Cooperation Vermont
Board of Directors

Earl Hatley (he/him) is a co-founder of LEAD Agency, Inc., a grassroots organization in northeastern Oklahoma, and serves as the Board President. LEAD Agency is predominantly of Native American membership. Hatley served as the Grand Riverkeeper, patrolling the Grand River and feeder streams of the upper Grand River watershed. Earl currently serves as board member for Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition, Building a Local Economy (BALE) and Rural Vermont. He is currently a member of the VT Environmental Justice Advisory Committee and President of the board for Ottauquechee Water Protectors Association in Quechee, VT.

Hatley also serves on the Steering Committee for the Western Mining Action Network, including their Indigenous Caucus. Hatley also serves on the Waterkeeper Council for the Waterkeeper Alliance (the organization’s governing body) which governs over 350 Waterkeeper programs in 47 countries.

Mr. Hatley is an enrolled citizen of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi with Cherokee/Shawnee Heritage and a disabled veteran.

Edget Betru (she/her) has worked as a community organizer and attorney committed to the advancement of human and civil rights since receiving her Bachelor of Arts from Spelman College and later her Juris Doctorate from New York University School of Law. She serves on the Board of Directors for Community Movement Builders and is the Board of Directors Co-Chair of the Organization for Human Rights and Democracy.

Jason Hirsch (he/him) is a lecturer in Anthropology at Saint Michael’s College, where he focuses on ecological and economic anthropology, critical theory, and political imagination. He has worked in public health policy at the Ministry of Health in Ontario, co-founded an urban agriculture project, called The Neighbourhood Farm, and traveled extensively working and learning in local and bioregional economic projects. He has worked in popular and experiential education in various capacities over many years. He currently serves as President of the Board at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism and is an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace of Vermont and New Hampshire. Currently, he is working to complete a book about Western herbal medicine and its role in transforming political imagination, entitled Wildflower Counterpower: The Ecological Politics of Western Herbal Medicine.

Kali Akuno (he/him) is the co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, and served as the Director of Special Projects in the administration of Mayor Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus was supporting cooperative development, introducing eco-friendly and carbon reduction operations, and promoting human rights and international relations for the city. Kali also served as the Co-Director of the US Human Rights Network and the Executive Director of the Peoples’ Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) after Hurricane Katrina.

Michelle (she/her) is a mother of two and has been active in climate, social, and racial justice movements for the last twenty years. She was active in long-term mutual aid work in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where she became committed to transformative change. She currently serves as the General Manager of the worker-owned Marshfield Village Store in rural Vermont, a member of the Board of Directors of Cooperation Vermont and the Cooperation Vermont Land Community Land Trust, a coordinator of Regeneration Corp, a Trustee of the Jaquith Library, and a member of the Planning Commission for Marshfield, VT. In addition to a decade being an executive in global education travel, previous experience includes working with the East Bay Community Law Center, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, Women’s Intercultural Network, and the Children’s Health Fund at Tulane School of Medicine. When she has a spare moment she enjoys fly fishing, kayaking and traveling.

I’m a lifelong building trades worker and anti-racist activist, originally from Lyndonville and have been homesteading in Cabot for the past 15 years. I work with my partners in Building Fearless Futures to mitigate racial harm and increase racial literacy in our communities. We believe white supremacy culture is harmful to people of all racial identities and that everyone can benefit from developing a positive racial identity. We work joyfully for a future where community members can successfully collaborate across difference to solve our shared problems, because we’ve come to view each other with love and inquisitiveness, rather than fear and anxiety.