Board of Directors
Our Board of Directors
We benefit from the generous service of our Board of Directors. We are committed to a Board that is representative of the diverse communities we serve, reflecting the socioeconomic, ethnic, geographic and disability diversity of New Hampshire.
To achieve this, one third (1/3) of our Board members must be people with disabilities or family members of people with disabilities, and one fourth (1/4) of our Board members must be attorneys.
Our Board of Directors meets every other month on the third Monday from 5:00 – 7:30 p.m. The Board usually meets in-person at our office in Concord but due to COVID-19, meetings will be held via Zoom until further notice.
2022 Meeting Dates
Meet Our Board of Directors
Leslie Alcorn
Leslie Alcorn is a semi-retired registered nurse, who works part-time at Concord Hospital. Throughout her life, Leslie has advocated for people with disabilities, recognizing the barriers to freedoms and access they face every day. Her life-long dedication to disability justice was sparked while she was working at the Laconia State School and faced with the harsh realities of institutionalized living and the need for community-based options. Throughout her career, Leslie has worked with people with disabilities and has worked at NH Medicaid, Granite State Independent Living, and in the worker’s compensation forum. Leslie enjoys gardening, the theater, and fitting in as much fun as she can in life.
Judith Bomster
Judith is an attorney specializing in disability, estate planning, public benefits and elder law. Her training and affiliation with special needs trust planners enables her to assist clients in planning for the future care of individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities by tailoring estate plans and public benefits eligibility to ensure long-term financial security for their loved ones. She received her BA from Rhode Island College and her J.D. from UNH School of Law. She lives and works in Manchester, NH.
Irene Bucken
Irene is a Family Worker at Head Start Nashua where she helps parents navigate the special education system and connect with community resources that address their own mental and physical disabilities. Irene’s personal experience with mental illness led her to connect with local organizations such as the Nashua chapters of NAMI (National Alliance of Mental Illness) and DBSA (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance). Irene is interested in how the intersection of race and socioeconomic status affects people with disabilities and is dedicated to addressing ableism in all its forms professionally and personally. Irene has her BA in Sociology and Government from Connecticut College and lives in Massachusetts.
Dellie Champagne, Secretary
Dellie is the Community Engagement Coordinator for the Children’s Behavioral Health Collaborative. Her passion for mental health awareness comes mostly from her lived experience. Her son lives with Schizoaffective Disorder and Dellie has advocated for his needs from the onset. Dellie received her BA in Sociology and her M.Ed. in Education from the University of New Hampshire. She is currently working on another Master’s Degree in Human Services. She lives in Concord.
Katie Epstein, Chair
As a person with a disability, Katie Epstein often draws on her personal experience when advocating for disability rights. Katie works as a Direct Support Professional and is a 2010 graduate of the IOD Leadership program. Katie has a special education degree from Granite State College and recently completed her term as the Vice-Chair of the NH Council on Developmental Disabilities. Katie lives in Epping.
Daniel Goldstein
Attorney Daniel Goldstein recently retired from a remarkable career with the Baltimore, Maryland law firm of Brown, Goldstein & Levy. For several decades, Dan’s disability law work concentrated on increasing the accessibility of digital content and devices, including ATMs, voting machines, accessible absentee ballots, websites, e-readers, kiosks, educational software and instructional technology. He worked with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) to reach agreements with some of the country’s most well-known companies and universities including Apple, Amazon, Target, Penn State, and Florida State University.
At the time of his retirement, settlement was nearly complete in a lawsuit for blind prisoners against the Maryland correctional system, ensuring that blind prisoners learn independent cane travel, need no longer depend on sighted prisoners to file grievances or other forms, and can fully participate in work and educational programs.
Dan is the recipient of the NFB’s Kenneth Jernigan Award for his contributions to the blindness community and the American Bar Association’s Paul Hearne Award for Disability Rights Advocacy (together with Marc Maurer, then President of the NFB).
Juliana Good
Juliana is the founder and consulting lead of Neighborhood Access. Jules is a late-Deaf entrepreneur with a passion for leveraging design, community, and talent to create more accessible neighborhoods. They are finishing their Master in Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Jules has worked on a wide variety of projects, including diversifying graduate schools with the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers, building a youth entrepreneurship curriculum with the UNH Sustainability Institute, running tech support for the Crip Camp documentary team’s summer discussion events, and training Black Lives Matter organizers on protest accessibility. Jules lives in Barrington NH.
Daniel Hebert
Daniel received his BS in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and has been a software engineer at IBM since 2006. In his spare time, Daniel enjoys developing accessible technology and the planning/execution of accessible world travel. He continues to work as an advocate for persons with disabilities in nonprofit and state-level settings.
Megan Henly
Megan is a social science researcher at the University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability (IOD) where she studies the health, employment, and community living characteristics of the population with disabilities. She also administers a public health program designed to reduce health disparities for those with mobility and/or intellectual and developmental disabilities in our state. Megan received her M.S. in survey methodology from the University of Maryland-College Park and her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of New Hampshire. She lives in Nottingham with her spouse and three children.
Ben King, Treasurer
Benjamin T. King is a partner in the Concord, New Hampshire, law firm Douglas, Leonard & Garvey, P.C. He focuses his practice on employee rights litigation, personal injury litigation, and workers’ compensation. Ben’s peers have rated him among the top 5% of attorneys in New England in representing employees in employee rights litigation, continuously since 2014. New Hampshire Magazine has ranked him among the best attorneys in the State in representing injured workers in workers’ compensation cases. Ben frequently lectures at continuing legal education seminars educating New Hampshire attorneys and human resource professionals on State and Federal employment laws.
Ben is the current President of the New Hampshire Chapter of the National Employment Lawyers Association, and a Past President of the New Hampshire Association for Justice, as well as a current member of its Board of Governors.
In his spare time, Ben enjoys writing freelance columns in the Concord Monitor on topics like restaurant kiosks, hotel resort fees, and what not to do in Concord in a snow emergency. Ben graduated from Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia School of Law. He resides in Concord, New Hampshire.
Melissa Mandrell, Past Chair
Melissa Mandrell is a social worker whose projects currently focus on supporting access to person-centered long-term care options for individuals with disabilities and/or who age into disabilities at the Institute on Disability, a program of the University of New Hampshire and New Hampshire’s UCED. Throughout her career as a social worker Melissa has been committed to the social work mission of “promoting the responsiveness of organizations, communities and other social institutions to individuals’ needs and social problems.” Serving on the DRC-NH Board is an opportunity to further that goal by assuring that people with disabilities do not experience discrimination. Melissa received her MSS and MLSP from Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College. She lives in Concord.
Anne Rice
Anne Rice is an attorney whose practice focuses on the integration and coordination of employment law with personal injury, Workers’ Compensation, Social Security, discrimination and disability law with an aim toward maximizing benefits, coverage, and outcome for those with serious injuries or disabling conditions. Anne’s passion for her work is strong and her roots in NH run deep. Anne grew up on the Seacoast of New Hampshire before heading off to the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School of Business for her undergraduate degrees. Thereafter she received her Juris doctorate from the University of Connecticut before returning to the lakes region, where she has lived and worked for over 20 years.
Kirk Simoneau
Known for always wearing red shoes and a seemingly carefree demeanor, Kirk came to the practice of law for very specific and serious reasons. In 2003, he was the sole eye-witness to a hit-and-run drunk driver killing his pedestrian father. Unhappy with how the legal system treated his family as just the “next case” on the docket, Kirk became a lawyer to help those harmed, as his family was harmed, with personal understanding and caring, leaving behind a budding career as a comedian and writer. Kirk tries to treat every client like a person not a “case.”
As the child of two Deaf parents and having a neurological disability himself, which is why Kirk is always wearing those red sneakers, to protect himself from further pain, Kirk is deeply committed to aiding the disabled and downtrodden, both professionally and personally.
An experienced trial attorney, Kirk is a graduate of the UNH School of Law’s Daniel Webster Scholar Program. In addition to his own legal practice, Kirk also teaches law at his alma mater.
Ellen Tavino
Ellen’s personal experience with mental illness, PTSD, and epilepsy guides and inspires her work as a Team Leader at a Peer Support Center. Ellen challenges us all to look beyond a person’s diagnosis and, as a certified WRAP facilitator and certified in Intentional Peer Support, she focuses on empowering those she works with to live lives filled with purpose and meaning. Ellen holds a degree in Behavior Sciences, with a focus on special education and lives in Berlin.