We are excited to participate in a new form of capitalism—where the metric of success is not ROI, but IPC: Impact Per Capita. IPC measures the positive environmental and social impact each of us is making in the world through our work at Green River. Our goal is to have the highest IPC of any company.
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Michael Knapp
CEO, Partner
With professional roots in academic research and teaching, Michael founded Green River in 2000, and has grown the company into an internationally renowned team of software architects and programmers. As CEO, Michael provides entrepreneurial leadership, and coordinates engagements with clients that include Starbucks Coffee Company, the National Education Association, the US Green Business Council, numerous colleges and Universities, and many others. Michael’s company operates on the cutting-edge of custom web-based application development. They are known for their excellence in systems analysis, data analytics and visualization, and user experience design.
Prior to founding Green River in 2000, Michael served as faculty at Marlboro College Graduate School. He earned a Ph.D. from Yale University, with a concentration in environmental health, and a Masters in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Michael focused his work at Yale in data science, and has expertise in spatial statistics, biostatistics, and social science statistics. He holds a BA in Biology from Wesleyan University.
Michael is passionate about social justice. He believes software can play a pivotal role in solving pressing social problems through enhanced transparency, efficiency, and informed decision making. Michael focuses Green River’s mission on promoting learning opportunities for all, public health for those in need, and progress toward a sustainable society. His skills span a variety of fields, as he is currently working in school improvement, health equity, green building, and ethical supply chain management.
Michael lives with his family in the rural village of Green River, Vermont - southwest of Brattleboro. He spends his free time working on the ecological management of 48 acres of meadow adjacent to the Green River, minimizing human impacts on the surrounding forests and wetlands.
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Derrish Repchick
COO, Partner
Derrish is a veteran Software Engineer with well over 20 years designing, developing and deploying large-scale software applications. Before joining Green River in 2011, Derrish co-founded Intellidimension, a Semantic Web company. At Intellidimension, one of his major achievements include developing a high-performance specialized database platform starting in 2000. Derrish also gained expertise as a technology consultant while at Tally Systems Corp., and as an IT professional for United Technologies. Derrish received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Massachusetts and a M.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Ann Frago
Dir. Finance
Ann heads our finance department and business office. Prior to joining Green River, Ann worked as a financial project manager at Hewlett-Packard focusing on mergers, acquisitions and divestitures; financial system migration and SAP factory implementation for over 20 years. Afterwards she moved to finance positions in higher education working at University of California Davis in Global Affairs and California State University Sacramento as Athletics Chief Financial Officer, Associate Athletic Director and Senior Woman Administrator.
Ann holds a bachelor's degree in Accountancy from Saint Mary's College of California and is a certified public accountant.
She is a fourth-generation native Californian and lives with her husband in Sacramento, California. As a former collegiate athlete, Ann has a competitive spirit and loves watching and attending sporting events, especially European football. She and her husband travel as much as they possibly can seeking out locations in which they can experience unique nature, culture and cuisine.
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Ian Kozak
Dir. Strategic Development, Partner
As Director of Strategic Development, Ian's primary concern is ensuring all Green River's clients have a productive, efficient, and satisfying engagement experience, regardless of a project's size or current development phase.
Before joining Green River, Ian led the IT department at Marlboro College for 10 years. Previously he co-founded two education-focused web application development companies, EdsUp, Inc. and N400 Studios, which built interactive sites for clients including PBS and National Geographic.
Ian currently lives in Townshend, Vermont, with his sweetie, where they try their hand at micro-scale organic farming. Ian holds a BA in Biology and Anthropology.
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Erin Van Ness
Dir. Project Management, Partner
All of her professional life, Erin has focused on the technical aspects of making non-profit organizations successful, from government, social, and health services to media, culture, and the performing arts. At Green River, Erin's goal is to maintain magical clarity within complex projects. She works on managing communications and technical details, along with ensuring the quality of deployed software. She believes the key to a successful project lies in building strong relationships and maintaining excellent communication with our clients.
Erin has an Master’s degree in Arts Management from Columbia College, and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She lives in Chicago with her husband, John, and their big lovable German Shepherd, Freyja. In her spare time, she enjoys running, yoga, brewing beer, and she volunteers for an independent community radio station, which helps promote local artists and independent voices in the Chicago community.
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Maryam Abdul-Wahid
UX and Interface Designer
Maryam is a UX/UI designer with a background in software engineering. After working previously in the aerospace industry as a developer, she uncovered her passion for designing digital products that are meaningful to the people who use them. She continuously supports STEM nonprofits and networks for minorities and women ever since she was a junior member of the National Society of Black Engineers. Now she aspires to use her talents to improve the user experience of services and products for nonprofits and businesses achieving social good.
Maryam has a M.S. and B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Arizona. She enjoys playing basketball, soccer, & volleyball, hiking, indoor rock climbing, horseback riding, kickboxing, and cycling. Maryam is also an avid women’s soccer fan and travels the world to watch U.S. women’s soccer matches in person.
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Elliot Anders
Software Engineer, Partner
Elliot joined Green River with already over 10 years of custom web development experience, bringing a suite of skills from enterprise database design to interactive UI implementation. With a professional background mainly in education, aside from being at times a full time developer, Elliot was IT Director for Marlboro College, IT Director of the Mohawk/Hawlemont Regional School District, and co-author (and companion software developer) for the environmental chemistry textbook, "A Basic Introduction to Pollutant Fate and Transport: An Integrated Approach with Chemistry, Modeling, Risk Assessment, and Environmental Legislation." He also spent several months trapped in the Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona.
Elliot holds a B.A. in Environmental Chemistry from Whitman College, and lives in Brattleboro with his wife and two children.
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Gig Ashton
Software Engineer
Gig is a full-stack software engineer with a background in React, Python, Rust, and Java. She previously worked as research engineer with the Metagovernance Project, where she built tools for digital self-governance. Before that, she was a software engineer at a healthcare application platform startup called Commure, and a data engineer at Spotify.
Gig lives in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Outside of work, she likes to snowboard, skateboard, read speculative fiction, and practice her Swedish.
Gig has a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Brown University.
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Poonam Benakatti
Technical Project Manager
Poonam is a Technical Project Manager at Green River. She has a passion for social impact driven organizations previously having worked in public health, non-profit, and education sectors. Previous to Green River, she worked as director of the data quality team for NYC Health and Hospitals, helping to run their Covid-19 response. After landing in the analytics space, she has used her experience in human-centered management to liaise with stakeholders and ensure projects are implemented to be data driven and digestable.
Poonam holds both Bachelors and Masters degrees in Neuroscience from UT Dallas. As a Texas native, she enjoys warm weather sports like climbing, sailing, and running half marathons.
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Joel Berman
Software Analyst
With a background in solving problems and pride in offering exceptional service, Joel now uses his detective skills to support sustainable projects at Green River. After graduating from Northeastern University he worked as a software implementation consultant helping to build a benefits system for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He also has worked as a logistics project manager, while operating his own business with a mission to give back to the community. His passion lies in helping others and finding ways to change the world for the better.
An explorer at heart, Joel has traveled and lived all over the US with his faithful dog Wile E. When not on his computer you can find him playing outdoors, at a concert or chowing down a new recipe he crafted in the kitchen.
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Todd Blackman
Software Engineer
Todd remembers learning Logo and Applesoft BASIC in elementary school and has been programming ever since. At The University of Kansas, he earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering and an M.S. in Computer Science. After starting off professionally in Perl, Todd explored teaching and was a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching primarily Java programming in Western Samoa 2007-2008. In 2010, Todd returned to programming for industry as a lead Rails developer – first with two firms in Portland, Oregon, and then at Location, Inc. in Worcester, Massachusetts. At Location, Inc. Todd built preeminent location-based services, leveraging big data to inform decision-making. Todd describes himself today as a “full-stack website engineer with a focus on back-end systems.”
In his spare time Todd plays piano, folds origami, bicycles, draws, camps, brews beer, does basic woodworking, gardens, and fiddles with Arduinos. If there's any time left, he squeezes in a good book or a hike.
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Lucas Braun
Software Engineer, Partner
Lucas came to Green River as an experienced Rails developer, with a background in geospatial data visualization, and a drive to help address the global challenges of wealth inequality and environmental degradation. Prior to moving to Brattleboro, Lucas worked as Lead Rails Developer for Annkissam, LLC, a medical work flow software vendor, and as a Web Developer with Nuesta GmbH. He also organized GeoMundus 2018, an international conference on geospatial technologies, and managed to bike across America in 42 days.
Lucas has an M.Sc. in Geospatial Technologies from James I University & University of Münster, and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Middlebury College.
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Grace Charles
Data Scientist
Grace is a Data Scientist with a background in environmental science and public health. Prior to joining Green River, Grace worked at a think tank in Washington, DC conducting research that spanned public health, behavioral science, and causal inference. Grace was drawn to Green River by the chance to do meaningful work that has measurable social and environmental impact.
Grace holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis and a B.A. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard. For her Ph.D., Grace studied the consequences of biodiversity loss and how livestock and wildlife coexist. Her work primarily took place in the savannas of central Kenya.
Grace lives with her husband in Beverly, MA. Outside of work, Grace enjoys silversmithing in her home studio, hiking around New England, and taking photos of particularly nice looking clouds and landscapes.
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Megan Eborn
Software Engineer
Megan is a full stack developer, with a penchant for user workflow implementation and dynamic data visualizations. A graduate from Dixie State University in Utah, Megan originally moved to Brattleboro to join the Green River team, where she has become, among many other things, our resident D3.js whisperer.
When not writing code, you can find Megan at the top of a mountain on her snowboard. She now lives in Cedar City, Utah, with her fiancé.
Megan has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Technology.
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Aaron Frary
Software Engineer
Aaron is an engineer looking to effect sustainable change for people facing systemic injustice. Along with a strong background in computer science and mathematics, Aaron has production experience in Android and iOS development, C++, and Rails development. Prior to Green River, Aaron was a founding employee at Valt Inc., a cross-platform password management tool (since acquired by DropBox), and was a Software Engineer at MeedMobile.
Aaron has an A.B. in Computer Science from Harvard College. He lives with his husband and a growing herd of goats in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
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Adam Garcia
ETL Data Engineer
With an academic background in public health research in clinical and community-based behavioral interventions, Adam began his career working as a statistician and researcher at Tufts University and later the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. While programming is often a means to an end in that field, Adam found he deeply enjoyed working with code and in particular the ways that web technologies can facilitate scientific communication through interactive data visualization and storytelling.
Prior to Green River, Adam worked at the Vera Institute of Justice, where he led reporting on a suite of federally-funded immigration court orientation programs and created a public-facing data repository and dashboard illuminating the spread of COVID-19 among people in ICE detention centers.
Adam holds a B.A. in Community Health from Brown University and a M.P.H. in Biostatistics from the Boston University School of Public Health.
In his free time, Adam enjoys going for runs around Brooklyn, spending time in Prospect Park, going to concerts with friends, and–per his astrological sign–spending time at home with his partner and their cat, Lenny.
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Aaron Gerber
Software Engineer
Aaron is primarily a backend developer, with a rich multi-platform background in Python, PHP, and Node.js. Prior to joining Green River, Aaron spent 10 years building backend systems for mobile apps for InspiringApps, based in Boulder, Colorado. Originally from Iowa, he's also worked in corn and soybean fields with 3 generations of family, and spent 2 years in Niger as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Aaron has a B.A. in Psychology and Computer Science from St. Olaf College. Outside of work, you can find him running, cycling, playing the piano, and walking Søren, an "adorable bichon poodle mix" - though not all, of course, at the same time.
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Jonathan Goley
Interface Designer, Software Engineer
Jonathan’s path to being a designer and developer started in high school where he was exposed to the art of photography and the technical wonders of the BASIC programming language. After studying photography at the University of South Carolina, Jonathan worked at the Columbia Museum of Art for almost 9 years where he did everything from art handling to exhibition design to photography to to full-on application development. He realized his artistic/design skills could be combined with his latent, yet blossoming, technical skills to help do good for the world. This was the case at his previous job with EcoHealth Alliance where he helped design and develop applications to help monitor infectious disease outbreaks.
Jonathan can sometimes be spotted on back roads with a large format camera photographing power lines using a 19th-century process called wet plate collodion (see some of those photos here). Or wearing a veil stealing honey from his honey bees. Or on a trail above the tree line receiving Nature's "good tidings." Or volunteering to help out his community.
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Juan Ruiz González
Software Engineer
Juan is a software engineer with a passion for improving processes through the use of technology. Prior to joining Green River, Juan brought over 10 years of experience developing software, leading teams, implementing systems, and managing IT infrastructure. He is technology-agnostic, with a background in AWS Serverless Application Model, Flask, Laravel, Zend, Angular, Python, PHP, Typescript, and JavaScript.
Juan has a Bachelors degree in Systems Engineering and a Masters Degree in Business Administration. He lives in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Outside of work, you can find him spending time with his family, eating out, or working on personal projects.
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Angela Gougherty
Software Analyst
Angela has a passion for serving communities and has worked within the housing/homeless sector for the past 10 years. She has specialized knowledge and experience related to the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) where she served as the System Administrator for Oakland County (MI) and the State of Michigan. During her tenure, much of her focus has been on streamlining processes to improve efficiencies in data collection, managing the implementation of HMIS and establishing outcomes to inform stakeholders.
Angela has a Master’s of Urban Planning with a concentration in Housing and Community Development from Wayne State University. She currently lives in Detroit where she enjoys bike riding, gardening, and attending gallery openings.
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Lucy Hornbuckle
HR Generalist
Lucy is our HR Generalist - originally from the UK, she moved to the USA in 2009. Lucy has always had a passion for people and takes great joy in getting to know and support those she works alongside. She loves hearing people’s stories and finding out what makes them tick.
As well as this, Lucy holds a MSc in Management and Leadership - her passion is improving processes and seeing a business function at its highest level - HR is a perfect fit for her and she genuinely enjoys watching those around her thrive and really enjoy their working life.
Lucy has worked for various companies in an office management or HR role - most recently working alongside her husband in their family business within the floral industry.
When not working, Lucy enjoys painting, spending time with her husband and four sweet dogs and hiding from the GA humidity.
She still travels across the pond from time to time - if only to re-up her British accent and replenish her Cadbury’s chocolate supplies.
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David Houghton
Software Engineer
David is a linguist, specifically a semanticist, who has been working for over a decade as a programmer. David completed his Ph.D. in 2000 from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He specializes in natural language processing and machine learning. In addition to his work with Green River in Ruby, David programs in Java, Perl, Scala, Haskell, Python, C++, and Lua. David loves writing useful code, and especially enjoys developing algorithms.
In his spare time, David plays with his kids, studies a little Finnish, and tinkers with his open source projects. David loves living in Brattleboro, VT, which he describes as beautiful, comfortable, and scaled to suit his aesthetics.
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Felipe Lima
Software Engineer
Felipe works primarily as a front-end engineer, implementing highly usable, interactive interface components. Primarily self-taught, he brings curiosity and enthusiasm to all his projects, along with rich experience in React, NodeJS, and Ruby on Rails.
Felipe has a degree in Advertising from Universidade Unigranrio. He currently lives in Rio de Janeiro, where he plays the piano in his spare time.
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Joe Lopes
DevOps Engineer
Joe brings to Green River a love of cloud infrastructure, automation, and Infrastructure as Code. Prior to joining Green River, Joe worked as a Systems Administrator on a variety of networks ranging from SMB to enterprise. Joe's IT career began in 2009 as a field engineer working on ATMs and doing office IT for big box retailers. From there he moved into a help desk role and was quickly promoted to a Systems Administrator. While he very much enjoyed his experience as a Systems Administrator, he much prefers the DevOps mindset to administering infrastructure.
Joe spends his free time tinkering with his cars, lifting weights, watching English Premier League soccer, and traveling to new countries.
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KT Merseles
Technical Project Manager
KT brings humor, collaboration, and strategic operational insight to managing projects. Hailing from the non-profit space, they have worn many hats such as program director, accidental techie & business systems expert, project manager, events coordinator, and door-to-door fundraiser. This unique experience provides them with the insights needed to understand how technology solutions can operate and optimize from within an organization’s existing operational structure.
They were drawn to Green River for the opportunity to expand the impact they can make within organizations.
Outside of work, you can find them training their pitbull, snuggling their puggle, or in the pottery studio making large vessels to contain their iced coffee dependence.
They have a BA in English from Clark University.
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Ash Otocki
UX and Interface Designer
Ash is a User Experience and Interface designer with an extensive background in visual design, front-end web development, and marketing.
After attending Dreyfoos School of the Arts as a graphic design and communications major, Ash followed her deep interest in people and human behavior and received a BA in Anthropology, and a BA in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences from Florida Atlantic University.
Ash’s goal is to understand the client vision and communicate clearly. With thoughtful research, planning and testing, Ash believes that every project has the potential to be an enjoyable and engaging experience for all users.
When she is not designing, Ash loves spending time with her family, running, surfing, and making music.
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Zach Parks
Software Engineer
Though decidedly a full-stack developer, Zach has especially rich facility in UX implementation, using React, NodeJS, and GraphQL to craft scalable and usable software. Before joining Green River, he was a Senior Software Engineer for Zato Health, working on an interoperability platform for healthcare, and a Lead Developer, Digital Products for Rowan and Littlefield Publishing Group.
Zach has a B.A. in Sculpture and Philosophy from Marlboro College
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Eduardo Rojas
Software Engineer
Eduardo is primarily a front end developer, though he came to Green River as an experienced fullstack engineer. A self-taught programmer who started his professional career when he was 15 years old, he has worked for multiple startups, and has an especially rich facility in fullstack development — focusing on integrating all the pieces of a project using tools like React, Node JS, and Python. Prior to Green River, Eduardo was a lead developer for Leadsales, a startup focused on providing a complete platform for small business sales and support administration.
Eduardo has a background in electrical and mechanical engineering, and holds multiple certificates in artificial intelligence and stochastic models for predictive analysis.
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Sarah Ryder
Technical Project Manager
Sarah brings to her position as project manager a strong technical background from working as a full-stack developer for over fifteen years. Before joining Green River, she spent several years providing IT leadership in higher education and K-12 environments, and she has extensive customer service experience, including doing technical support for dial-up internet back when that was a thing. In all of her roles, Sarah takes a flexible, inclusive, service-oriented approach by focusing on communication and building relationships. She was drawn to Green River by a desire to collaborate with others who share common values and do meaningful work.
Sarah has a Bachelor's degree in Spanish from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and she studied abroad in Salamanca, Spain in 2003. She grew up in the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts and currently resides in Turners Falls, MA. In addition to juggling priorities at Green River, Sarah is a bartender and a massage therapist licensed in the state of MA. She enjoys hiking, kayaking, yoga, cooking, brewing beer, DIY home projects, and volunteering in the local community.
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Kyle Schwartz
DevOps Engineer
Kyle came to Green River with a love for automation, security and distributed systems. Before joining Green River, Kyle worked as a consultant designing scalable business solutions for SMB and enterprise clients. Kyle remembers provisioning systems with PXE, bash and python scripts early in his career. He much prefers working with cloud infrastructure and its focus on API first deployment and configuration.
Kyle spends his free time with his wife and daughter, tinkers with his home lab, and volunteers for his town's technology committee.
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Guillaume Sparrow-Pepin
Software Engineer
Guillaume is a developer with a primary focus these days on front-end frameworks. Guillaume came to Green River looking for a way to use his skills as an engineer to create positive change in the world. A Vermont native, Guillaume studied Computer Science and music at the University of Vermont. He has worked as a iOS engineer, freelance web-developer, and at The Putney School as a Network and Systems Administrator and teaching programming.
Aside from programming, Guillaume plays piano and accordion with his Celtic band Nova. He lives with his partner at his rural home in Westminster, Vermont and enjoys gardening, swimming, and hiking with his dog Mona.
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Theron Toomey
Software Engineer
Theron joined Green River in 2005 where he works on projects involving supply chain certification, green building, and social equity.
As a full-stack engineer, Theron works primarily in Ruby on Rails, Knockout, and React.
Previously, Theron worked at The Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University where he helped support research into climate change, public health, and ecology.
Theron attended Marlboro College as an undergrad where he studied computer science and network security.
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Kevin Wiliarty
Software Engineer
Kevin is a backend engineer with a strong facility for frontend development. Before coming to Green River Kevin worked for more than a decade in academic computing, first at Wesleyan University, then at Smith College, and most recently at Hampshire College. Throughout his career, Kevin has cared passionately about working in the service of a greater social good. His background in web development includes PHP, WordPress, Python, Django, Javascript and React.
Kevin holds a Ph.D. in Germanic linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley where his specialties included historical linguistics, cognitive semantics and second language acquisition. He earned his B.A. in German from Harvard University. He occasionally publishes literary translations from German to English, and these days he is working steadily toward fluency in Irish.
Kevin lives with his wife and two kids in Middletown, Connecticut where he plays bass in a string band. He also enjoys walking and knitting.
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Sandy Wise
Software Engineer
Sandy is primarily a back end engineer, who provides both deep system architecture solutions and guiding technical management implementing them. He worked for 22 years for the Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he led the creation of the workflow specification language Little-JIL, as well as doing extensive application development in Java. Most recently, he was Senior Software Engineer at Clickshare.
Sandy resides with his family in Western Massachusetts.