Sarah Leathers grew up in Simsbury and graduated from Union College, Schenectady, NY with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Afterward she went on to work for Procter & Gamble as an engineer and then worked for two different construction companies as a project manager. She has worked in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors throughout her career.
Sarah is the Founder and Executive Director of Healing Meals Community Project, a nonprofit organization that provides organic meals for free to families going through a health crisis while empowering youth chef volunteers with leadership, job ready skills in addition to purpose and belonging.
Sarah met her husband Alan through their fellowship group at church when they were in high school. Her husband is a private school teacher and coach. Sarah and Alan have raised three children: Samantha,married; Hannah, married and Will, a sophomore in college. They also have a 1 year old granddaughter, Madison.
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Carrie Firestone grew up in a rural area in central New York with her younger sister, Jennifer and her service-minded parents. She studied English and anthropology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Inspired by her work with Chinese students at a summer program, she moved to Taiwan five days after graduating to teach English in a remote town. Carrie discovered she loved teaching English to speakers of other languages and decided to pursue her Master's degree in TESOL (Applied Linguistics) at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Katelyn Kaplan grew up in Avon, CT and graduated from the University of Connecticut with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences. Since then, she has never passed up an educational opportunity and has traveled extensively to attend conferences related to her field. Katelyn is a naturalist in that she educates people of all ages about the natural world around them. She explains that a man by the name of Baba Dioum described “quite wonderfully” what her occupation entails when he said “In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.”
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