The Orton Family Foundation Appoints Senior Associate for Northeast Projects

Middlebury, VT — The Orton Family Foundation announced another key staff appointment to strengthen its “Heart & Soul” community planning efforts. Ariana McBride was appointed Senior Associate, Northeast Projects, and works at the Foundation’s Middlebury, VT headquarters.

“We are excited to have Ariana join our Foundation team,” said Bill Roper, President & CEO of the Orton Family Foundation. “Her background in place-based economic development and community planning perfectly dovetails with our commitment to help communities describe, apply and sustain their heart and soul attributes. She was a proven leader and excellent partner in the Borderlands Project in Rhode Island and Connecticut.”  Ariana will work closely with Northeast Director of Projects Betsy Rosenbluth.

Prior to joining the Orton Family Foundation, Ariana worked as the economic development planner for the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council. During her four years with the Council, she led several initiatives focused on developing a place-centered approach to economic development. Those initiatives required partnerships across political boundaries and brought together a variety of interest groups. Many of Ariana’s projects raised questions of how to define community and how we determine the best scale at which to plan.

Her project work included the Borderlands Project (an Orton Family Foundation funded initiative), which is a partnership with The Nature Conservancy that works to create opportunities for economic and community development in towns along the Connecticut-Rhode Island border while enhancing the natural amenities that make these communities unique. Ariana played a lead role in imagining and organizing regional forums and educational workshops to solicit input from local stakeholders on their view of the Borderlands region. Based on the conversations at these events and other Borderlands activities, Ariana worked successfully with project partners to develop and refine a pilot project aimed at balancing conservation and development in the Borderlands region, which is currently underway.

Ariana was also staff lead on the One River Project, a collaborative initiative with the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) that works to advance waterfront development strategies that integrate natural systems, economic opportunities, cultural heritage and public access. As part of this project, she advised a group of students from RISD and Brown University that were studying public participation in the waterfront context.

Ariana received her Masters of Community Planning in 2004 from the University of Rhode Island, where she concentrated in environmental and land use planning. She received an American Institute of Certified Planners Award for outstanding attainment in the study of planning. Prior to graduate school, she worked in the Boston office of the Conservation Law Foundation. Ariana earned a Bachelors Degree in International Relations at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She lives with her husband in Quincy, Massachusetts, and is looking forward to the move to Vermont.

The Orton Family Foundation seeks to help small cities and towns identify and describe their heart and soul attributes, and to build on those qualities in planning toward desired futures. The Foundation believes that if a community deeply explores and agrees on its unique physical, economic, social and cultural attributes and then uses this knowledge to steer change and guide decisions, it will ensure a vibrant and sustainable future through periods of economic expansion and contraction. The Foundation serves cities and towns under 50,000 in population in the Northeast and Rocky Mountain regions, and has an office in Denver, Colorado. Lyman Orton, owner of the Vermont Country Store, created the Foundation in 1995.

For more information contact:

John Barstow
Director of Communications, The Orton Family Foundation
152 Maple St., Suite 101
PO Box 111
Middlebury, VT 05753 U.S.A.
Phone: 802.388.6336 , ext. 202
jbarstow@orton.org
www.orton.org