Erica Berman
Executive Director/ Founder
After 20 years in Paris and Italy, Erica swapped city living for a life steeped in sustainable values, nature, and creating less waste when she moved to Midcoast Maine in 2012 with her French husband, and Veggies to Table co-founder, Alain Ollier. In 2019 the launch of Veggies to Table stemmed from a deep-rooted desire to give back to their community. Previously Erica created and ran the boutique vacation rental company Haven In (luxury rentals in Paris, Provence, and Tuscany) and founded and curated HiP Paris a cultural blog on Paris. In her rare free time, Erica loves to read, cook, learn languages, walk in the woods, snuggle with her cats, and travel off the beaten track. Erica has a passion for flowers, beautiful interiors, industrial furniture, and reclaimed and reused everything. She has a degree in Journalism and Psychology from Syracuse University and originally hails from Lexington, Mass where her father still owns Berman’s Wine and Spirits which has been in the family since its inception in 1909.
Alain Ollier
Co-Founder
A world traveller, bread-baker, ice hockey-player, trained physical therapist, and marathon runner, Alain embraces life in Maine with gusto. He moved to the area with his wife Erica in 2012, happily leaving behind city life. He now teaches French and Spanish in Wiscasset Middle High and in the summer, Alain works full-time on the farm. He helps with everything from chain-sawing, irrigation and breaking ground to installing deer fencing and portable chicken coops. He can also be found taking care of his bees or baking loaves of sourdough bread, gâteaux, and French pastries for the team.
Jen Ross
Board chair
Jen moved to the Boothbay Harbor Region in 2006. She has been actively involved in the community as a restaurant owner and member of the Congregational Church. Jen grew up with an appreciation for organic vegetables on family farms in the Hudson Valley, New York. Currently, Jen works in e-commerce and marketing out of her home and welcomed the idea of giving back to the community by serving on the board at Veggies To Table. Jen met Erica and Alain through a mutual friend in 2018 and admired Erica‘s dream of building the farm and serving others. When not in her own garden of heirloom tomatoes, delicata squash, herbs and garlic, she loves to be with her family hiking, boating, kayaking or tucked in a quiet harbor on the Coast of Maine.
Helen E. Costello
treasurer
Helen is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist with a background in Agriculture, Food and the Environment from the Friedman School at Tufts University. She moved to Mid-Coast
Maine in 2018 to start an encore career creating a small diversified organic farm with her partner. The Byre Farm combines her love of food systems and policy with nutrition and growing food. Helen is passionate about providing healthy food to all eaters and is a perfect fit for Veggies to Table. She spent over twenty five years working in food systems including 11 at the NH Food Bank connecting the food-insecure to healthy food. Helen lives in Bristol with her three dogs, barn cats, Scottish Highland Cattle, Shropshire sheep, ducks, chickens and geese.
Gail Dudley
secretary
Gail retired to Maine in 2013 after teaching and the Landmark School in Massachusetts for 42 years. Her love of cooking and willingness to help others led her to volunteer for a local program Food for Thought designed to feed children and families in need in her community of the Boothbay Peninsula. During her five years with the Food for Thought program, she met Erica, became inspired and so began her mission to help Veggies to Table. In her spare time, Gail can usually be found in her kitchen creating some new and interesting dish or snuggling with her two cats.
Merry Fossel
director
Merry moved to Maine in 1995. After retiring from a career that included the Peace Corps, teaching special ed, and evaluating and administering health and social service programs in five states—and after ten years of experimenting in her own garden—she decided to learn a lot more through the local Master Gardener Program. This led to various projects focused on food security. As a result, food security work has become a large part of her life for the last 14 years. Her experience includes a long stint as co-president of Morris Farm Trust, helping found the Lincoln County Gleaners, and actively working to create a food council in Lincoln County. Merry loves connecting people and supporting the systems they use to make good things happen.
Stephanie Katz
director
Maine is Stephanie’s happy place and she has been traveling to the Midcoast area for 30+ years to her home in Owl's Head. Distant cousins who connected at a funeral a few years back, Stephanie and Erica have remained in touch ever since. While sharing a love of food, flowers, and Maine, Stephanie became increasingly interested in, and excited about, the work of Veggies to Table. In her professional life, Stephanie is a fundraiser with more than two decades of experience in both educational and cultural institutions. She is currently Director of Major Gifts at St. Mark’s School in Massachusetts where she has worked since 2009. Since becoming involved with Veggies to Table, Stephanie developed a love for #flowerjoy and growing her own dahlias.
Irene Marchenay
Director
Irene Marchenay was born in Paris and raised in Savoie, France. She came to the US as a young adult. She has a Bachelor’s in French and education from Elmira College and a Master’s in Literature from Cornell University. After careers in farming, retail, and beauty, she began teaching full-time at Cornell. She moved to Maine 34 years ago and has taught French at all levels from middle to graduate school. Irene loves nature and birds (especially chickens!), cooking, painting, embroidery, and writing (she is a published author). She prefers French and British TV and mostly reads non-fiction. She has two amazing grown children and two, also amazing, grand-children.
After ‘retiring’ from teaching she followed her dream and became a Real Estate Agent. She currently lives in Edgecomb, Maine with her husband Ivan and her tuxedo cat Button.
Donna Denniston
Director
After a career in education, Donna moved to the Boothbay Peninsula thinking she would devote her time to sculpting and volunteering. Those plans changed when she and her husband got three bee hives in 2020! Their passion quickly and unexpectedly grew into a business—Barters Island Bees. She loves this work as it allows her to support the environment and produce honey products that people enjoy. After selecting Veggies to Table as an organization to support, Donna met Erica and Alain and learned even more about local hunger. She is thrilled to join the board so she can help provide “nourishment for the body and the spirit” by sharing healthy organic produce and beautiful flowers. Donna lives around the corner from the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens with Denny, her husband of 50 years, her pup and a lot of bee hives.
Heather Dubina
Director
Heather has spent her career dedicated to patient and client advocacy, and has held several leadership positions in this field. After relocating from Massachusetts to an old farmhouse in Alna in 2022, she quickly became involved in the community, including the Community Garden, the Lincoln County Historical Society, and as a founding member of the Climate Action Committee. She met Erica while completing a graduate certificate in Human Resource Management and became inspired to contribute to Veggies to Table. Heather holds a master’s degree in Management and serves as the HR Manager for the Knox County Homeless Coalition. Heather loves gardening, antiquing, campfires and spending time with her husband, Brian, and their rescue pup, Jack.