JD Chesloff

JD Chesloff is the President and CEO of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable (MBR). His work at MBR is focused on strengthening the state’s long-term social and economic vitality with the goal of making Massachusetts a highly desirable place to do business in a global economy. Originally from the Berkshires, Chesloff grew up in Cheshire and has worked in and around Beacon Hill for more than 25 years. In the Massachusetts State Legislature, he was the Chief of Staff to the House Committee on Commerce and Labor, and was the education issues analyst and Deputy Budget Director for the House Committee on Ways and Means.

Angela Dixon

Angela Dixon is the Senior VP and Chief Diversity Officer at Berkshire Bank.  Her work centers on ways Berkshire Bank can reach diverse populations including BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities in a variety of ways to enhance their access to banking in general, including mortgage lending. Before joining Berkshire Bank, Dixon owned and operated Dixon Consulting II, LLC, a management consulting firm focused on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), and Talent Management. Ms. Dixon has a BA in Political Science and MBA from the University at Albany. She is also a Senior Certified Human Resources Professional through the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM-SCP).

Brent Heeringa

Brent Heeringa is a computer scientist and entrepreneur, most recently serving as VP of Product for Materialize, the SQL streaming database startup. Brent founded password protection software company Valt, which was acquired by Dropbox in 2019 and where Heeringa built Dropbox Passwords and later led engineering for new products. He also is a former associate professor and chair of computer science at Williams College

Steve Jenks – Chair of the Lever Board

Steve Jenks is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Candescent Partners. He has thirty years of management and investing experience in private equity. Prior to that, Mr. Jenks was an Associate with Norwest Venture Partners, where he managed private equity investments in business services, consumer services, healthcare and software industries. Mr. Jenks graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Williams College in 1981, and also received his MBA from New York University in 1983.

Sara Lalumia

Sara LaLumia is a Professor of Economics at Williams College, where she teaches classes on public economics, tax policy, and income distribution. Her research has investigated how the U.S. individual income tax affects individuals’ labor supply, educational choices, tax reporting behavior, and other outcomes. She has served as a co-editor of International Tax and Public Finance. She is a board member of the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition and a volunteer tax preparer. She received a BA from Youngstown State University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan.

Elizabeth Nielsen

Elizabeth has experience as a teacher, in a range of volunteer work, and non-profit Board service, including serving as the Board Chair of InterVarsity.

She earned her BA in English at Williams College and later earned graduate degrees in literature (Rutgers University) and theology (Knox Theological Seminary). Elizabeth serves as Pastor of Congregational Care at the First Presbyterian Church in North Palm Beach, Florida. Elizabeth and her husband Steven enjoy living part-time in the Berkshires.

Angela Randolph

Dr. Angela Randolph is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College. Her research focuses on the cognitive and behavioral process by which nascent entrepreneurs identify, evaluate, and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. Randolph holds a Ph.D. from the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University, an MBA from the College of William and Mary, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia. She and her family reside in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Jeffrey Thomas – Lever Co-Founder

Jeffrey D. Thomas is Lever’s Executive Director. A self-described “scientist-by-training and entrepreneur-by-accident“, Jeffrey was among the founding scientists at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and was the founding CSO of Genstruct (now Selventa). He also led the genomics and bioinformatics program at Pfizer‘s Ann Arbor site. He founded Entrepreneurs@Williams in 2011, a program that includes courses, internship opportunities, and a campus-wide business plan competition. He received his B.A. from Wabash College and his Ph.D. and M.D. from Indiana University. He lives in Williamstown.