CCS’s Board of Trustees possess the business acumen, vision, and experience that will allow CCS to thrive for decades to come. They have built nationally recognized non-profits, managed art schools, and spearheaded ambitious real estate ventures.

Donna Almendrala is a cartoonist and graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies Class of 2012. She received her BS from the College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before earning an MFA at CCS. In 2013, she started her dream job in Santa Rosa, California as a studio artist and steward of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. She served as Art Director for three years before being named VP of Content in 2021. She has contributed to the Boom! Peanuts comic series, 2018 Eisner Winner Celebrating Peanuts, and the Emmy-nominated series Snoopy in Space. She continues to create her own comics which have appeared in local publications such as Vermont Seven Days, The Cartoon Crier, Bay Nature and other small press anthologies.

Warren Bingham (Chair) was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University and served for nine years on the research staff at the Harvard College Observatory and the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics before straying from the rich groves of academe for the siren call of publishing and entrepreneurship. Mr. Bingham’s business career has been largely in the publishing and creative sector where he has international experience as: a business founder; in senior management, including CEO, of several publicly traded companies.

Matt Dunne has focused his life’s work on bringing together the worlds of entrepreneurship, service and politics. Elected to the Vermont House at the age of 22, he served 7 years before joining the Clinton Administration as the Director of AmeriCorps*VISTA overseeing 6000 full-time people working in the fight against poverty. In 2002 he returned home to Vermont and was elected to two terms in the Vermont Senate. Outside of the legislature, he as worked in high-tech marketing and before launching Matt Dunne Consulting was the Associate Director of the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College creating programs to support students who wish to pursue careers in the nonprofit and public sector.

Ann Hargraves (Treasurer) began her relationship with CCS before it opened as a counselor with SCORE, where she volunteered for eight years. Ann is the current president of Institute for Lifelong Education at Dartmouth (ILEAD), and has previously served as Vice President and Treasurer. She also serves as the DHMC Auxiliary Treasurer. Ann was Treasurer of New England College from 1994-2000, and Dartmouth Bank’s Senior Vice President, Corporate Control from 1986-1991. Ann received her MBA from Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, Dartmouth College in 1977.

Steve Karcher is a seasoned financial and operations executive whose career has focused on improving performance of mission-driven organizations through excellence in human resource management, effective financial and operational systems and continuous improvement to meet the needs of customers and community. Steve holds an M.S. Accounting from Binghamton University, and B.S. Agricultural Economic from Cornell University.

Charles G. Lief (Secretary) is the President of Naropa University in Boulder Colorado, the pre-eminent accredited university integrating contemplative education and mindfulness throughout its graduate and undergraduate curriculum. He has served for decades on numerous non-profit boards of organizations working toward sustainable social and economic transformation. Chuck was the first President of the Greyston Foundation in New York, one of the earliest models of integrated nonprofit social enterprises and service providers creating housing for homeless families, childcare centers, HIV/AIDS housing and health care, and the well-known Greyston Bakery hiring the chronically unemployed. As a principal in the Hartland Group of Burlington, Vermont. Chuck created mixed-income housing and economic development projects in Vermont and New Hampshire. He was a founding board member and CEO for Amida Care, a nonprofit special needs HMO, which is now a $400 million social enterprise, serving 10,000 low-income people in New York City. He was chair Social Enterprise Alliance and vice chair of the Vermont Community Loan Fund.

Administration

Michelle Ollie (CCS President) is cofounder of The Center for Cartoon Studies. Prior to CCS Ollie was a director and faculty at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), and the development manager for Banta Corporation (now RR Donnelley). She has an MBA from the University of St. Thomas and taught for the New York Institute of Technology’s graduate online business degree program. She serves on the board of the Vermont Community Loan Fund,  advisory board for the Institute for Lifelong Education at Dartmouth College (ILEAD), and the Vermont Higher Education Council.

James Sturm (CCS Director) is cofounder of The Center for Cartoon Studies and Seattle’s alt newsweekly The Stranger. His books include The Golem’s Mighty Swing, Market Day, Birdsong, and Ape and Armadillo Take Over the World. He is the coauthor of the popular Adventures in Cartooning series. His writings and illustrations have appeared in scores of publications including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Onion, The New York Times and on the cover of The New Yorker. James has spoken at hundreds of conferences, universities, public schools, libraries, and comics and book festivals and was a 2008 and 2015 MacDowell Colony Fellow.