Our Team

Our Staff

Staff

Joe Primo

Chief Executive Officer
Prior to joining Grateful Living, Joe spent 15 years as CEO of Good Grief, Inc., growing it from a start-up nonprofit into a multi-million dollar organization with four campuses in New Jersey and more than 250 school partnerships. Before that, he served as an interfaith hospice chaplain at Connecticut Hospice. In his work with dying patients and grieving children, Joe encountered the deep sorrow and always-available joy that permeate our search for meaning. Gratefulness for life, he believes, is foundational to discovering meaning and the only response that is big enough and appropriate for the plot twists, delights, surprises, and devastation we encounter along the way.

A student of our founder since his studies at Yale Divinity School, Joe is committed to advancing our global movement and making the transformational practice of living gratefully both accessible to all and integral to communities and places of belonging. Among his many responsibilities as CEO, Joe is a thought-leader on living gratefully and contemporizes Br. David’s teachings through his writing, speaking, and teaching. He is the author of “What Do We Tell the Children? Talking to Kids About Death and Dying.”

Joe says, “When your orientation to life is gratefulness, you are empowered to discover meaning like an archaeologist unearthing bones.” Fun fact: Joe is also a trained archaeologist and thinks often of his adventurous excavations in the jungle.

You can read his reflections on hope, belonging, joy, and living imperfectly here.

Staff

Sheryl Chard

Director of Education

Sheryl is a lifelong educator, passionate about designing innovative and beautiful spaces in which people are inspired to learn and grow. She has spent nearly three decades teaching and leading in schools and organizations, creating transformative learning experiences rooted in both scholarship and heart. In 2013, she founded the Sofia Center for Professional Development, whose professional offerings support and honor educators in their sacred work.

Sheryl received a BA in English from Trinity University and an MA in Women’s Studies from George Washington University. In 2004-05 she was a Klingenstein Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University.

When not engaged in this work she loves, Sheryl can be found connecting with beloved family and friends, traveling to new places whenever possible, creating ritual and ceremony, or camping by a river several miles down a mountain trail near her home in New Mexico. Throughout all, she embraces the lifelong learning and blessings offered by aspiring to live gratefully each day, by over and over saying grace.

Staff

Stephanie Patterson

Director of Communications

Prior to joining the Grateful Living team in 2022, Stephanie worked as a professional photographer, marketer, freelance writer, and editor. Her passion for creativity, connection, and service are the guiding principles that brought her to nonprofit work and to Grateful Living specifically.

As Grateful Living’s Director of Communications, Stephanie brings 10+ years of experience in marketing, writing, and editing to create meaningful content and communications for a global audience interested in living gratefully. She is responsible for marketing strategy, communications, social media management, maintaining the organization’s content library, and working to ensure the organization’s programs and content reach a wide global audience and continue growing the gratefulness movement.

Staff

Sue Pynchon

Development Associate
After 30+ years working in the healthcare software industry, Sue ‘retired’ and now happily finds herself part of this transformative Grateful Living community. A believer in serendipity and the grace of everyday connection, she lives in Western Massachusetts where she is close enough to nature to revel in its beauty every day, hear live music, practice outdoor yoga and knit with wool from local sheep farms. Her biggest joy is sharing life with her young grandsons, who continually teach her to live with ease, and to receive with grateful wonder all the universe offers us.

Our Board

Board

Sharon Benjamin

Treasurer

A “prac-ademic,” Sharon Benjamin consults with multi-lateral, government, NGO, and healthcare organizations as a Principal with Alchemy, a boutique management consultancy. She was the lead author of two books on using Positive Deviance to improve organizational performance, of which gratitude is a keystone. For the last seven years she has taught in the MS Organizational Dynamics program at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to that, for 12 years, she taught the final executive leadership course for E-MPA students at New York University. She holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior. She has served on the boards of two-dozen nonprofit organizations including Plexus Institute, BlueVoice.org, Ted Danson’s American Oceans Campaign, Earthworks and was one of four founders of EarthShare, a national environmental fund-raising federation that has raised more than $300 million since its inception.

Board

Ailsa Currier

Vice President

Ailsa, whom many people call Ace, grew up in the high desert of Santa Fe, NM, and later studied Humanities at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. After college she was faced with a choice: follow the status quo or pursue something more meaningful. After moving to New York and beginning to work in sales, she realized it was more important for her to respond to the call of her heart which was yearning for spiritual growth. Ailsa went to Europe and participated in a silent retreat and spent two more months studying yoga in Madrid. She now spends her time honing the skill of being a bilingual yoga teacher under the guidance of her teacher and mentor in Mexico. Ailsa is also a KonMari consultant and Feng Shui practitioner, helping people to bring more harmony into their homes and lives.

Board

Wendy Hanson

Board Member

As Co-Founder of BetterManager, Wendy is proud of her company’s mission to help leaders at all levels create a workplace where people can thrive. She firmly believes that when companies invest in their managers, they provide the tools to create a positive culture. Wendy draws from more than 20+ years of management, executive coaching, education experience, and commitment to continuous learning.

Wendy has a BS in Special Education and has developed programs for folks with disabilities for 20 years. She earned a master’s degree in Education from Antioch University of New England in Organization and Management. In 1999, she received her coaching certification (PCC) from the Coaches Training Institute (Co-Active). Wendy co-authored The Sassy Ladies’ Toolkit for Start-up Businesses and has an ongoing podcast, Building BetterManangers.

Board

Jennifer Long

President of the Board

Jennifer Long was appointed by Council, in February of 2022, to fill Tim Rood’s seat after he resigned in December of 2021. Council member Long began her volunteer work in Piedmont as a member of the Piedmont Racial Equity Campaign (PREC) steering committee. She then went on to become a board member and co-president of the Piedmont Anti-Racism Diversity Committee (PADC), an organization that has been a fixture in Piedmont for over 20 years. Long obtained her B.A. from William Smith College, and her law degree from Howard University School of Law.

Board

Stuart McFaul

Board Member

Stuart McFaul is president of Stuart McFaul Associates, a marketing strategy and management firm helping purpose-driven entrepreneurs. He is the creator the Living Brand™ Marketing System, an empathy-based approach that has been leveraged by over 100 companies and has been recognized by The Smithsonian Institution as a groundbreaking way to introduce companies, products and services to consumers.

He most recently founded and led Spiralgroup, an internationally-focused full service brand marketing agency. A seasoned business strategist, Stuart has guided B2B / B2C marketing efforts for over 200 companies all over the world, including Apple, Cisco, Getty Images, HP and Oracle to multiple startups to foreign governments. His efforts have earned clients billions of dollars and program ROI as high as 23,000%. He is a frequent lecturer at major universities, including Wharton, Stanford and USC Marshall School of Business.

Board

Chuck Roppel

Immediate Past President

Chuck Roppel served as a Catholic Priest in the early years of his career. From this role his professional life evolved into health promotion and disease prevention work within the framework of Community Mental Health Centers in Kentucky and California. He has been the Director of the San Francisco Mental Health Association, and for 13 years the Director and Founder of the California State Department of Mental Health’s Office of Prevention and Mental Health Promotion. He was a Master Certified Coach through the International Coaches Federation. From 2000 – 2015, he was a faculty member of the Coaches Training Institute, maintaining a private life coaching practice while training Co-Active coaches throughout the world.

Board

David Steindl-Rast, OSB

Co-Founder, Senior Advisor

David Steindl-Rast, OSB, studied art, anthropology, and psychology, at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (MA) and the University of Vienna (PhD). In 1953, he joined Mount Saviour Benedictine Monastery in New York State. In 1975 he received the Martin Buber Award for building bridges between religious traditions. His books include Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer; A Listening Heart; and Deeper Than Words. Currently, Br. David serves as senior advisor of Gratefulness.org.