founded thenon-profit Melanoma Education Foundation and, since 2000, has devoted full time tothe Foundation.
The primary activity of the Foundation is educating high school and middle schoolwellness teachers about melanoma skin cancer and providing them with free onlinelessons to educate their students about self-detecting melanoma while it is curable. Atlast count over 1700 schools in all 50 states were using the lessons.
Sgt. William Page was born in Wilson in 1976 and has lived in Wilson his entire life. He attended Wilson County Schools and graduated from Hunt High School in 1994. Sgt. Page attended Wilson Community College and started a career at Wrangler Jeans as a mechanic. He worked in the mechanical field and eventually entered the residential repair field as a HVAC, Plumbing, and Electrical technician before changing careers in 2005 to become a Police Officer. Sgt. Page started at the Wilson Police Department in 2005 and became a detective within two years. He worked in the narcotics division for a couple years and became of the of the department’s certified trainers. Sgt. Page was given the opportunity to work as WPD’s US Marshal liaison for several years before being promoted to Sergeant in 2021. Sgt. Page supervised a Patrol team and is now one of the Professional Standard’s sergeants overseeing training, hiring/recruiting/payroll/internal affairs.
Rhyan Breen is a father to two precocious children and a husband to a wife he doesn’t deserve. Professionally, he is a general litigation attorney. He spent the first nine years of his career as an attorney with Farris and Farris before opening his own law firm. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Barton College and Methodist University. Additionally, he has helped his community by serving on several non-profit boards including: the Imagination Station, where he currently serves as president; Seeds of Hope; Wilson Arts; YOUTH of Wilson, North Carolina Veterans Farm and was asked by Governor Cooper to serve as a member to the State Youth Advisory Council.
Scott Hamilton became the president of the Golden LEAF Foundation in November 2019. In this role, Scott is responsible for working with the Golden LEAF Board of Directors to develop and implement the foundation’s grantmaking priorities and strategies, overseeing the foundation’s investments, and managing the day to dayoperations of the organization.
Hamilton previously served as executive director of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) in Washington, D.C. and in leadership roles with various county and regional economic development organizations in North Carolina, including as president and CEO of AdvantageWest, a nonprofit regional economic development partnership serving the 23 westernmost counties of North Carolina.
Hamilton is a current member and past president of the North Carolina Economic Developers Association and has held leadership positions with numerous boards and organizations across North Carolina. He served for 11 years as a gubernatorial appointee to the North Carolina Commission on Workforce Development.
A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Hamilton received additional training and certification in economic development from the University of North Carolina School of Government and the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a graduate of the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma and the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center’s Rural Economic Development Institute.
About Golden LEAF
The Golden LEAF Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in 1999 to receive a portion of North Carolina’s funding from the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with cigarette manufacturers. For 20 years, Golden LEAF has worked to increase economic opportunity in North Carolina’s rural and tobacco-dependent communities through leadership in grantmaking, collaboration, innovation, and stewardship as an independent and perpetual foundation.
Over two decades, Golden LEAF has funded 2,058 projects totaling more than $1.1 billion. These projects have helped create 66,000 jobs, more than $700 million in new payrolls, and have trained more than 90,000 workers.
Mahalia Witter-Merithew is the President of Casita Brewing Company in Wilson. She is a member of the Downtown Development Corporation Board, the Wilson Tourism Authority Board, the Wilson Education Partnership Board, the Integrity Unlimited Board and the Downtown Commerce Group. She was born in the Philippines in 1982 and moved to America with her family in 1984 and to Wilson with her family in 1988. She grew up here and graduated from Hunt High School in the year 2000. She graduated from ECU with a Masters in Teaching and worked as an English teacher in North Carolina, Korea, Denmark, England and Vermont. In Vermont, she started Casita Brewing Company for her husband, who is a world-class, award-winning brewer, and they moved their operations to North Carolina when they decided to relocate to Wilson in 2017, operating as a wholesaler until opening their taproom in Wilson in August of 2020.
Experienced in B2B and B2C digital sales and marketing with excellent communication skills. I have extensive experience planning and implementing advertising campaigns and hands-on design skills with solid team-building and management experience.
Previously, I created and operated an award-winning advertising agency with national and regional clients. We provided clients with web and interactive design, marketing, IT, video and photography services. I managed my staff for creative, web and sales strategies and published regional tourism magazines. I operated two offices in Roanoke and Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia.
I have worked in the marketing and advertising industry for 30 years and I have been an illustrator, designer, photographer, creative director, manager, writer and marketer for magazines, newspapers and advertising agencies. I have many years of experience with pre-press and printing techniques and web coding.
Jessica Griffin is the Executive Director of Institutional Advancement at Wilson CommunityCollege, where she oversees the Foundation, marketing, and public relations for the college. Shegrew up in Wilson, where she graduated from Hunt High School. She holds a degree inpsychology from Meredith College and is currently in the last year of her MBA at the Universityof North Carolina Wilmington. She serves on the United Way of Wilson Campaign Cabinet andon the Whirligig Festival Planning Team, and she writes a weekly column for the Wilson Times.Jessica is married and has two children, Paxton (14) and Ella (12).
Born June 3, 1970 in Raleigh North Carolina. Moved to Greenville North Carolina at the age of seven and graduated from Rose high school in 1988.
Attended Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville Tennessee to receive a bachelors in religion and theology.
Began work with the Salvation Army in 2009. 2012 I joined the Salvation Army church and decided to make the salvation army my full-time ministry and enrolled in the officers’ training program in Atlanta Georgia in 2015.
I became an officer with the salvation army in 2017 where I also met my wife Claudia while in school.
Claudia and I have two kids, Micah who is 3 years old and Lilah who is 1 year old.
We both serve as officers for the Salvation Army and are currently appointed to serve the Nash Edgecombe and Wilson County area since 2021.