Work

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Sullivan

Kim Miner

Executive Vice President/General Counsel, Worcester Red Sox

With the current ownership group when they bought the team in 2015, I think the team was exclusively white men on the staff across the board. It has been what six or seven years since then? I think it has changed drastically. I actually think it’s changed a lot since we made the move to Worcester. We just have had better success finding a broader array of candidates. We have a lot of women, we have over time—and we are finally getting more racial diversity as well—diversity in other areas. It has been a priority. Brooke Cooper who your classmates talked to, is now the Senior Vice President and we now have two female VPs which is great. Since I came to the club, I was the only female VP until Brooke was made one. And I think it’s been good. You know there's always growing experiences and we have been trained well. I wanted to bring more women into the front office, it's a nice and fun environment with that. Not everyone is the same. Everyone has different backgrounds,everyone has different thoughts about baseball, how we should interact with the community and that makes it more interesting.

Kim Miner was born in 1989 in Boston, Massachusetts. She was raised in Concord, Massachusetts. Kim is the daughter of Kathy and Bob Miner of Pennsylvania and has one younger sister. After attending Tufts University for a bachelors in economics, she took a gap year to work a few different minimum wage jobs to discover more of who she is. Kim married Adam Aronson in June 2017 and they now live in Quincy, Massachusetts. They do not have any kids but adopted a dog and cat recently. Kim went to law school at Harvard Law School and became a lawyer.

Interviewer:

Kathleen Moran

Shea Ryan

Interview Date:

Sun, 03/13/2022

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Miner

Elizabeth Hamilton

Executive Director, Boys and Girls Club Worcester

I have to tell you, it's been an incredible honor, working at the Boys and Girls Club of Worcester, because I feel like this organization has done so much for so many years. We are 133 years old so way before I was ever involved, it was doing great work and I believe it's continuing to do great work. And what I like about Boys and Girls Clubs in general is they meet the needs of the community they serve. So, there's I think 4000, over 4000 Boys and Girls Clubs in the US. If you've been to one Boys and Girls Club, you've only been to one Boys and Girls Club. Every Boys and Girls Club is going be different. And I love that I feel like our clubs in Great Brook Valley, Palmer Village, and in the Main South area, truly represent our kids and our community. And I'm really proud of the incredibly talented and diverse team members that do so much incredible work with our kids and families. But I also want to acknowledge how great our kids are. Unlike regular childcare, our kids decide every day to walk here to get here. So, they're making really good choices and they're showing great leadership. And I'm proud of the work that they're doing. We're providing some resources and support but ultimately, it's up to the kids and it's always a real privilege to see them when they first start with us they’re age five and then graduate from high school and then go on to college and just see their transformation in their growth and everything that they've done for themselves. It's, it's amazing.

Elizabeth Hamilton was born in 1968 in Hackensack, New Jersey. When she was the age of six, she moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma with her parents, brother and sister until the age of 18. Elizabeth went to college at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, and then earned her master’s degree in social work at Boston University. Between her undergraduate and graduate study, she served two years of Jesuit Volunteer Corps, one in Great Falls, Montana, and then another in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is how she became familiar with Worcester. Elizabeth is married to Matthew and

Interviewer:

Olivia Heaney

Sydney Morse

Interview Date:

Wed, 02/23/2022

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Hamilton

Julieane Frost

Senior Marketing Manager, Worcester Art Museum

I have been very lucky that opportunities have presented themselves to me and I have taken them and that has kind of created my path. And it started when I was hired to be the Study Abroad Advisor and Assistant Director of International Programs at Clark University. And in part I was attracted to that job because I'm a first generation American, I had grandparents that lived in Germany, I had visited them. So I had some international experience. And I think I had an affinity for that experience of being new in a place. So, I was hired for that job, and I realized that what I liked the most about that was the communication part, the writing. So, I would write booklets for each of the different study abroad programs in each different country and the customs, what to expect, how to prepare yourself. And so then I left when I had my daughter. And then when she was a little bit older, I took a job at the Higgins Armory Museum. It started out as a staff writing position, and then it evolved into a public relations position. And so that is where I really learned that I love that, I love telling stories. And that's really what public relations is. It's telling stories, and trying to get those stories placed in various outlets so that there's a broad audience for that. That's really what it is.

In this interview conducted in partnership with the Worcester Women’s Oral History Project [WWOHP], we explore the many accomplishments of Julieane Frost. Born in Rutland, MA, in 1959, Julieane grew up enjoying the quiet comforts of a tight-knit neighborhood, including but not limited to the summertime activities offered at the town pool. She graduated from Wachusett High School and furthered her education at University of Massachusetts Amherst with a major in psychology before accepting a job at Brown University.

Interviewer:

Kaleigh Brennan

Rosemary McLaughlin

Interview Date:

Thu, 03/10/2022

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Frost

Brooke Cooper

Senior Vice President/Assistant General Manager, Worcester Red Sox

So now I'm the Senior Vice President and Assistant General Manager for the Worcester Red Sox and there's a lot that goes into it. People ask what day to day is like, and I always say every day is different. I directly oversee productions and ballpark entertainment and that includes what you see on the video board, as well as social media and the television broadcast. I oversee merchandise, so the team store and all of our branding, community relations. And then marketing has really been kind of my specialty and that includes advertising, but also outreach and the different promotions that we do. I have a hand in some of our HR [human resources] efforts, including recruiting and hiring and training. So pretty broad, but I think that's one of the really beautiful things about minor league baseball is that you're not put into a box and you get to explore a lot of different areas. We all wear many different hats, and it's been a really great opportunity to grow professionally.

Brooke Cooper was born in Woonsocket, RI in 1992 and attended Woonsocket public schools. She attended Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire pursuing a Bachelor's of Science degree in Sport and Recreation Management. She then attended Providence College and obtained her MBA. Upon completing her MBA, she interned for the Pawtucket Red Sox, who then hired Brooke when she graduated. She began her career within the Red Sox organization, and is now the Senior Vice President/Assistant General Manager for the Worcester Red Sox [Woo Sox], a Triple-A Affiliate of the Boston Red Sox.

Interviewer:

Ana Escudero

Sophia Martin

Timothy Forde

Interview Date:

Wed, 03/09/2022

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Cooper

Tracy Baldelli

Major Gifts Officer, WPI

At the beginning [of the Covid 19 pandemic], because the weather was so nice, I really liked it because I used that to get outside and to move. We all had so much time on our hands that it was like, what do you do with all this time? And then of course, we all went through our slump. Overeating, doing your thing watching Netflix all the time, getting takeout. So, I would say it became a rough time. But again, I think from a professional perspective, it helped me realize what I want. I could not be a remote employee, I needed to work with a team, I needed a boss that really didn't have an ego, that was there for their employees.

Tracy Baldelli was born in Boston, MA in 1993 and grew up with her family in Southborough, a neighboring town to Worcester. She then furthered her education at Assumption College now Assumption University. After Tracy graduated, she became an active member of the Worcester community. She's an active board member at the Boys and Girls Club and joined the Emerald Club. Tracy was first employed at United Way and then at Worcester Polytechnic Institute [WPI] and Providence College.

Interviewer:

Grace Rinaldi

Shadda Cliche

Interview Date:

Wed, 03/23/2022

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Baldelli

Germaine Lambergs

Registered Nurse; Lactation Specialists; Member of Worcester Institute for Senior Education

So, a little mini history on breastfeeding. Well because it used to be the norm, way back like when your grandmother might have breastfed, or her mother may have breastfed, but then mothers were taught that formula was just as good as breast milk. And why would you want to look like a cow to have a baby--I’m just giving you a shortened version--to have a baby sucking on you when you can go out and be yourself and have someone bottle feed the baby. It also came around during the wars when mothers had to leave the children with—they didn’t really have nannies back then, but you know the nanas, and they went to work in the factories. Who’s going to feed their babies? So, Enfamil, Nestle, all of those, the pediatricians started to fuel that this is just as good. They were never trained. One of my positions at MGH [Mass General Hospital] was teaching residents how to breastfeed because it wasn’t taught in nursing or medical school. It is now, they have a two-second course, but the younger physicians now are very aware of the importance and value of a mother’s milk. To me it is a miracle fluid. I used to tell mums, “You look at that formula and it’s the same, the same, the same. It comes from a cow. The animals feed their babies and a mother feeds her baby cow’s milk? She should be feeding her milk that’s natural. And they would ask mothers, “Do you want to breastfeed or do you want to bottle feed?” And the pediatricians would say, “Don’t breastfeed, it takes too much time. Oh my God, just bottle feed.” So, it took me some time, to be honest with you, it took me quite a bit of time to re-educate in a gentle way because you don’t want to embarrass anyone if that’s their belief that breast milk and formula are the same. To understand the value of a mother’s milk. My youngest granddaughter is being breastfed and I just love it. Oh, she's just growing and when you understand what it does to a newborn baby, right when it's born for God sakes, it protects the kid’s gut. And it enables that baby to be bonded with the mother because having the baby in the nursery is what we used to do. They took the baby right away put it in the nursery and the mother couldn’t see the baby. Now when the baby is born, it comes out of the vagina and they put it right on the mother’s chest, naked, which is where it should be. And the mother’s breath initiates the baby to breath, the mother’s body, the antibodies she produces in that breast milk specifically for that gestational age for the baby, because it changes.

Germaine Miller Lambergs is a Canadian woman born in 1945. Germaine moved to the United States at a young age where she attended school in the Boston area now known as Newbury Street. It was here Germaine met her husband, with whom she has been with since she was a teenager. Together, they now share seven grandchildren and three children, all who live in the Northeast. Germaine attended nursing school and worked in the nursing profession for many years.

Interviewer:

Krysta Cabral

Olivia Solitro

Interview Date:

Wed, 10/09/2019

Interview Focus:

Health

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Lambergs

Fran Lubin

Director of Volunteers, CASA; School Counselor, Worcester Public Schools; Member, Worcester Institute for Senior Education

So my first job after college, there was a new program that started here that dealt with courts and it was called Court Appointed Special Advocates [CASA] and we were guardians, they call them guardians by law actually, for children in the foster care system who had been abused. And they really are neglected and they hadn’t really had anybody to speak for them. I was the Director of Volunteers, all were volunteer except for the two paid people, me and the director and we trained them to be advocates, they had to undergo extensive training and then interviews with the kids and everybody involved in the case, write a report, go to court, and it’s still in existence. It’s a national program, and we started the one in Worcester in 1980 actually, and I was there nine years. That was my first experience, and I did enjoy it, I loved the people. They gave themselves, in a very stressful situation with kids and the courts, very frustrating, but I did love it.

Frances Joan Lubin was born in 1938 in Portland, Maine, where she attended both primary and high school. She then went on to Simmons College to pursue her undergraduate degree in psychology. Fran was married in 1959. She then moved to Worcester, where she would eventually pursue a master’s degree in school counseling at Assumption College and become a social worker.

Interviewer:

Jillian Geyster

Katherine Sullivan

Interview Date:

Wed, 10/16/2019

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Lubin

Gabriele Goszcz

Optometrist; Psychiatric Social Worker

Don’t give up who you are to try to please somebody else.

Born in 1947 in Germany, Gabriele Goszcz immigrated to Plainville, Connecticut, with her family when she was six years old and moved to the Worcester area as a grown woman after marriage. She earned her bachelor’s degree and Master’s in Social Work from Smith College, which prepared her for a career as a psychiatric social worker and later, an optometrist. Gabriele expresses her love of helping people as an optometrist. She is on the Board of Trustees of the Worcester Art Museum, and volunteers at Art Reach.

Interviewer:

Isabella Bolognese

Paula Gomez

Interview Date:

Thu, 10/03/2019

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Goszcz

Martha Grace

Chief Justice of the Juvenile Court of the State of Massachusetts; Member of Worcester Institute for Senior Education

I mean, the best thing about becoming a judge, especially a juvenile judge, was I always had, and I still have, a sense of having made a contribution to society and making a difference in people's lives. That was the most—I mean it was impossibly hard. The stories that I heard about children being abused, being sexually abused, being physically abused, seeing kids in front of you having done horrendous things and looking into them and realizing they have no shot in life. They didn’t understand right from wrong. Yeah, it was, it was a very powerful job. It was hard.

Martha Grace was born in 1940 and raised in Providence, RI attending primary, secondary, and eventually collegiate level schooling in Providence as well. Soon after graduation, she decided to move to Worcester, MA with her husband because of his profession at the time. Shortly after the move, she had two children and was looking forward to continuing her education. After having her first child, and being turned down once already because of their fear of her getting pregnant, she attended Clark University and studied history.

Interviewer:

Camille Latoni

Olivia Gaglioti

Interview Date:

Fri, 09/27/2019

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