Dear Yestermorrow Community,

If you've spent any time on our campus, you know the first principle of design/build: you build for the people who come after you. A timber frame raised this summer is meant to stand long after the crew that cut its joinery has packed up and gone home. Good building is an act of faith in the future.

You've heard from Britton. If you missed his reflections, you can find it here. After seven years as Yestermorrow's Executive Director, he's beginning his transition out of the role this summer.

We wanted to follow his note with one of our own — because the school he helped steward is being handed, deliberately and in good order, to the three of us.

We are Aron Michalski, Chrissy Bellmyer, and Norm Staunton, and we now share the leadership of Yestermorrow as its Senior Leadership Team.

Aron Michalski, our Finance Director, keeps his eye on the school's finances and ensures everyone on the team has the resources they need. He is a former carpenter and aspiring woodworker (thanks to Yestermorrow’s woodworking courses) and has been supporting education nonprofits with their financial systems for 15+ years.

Chrissy Bellmyer, our Operations Director and one of our longest-tenured colleagues, knows this place and its programs inside and out. Throughout her time at Yestermorrow and moving into the future Chrissy is dedicated to building a welcoming culture, quality teams, and kick-ass programs. Developing programming and cultivating a community that people want to be part of is how we deliver quality and transformative education year after year.

Norm Staunton, our Development Director, leads fundraising, partnerships, and institutional advancement.  Norm is an alum of Yestermorrow and a longtime nonprofit leader and experiential educator.  He deeply believes in nontraditional educational pathways, being a person who “never let school get in the way of his education”, and that Yestermorrow’s future lies in applying its unique skills and ethos to being a part of sustainable solutions to workforce training and truly affordable and livable housing.

Between us we cover the money, the people, the programs, the students, and the partnerships. The bigger things — vision, culture, and the mission that's driven this place for more than four decades — we hold together and with you all.

Britton leaves us with the first phase of our strategic plan nearly buttoned-up and our direction clear. Our job is not to reinvent Yestermorrow but to run it well: to keep the workshops full, the budget honest, our focus tight on the work that matters most - our programs and our people.  The Board, meanwhile, is planning carefully for the school's longer-term leadership — and we'll help shape it and our places in it.

We'll be honest with you as we go. A transition like this asks a lot of an organization our size, and we'd rather tell you the truth than sell you a story. What we can promise is steadiness, and a deep care for this place and everything and everyone it teaches.

Come walk the campus this summer. Take a class, or simply stop in and see what's taking shape in the shop. Tell us what this place has meant to you, and what you hope it becomes. We welcome it — truly — and we're listening.

Yestermorrow was never one person's school, and it was never simply built. It was designed and built — and it continues in that same iterative process, many hands shaping and reshaping it for the builders, designers, and stewards of a more sustainable world who come next. Yestermorrow is built to last. We are the next hands on the work, and there is work to be done. We hope you'll stay close as we do it.

With gratitude,

Aron Michalski, Finance Director 
Chrissy Bellmyer, Operations Director 
Norm Staunton, Development Director
Senior Leadership Team, Yestermorrow Design/Build School