Board of Directors

Mary procter - Founder, board chair

As Founding Board Chair for Sustainable Villages Honduras, Mary draws on her work on the boards of half a dozen non-profits ranging from a small arts organization to a university. She carried the responsibility of board chair for three of them and was a key player in the startup of a brand new charter school in Washington, D.C. She learned about the importance of sound finance and sound strategic planning in private companies and government agencies. From her three years in Brazil as a foreign service officer in the U.S. Information Agency, Mary developed familiarity and great affection for the many varieties of Latin culture. She has supported sustainable agriculture and forestry in Honduran mountain villages, where she has traveled eleven times.

kurt jacobs - vice chair & Interim Secretary

Kurt is an attorney with a degree from Yale Law School who serves as a Senior Attorney Advisory in the Division of Audits and Accounting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Previously, he worked in energy law private practice for more than 20 years.   Kurt has also served in significant roles on non-profit boards and as Senior Warden of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church. In 2014, Kurt received the Laura Rinaldi Pro-bono Lawyer of the Year for his extensive pro-bono work. He has served for the past dozen years on the Working Group for Trinidad Conservation Project (TCP) the predecessor organization for SVH, and as a founding member of the SVH Board. He has traveled to Honduras to observe the agro-ecology work in multiple villages.  

Melissa Barrett - TREASURER

Housing Up, a nonprofit that provides housing and services to homeless families. Melissa has volunteered for many community organizations, served on nonprofit boards of directors, and held leadership positions in two Episcopal churches. In 2005, she visited a project her church was sponsoring in Honduras to store grain in silos and sell it during the year. She became interested in the challenges facing smallholder farmers generally. Melissa returned to Honduras many times, helped found the Trinidad Conservation Project (the predecessor to SVH ) and like  Betsy Agle, served on the Board of Directors of Sustainable Harvest International (SHI). 

betsy agle - founder, Assistant treasurer

Betsy co-founded TCP with her husband Collie Agle in 2006 and co-led the informal organization for many years. Her professional background is in environmental protection. She worked for 15 years for Clean Air
Partners and for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As a volunteer dedicated to improving the lives of mountain people in Honduras, she led fifteen adult and youth service trips to Honduras and has also made many personal trips. She served for seven years (2008 - 2015) on the Board of Sustainable Harvest International (SHI ) a U.S.-based organization working to improve rural lives in five countries in Central America, including Honduras.

BEVERLEY CARLSON – MEMBER 

Beverley has worked in international development in senior advisory, policy, and technical cooperation for more than 35 years, for the Agency for International Development, the United Nations and the United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), all in all in over 40 developing countries, including Honduras.Beverley is an internationally recognized Development Statistician and the author of many studies, policy papers, and guidelines on methodology. She graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University and holds two MBAs, one of which is from the University of Chile, where she lived for more than nine years while working as an economist at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). SVH benefits from her knowledge of development in Latin America and her expertise in the measurement of results.

Molly ELLISON – MEMBER 

Molly’s relationship with the SVH communities traces back more than a decade to service trips she went on through her church, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, while in high school. Since visiting the communities as a teenager, she has built a career in strategic communications and storytelling spanning the nonprofit, philanthropy, advocacy and government sectors. After graduating from the University of Maryland, College Park, she spent over a year working for a public health nonprofit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Through more recent roles in Washington, D.C. she’s counseled leading researchers, foundations, and government agencies on strategic communications for racial equity, nursing, the impacts of COVID-19, and clean energy issues. She brings her diverse experience in public relations and marketing to help SVH tell its story.

Senior advisors

BILL MATUSZESKI - SENIOR ADVISOR

Bill Matuszeski retired in 2001 after 33 years of Federal service in environmental programs, the last ten as Director of the Chesapeake Bay Program. BMat, as he is known to all, is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he specialized in land use law. His service in the Peace Corps in Venezuela opened his eyes to the “undiscovered jewel” of South America. During his two years assigned to the City Manager of Valencia, he worked to improve life in squatter settlements encircling the city. During his years in the Federal government, he carried out community improvements projects in Mexico and Ecuador. For each of the past ten years, he has spent a week visiting the people in the SVH program in Santa Barbara, Honduras. 

IN MEMORIAM

Collie Agle - Founder

After Charles (“Collie”) served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru, he became committed to an interconnected world. With a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Collie began connecting communities in Honduras and supporters in the U.S. with a St. Mark’s youth trip to Honduras in 1988. Using his fluent Spanish, he maintained phone communications with the leaders of Vecinos Honduras, the Honduran partner of SVH. His conservation practices on a family farm in rural West Virginia increased the habitat for an endangered species of warblers that breed on the farm and migrate to Honduras in the winter.  Collie also served on the Board of Directors of the Anacostia Watershed Society in Washington, DC.