JORDAN APPLEWHITE
NH (Vice Chair)
Jordan is a maple farm worker and bar owner living in the North Country. They serve locally as a supervisor of the checklist and chair their town’s community power committee.
DANA HACKETT
NH
Dana Hackett joins the board with a wealth of experience as a longtime New Hampshire resident, low income single working parent, and fierce advocate for intersectional justice. In the summer of 2020, Dana was one of the five activists arrested at the New Hampshire State House in protest of the passage of the divisive state budget. She looks forward to stepping into this new role within Rights & Democracy to help further the mission for collective liberation, justice, and equity for all.
JEETAN KHADKA
VT (Co-Chair)
Jeetan works as an Employment & Training Counselor with the Association of Africans living in Vermont (AALV, Inc). Before this, Jeetan managed and owned Nepali Kitchen of Essex Junction. Jeetan has also worked with the UN Sustainable Development Goals project, Spectrum Youth & Family Services, the Burlington Community & Economic Development Office, and served as Commissioner of Burlington’s Parks & Recreation Department.
MK KILCOYNE
NH (Co-Chair)
After beating cancer in 2015, MK was heavily impacted by our healthcare system and wanted to see change. They started working for Bernie and then Hillary out of Ohio for the general election. At that time, they got to organize with queer young people and they found the vocabulary to come out. Since then, MK has been dedicated to queer rights and healthcare organizing in New Hampshire.
ED TAYLOR
NH
Ed is a South Florida native who has been in the Granite State for several years working to build people power in young and marginalized communities. Ed is fiercely passionate about empowering, educating, and mobilizing marginalized people to redesign the structures that were created to exclude them. Previously, he worked as Organizing Director with the ACLU of NH. Ed graduated from Florida A&M University, a Historically Black College & University, in 2018 with a Political Science and Economics degree.
BARBARA WILSON
VT (Treasurer)
Barb grew up on a small dairy farm in Michigan and graduated with a B.S. in Secondary Education and Mathematics from Michigan State University. She spent 38 years working for a large telecommunications software development company in New Jersey, where she designed, implemented, and deployed engineering support software. Upon moving to Shoreham in 2008, she started a small fruit farm where she grows berries, peaches, and other fruits to make value added specialty products, such as jam and sorbet.
Barb has been a member of Rights & Democracy since 2016 and was first elected to the RAD C4 board in 2020. She has been active on many fronts, where those most impacted are often unable to fight back, including litigating on behalf of an elderly neighbor, fighting the expansion of the VT gas pipeline and exposing Vermont Gas’ deceptive marketing practices, advocating for healthcare reform, and fighting to keep rural schools opened.