Board of Directors

Board of Directors

Leading EastView from vision to vibrancy through local, nonprofit governance and oversight.

Executive Committee

Sarah Peluso, Board Co-Chair
Jason Robart, Board Co-Chair
Mary Cullinane, Board Vice-Chair
Rob Alberts, Director Emeritus

Rob Alberts, Director Emeritus, is the Founder and Past President of EastView, and founder and former owner of Middlebury Fitness, Community Investment Counselors, and Vermont Sun Fitness.  Rob is responsible for the vision and building of EastView.  He has served as President of the United Way of Addison County (2008-2010) and as a Commissioner of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency (2006-2011).  Currently, he is an Assistant Basketball Coach for the men’s basketball team at Middlebury College.  He lives in Bridport with his wife, Sarah, and their three children when they are not away at school and college.

Diana Barnard is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. She has spent her entire career caring for and educating the residents of Addison County. After nearly 20 years of working as a Family Physician at Middlebury Family Health, she became board certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine and began caring for patients living with serious illness. Dr. Barnard was the founder of Partners in Palliative and Home Care, an innovative practice providing exclusively home-based care. She played an instrumental role in the passage and implementation  of Vermont’s Medical Aid in Dying Law (act 39). Dr. Barnard  is currently a practicing Hospice and Palliative Care Physician at UVMHN Porter Medical Center and Helen Porter. She is passionate about providing patient centered care in her local community with the goal of living well and dying well. She lives in Weybridge with husband Bill Mayers where they raised their two daughters, Ruby and Zaidie Cooper, who have now have flown the coop!

Mary Cullinane is Vice-Chair of the EastView Board of Directors.  She has spent the last 20 years in various leadership positions in the education, technology and publishing industries.  She is co-founder of Community Barn Ventures, a boutique consulting firm, based in Middlebury, VT and co-founder of The Stone Mill Re-Development Project which has reimagined how to develop and operate a commercial building in downtown Middlebury.  She currently serves on the boards of AquaVitea and Capstone Publishing and recently served as Chairperson of the Addison Central School District Board.  Mary lives in Weybridge, VT.

Ian Phair has worked for over 20 years in the area of private investment focused on start-up companies and projects in the energy, real estate, and financial sectors. In 2002, he served as the interim CFO for InterOil Corp., overseeing the company’s project financing needs in regard the development of a refinery project in Papua New Guinea. Ian has been involved in multiple energy-related companies and projects, including a commercial solar project in Pittsford VT, and in 2021 established Vermont Solar Fund LLC, a solar venture with a focus on tailoring financial structures to fit individual client’s needs. Previously he worked for JP Morgan in New York City for 5 years.  He spent the first two years at the bank in the Corporate Finance department servicing corporate clients of the bank in the areas of mergers and acquisitions and equity and debt financing.  The following 3 years he worked in the bank’s Global Markets department trading energy financial derivatives. Ian has served on the boards of various portfolio companies as well as Stokely Creek Lodge (one of North America’s pre-eminent cross country ski lodges), the Algoma Highlands Conservancy, WestHarbor Capital (a London-based hedge fund), the Christian Montessori School of Ann Arbor, the Congregational Church of Middlebury, and EastView at Middlebury (a senior living community). He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University, where he studied economics.  He now resides in Middlebury, Vermont where he lives with his family – Tanya (wife), Bas (son age 23), and Eva (daughter age 21).

Benj Putnam

Jason Robart is Co-Chair of the EastView Board of Directors, a member of the Finance Committee, and chairs the Values & Growth Committee.  Jason joined the EastView Board in 2018. He is a co-founder and managing director of Bambu Global Healthcare Advisors. Prior to Bambu, he served as Chief Strategy Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and CEO of Zaffre Investments, a strategic healthcare investment firm. An avid cyclist, Jason holds a BA from Middlebury College and lives in Cornwall with his wife Sarah and their two dogs. Their two children are also Middlebury grads.

Sarah Peluso is Co-Chair of the EastView Board of Directors.  She has been a licensed real estate broker for IPJ Real Estate in Middlebury, VT since 2009. Prior to that, she was an area designer for Crate and Barrel, responsible for the Boston area stores and visual merchandising and design, and later worked for a developer staging model homes throughout the Northeast. Sarah has been very involved with United Way of Addison County over the years and was Board President in 2012. Currently she serves on the Middlebury Planning Commission and is also the Addison County Director of the VT Realtors Association. Sarah lives in Cornwall, with her husband, Mark, Medical Director and Head Team Physician at Middlebury College, and their two children.

Deb Wales has worked as a professional fundraiser in planned giving at Middlebury College for the past 18 years. Prior to that, Deb practiced law in Vermont and a few other New England states. Deb holds an A.B. from Smith College and a J.D. from the University of New Hampshire School of Law. Deb takes pride in watching her two twenty-something children become adults who participate meaningfully in their communities. Deb lives in Weybridge and is also on the Board of WomenSafe and on the mission committee of the Weybridge UCC Church.

Russ Leng is from Middlebury, where he taught international politics full-time at Middlebury College, his alma mater, for forty years.  After retirement he continued teaching part-time at Middlebury for another ten years, before turning exclusively to adult classes.  Each year he teaches life-long learning courses for two groups on Cape Cod, as well as for EastView and ESI.  He has served on the boards of the Monterey Institute of International Studies for four years, and then on the Middlebury College board for 10 years.  He and his wife Cilla live in a cottage at EastView, where they enjoy the beautiful views and their new friends in the EV community