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Advisory Board
Elizabeth Sokoloff
Elizabeth is an active Brunswick community member who is passionate about schools and education. A Brunswick School Board member since 2017, Elizabeth has served on multiple committees and is the current chair of the Kate Furbish Public Art Committee. Before TEAN, Elizabeth had been organizing small-scale donation efforts for families in her own neighborhood, so it was a logical step to jump in and help launch the town-wide organization. Elizabeth became the president of TEAN in January 2020. She serves on the Executive Committee overseeing TEAN’s strategic plan, operations, and other big-picture considerations. She coordinates all of the referrals TEAN receives from the Brunswick School District, and also serves on the Special Projects Committee, coordinating projects such as donation drives and organizing TEAN public events. In the future, she hopes to see TEAN grow within Brunswick and eventually expand to allow for more volunteers and allies to get involved in TEAN’s daily operations. She is incredibly grateful to work with the thoughtful, hard-working, and all-around amazing members of the TEAN board, and finds joy in working to support the members of the Brunswick community.
Dana Bateman
Dana is a Boston native happily living in Maine with her family since 2008. She is the co-founder and Education Director of the Personal Genetics Education Project, which is an organization dedicated to engagement and conversation about emerging ethical, social and legal issues in genetics. Dana has served on multiple boards and committees in Brunswick, all related to children, education and community-building. Dana is especially involved at TEAN with grant writing and working with asylum-seeking families. She lives with her husband Jack and two teenage children. Dana has loved the mission of TEAN since its inception and is honored to be part of the board.
Celina Harrison
Celina, a native of Turner, Maine, is an Adjunct Engineering Professor at the University of Southern Maine. She has two children in the Brunswick school system and currently serves as the District 4 Brunswick School Board representative. She initially became involved with TEAN in August of 2019, when she volunteered for a task force developed by the town and school board to welcome the new asylum seekers. Celina is the current secretary for TEAN and works directly with the Special Projects committee and the Asylum Seeker committee. Her goal for the future of TEAN is to continue to help children in the school district that need winter clothes, school gear, rides to and from sports outings, and the like. She wants all students in Brunswick to know about TEAN and the organization’s willingness and want to help its local community members. She would love to see TEAN’s framework replicated in other towns across Maine, as she believes taking part in an organization like TEAN is a great way to strengthen a community and help your neighbors.
Maggie Jansson
Maggie is a Maternal Child Health Nurse Case Manager with CHANS (Community Health and Nursing Services), which is part of the MidCoast-Parkview Health System. Through her work in the community, she has spent her career working to improve health outcomes, especially for disadvantaged children and mothers. Before TEAN was formed, she worked independently by asking for and organizing donations from her local friends and peers. When the concept for TEAN began to take shape in 2016, becoming a TEAN board member was the natural next step. Maggie works closely with TEAN-related public health-related initiatives as well as with the Community Outreach and Grants committees. Her hope is that every community in Maine may one day develop their own version of TEAN so that they may also connect families in need with people in their community who can directly meet those needs. Born in Brunswick, Maggie has a special appreciation for its close and caring community, and is honored to take part in harnessing the generosity of her local community members through TEAN.
Erin Mangalam
Erin currently works part-time at Katahdin Property Management while also helping manage her husband Kiran Mangalam’s small medical practice at Maine Mother & Company in Brunswick. Born and raised in Auburn, Maine, she moved on to graduate from Brown University with a major in history, and lived up and down the East and West coasts before eventually returning home to Maine to raise her three children. Along the way, she received her MSW from Boston College and worked with children at Head Start in Cumberland County and with survivors of military sexual trauma at the VA in Togus. Erin initially became involved with TEAN when she learned of its formation in 2016, and was excited for the opportunity to extend the nurturing she shares with her loved ones to the larger community of Brunswick’s children and families. She currently serves as TEAN’s treasurer, as well as on the Asylum Seeker and Executive committees. She is always thrilled to learn when former recipients become donors. Erin is honored to be a part of TEAN and is continuously impressed by the generosity of her neighbors.
Sarah Singer
Sarah, a native of Palo Alto, California, works as a realtor at Portside Real Estate Group and serves on the Brunswick School Board. She has spent the past ten years working to engage community members in issues around education, equity, and poverty in the community. In 2016, she co-founded TEAN with Teresa Gillis in an effort to help directly support the needs of a growing population of homeless and economically-at-risk youth in the Midcoast region. Sarah works directly with the Community Outreach, Grants, and Executive committees. In the future, she hopes to see TEAN replicated in other communities, and would love to see TEAN grow and prosper into a larger, sustainable community organization.
Emily Rines
Emily is a native Mainer and her family has called Brunswick home since 2007. She is a public health professional and spends her days working to address substance use disorder and behavioral health needs in Greater Portland. Through that role she works both as a funder and a partner with a number of agencies and organizations that assess and support the health of the Cumberland County. She is interested in taking her knowledge of the public health and social service systems and her non-profit leadership expertise to assist TEAN and the Brunswick community.
Our Interns
Mary Nzeyimana
Mary is originally from Burundi and now calls Tucson, Arizona home. She is a rising junior at Bowdoin College studying biochemistry with a strong interest in the black maternal mortality health crisis in the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. As a refugee from Burundi, she strongly relates to the experience of the asylum seeker families and the process of adjusting to a new way of life in a foreign country. She is very excited to be working with TEAN this summer, and looks forward to collaborating with the high school-age asylum seekers to plan and prepare for their future educational and career goals. She is honored and thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to the great work TEAN is doing in Brunswick.
Lianna Harrington
Lianna is a native of the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts. She is a rising senior at Bowdoin studying Psychology and English, and is currently pursuing an English honors project focused on solutions-based global climate fiction. Her interest in TEAN stems from hearing stories about the difficult process her mother, a first-generation Filipina immigrant, went through to obtain U.S. citizenship. Lianna is extremely excited to work with TEAN, and is particularly looking forward to completing training with the Maine Center for Grieving Children and engaging with the local asylum seeker families. She is am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work with TEAN this summer, and hopes to continue to do so during her final year at Bowdoin.
Lucas DiCerbo
Lucas is a rising sophomore at Bowdoin College originally from Lexington, Massachusetts. Since coming to Maine he has been deeply interested in learning more about Brunswick through community engagement. He first become involved with TEAN during the fall of 2020 while living in Harpswell, Maine and taking the semester off from Bowdoin classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has experience with academic outreach and social support at the secondary school level and is especially passionate about helping new Mainers navigate the Brunswick public school system. He is thrilled to be able to work with TEAN through the winter of 2020-21 and plans to continue through the end of the year and beyond.
The Emergency Action Network (TEAN) 