Dear Yestermorrow community,

It is bittersweet to say that, starting in July, my role at Yestermorrow is changing. I am stepping away from the Executive Director role to focus on specific strategic projects and to return to the teaching and practicing of design that I love.  In the short term, three members of our leadership team will take over in a shared structure. You will hear more from them in our next newsletter. For now, I have taken a little time to reflect on my past eight years in leadership at Yestermorrow and the sixteen years since I came here as a student.

Like many in the architecture profession during the 2008 recession, I was laid off and searching for something more. Yestermorrow offered a path I didn't know existed: hands-on learning in carpentry, green roofs, and solar installation; explorations of permaculture and ecology; and a way to reconnect design and the health of the planet with making. My time as a student at Yestermorrow was inspiring, humbling, immensely practical, and transformative. More than any other move I made after graduate school, Yestermorrow changed the trajectory of my career.

So when an opportunity arose to teach the Semester Program in 2018, I jumped for it. I was fortunate to work alongside remarkable co-instructors, talented students, and wonderful clients. Those experiences shaped not only my approach to teaching but ultimately my approach to leading this small but mighty school.

When Charlotte Potter asked me to take over leadership of Yestermorrow at the end of 2019, I was honored—and quite naïve. At the time, we were framing the Bunkhouse, the first project built for the campus master plan. A week after our spring interns arrived in 2020, the pandemic shut things down. It was a baptism by fire.

During those months, I learned more about communication, leadership, teamwork, and human nature than I ever expected. In the years since, we have welcomed many wonderful new staff and said goodbye to old friends. We have designed, built, salvaged, mocked-up, deconstructed, and demolished. We secured critical funding, expanded our capacity, and found new ways to deliver programs under extraordinary circumstances. We experimented and piloted new programs, and learned substantially along the way.

Most importantly, we began a strategic planning process that helped define Yestermorrow's future. Through that work, we discovered that our greatest opportunity lies at the intersection of education, housing, and stewardship. The vision is not simply to teach people how to build—it is to build in order to teach. To create housing that is beautiful, durable, and deeply rooted in place while preparing the next generation of craftspeople, designers, and problem-solvers. Every project becomes both a home and a lesson, extending Yestermorrow's impact far beyond our campus and into communities across Vermont and beyond. We will start with a model housing village on our campus to help house our community, and expand from there. 

"Sustainable design/build education" is a mouthful, but every word matters, and the definition of the words has helped to guide my time here. Sustainability means fostering our model of hands-on learning, stewarding the planet through better buildings, and creating places that endure because they are well built, useful, and delightful. As Vitruvius taught, good buildings balance firmness, commodity, and delight.

Over the last eight years, we've laid a strong foundation. The mentors, colleagues, students, and friends I've met along the way have made this journey unforgettable. I wouldn't trade these experiences for anything. I am immensely grateful to those critical members of the team who gave so much to me and to us. And I am inspired and have the utmost confidence in those who have joined more recently to help Yestermorrow into its next chapter.

As always, I remain deeply optimistic about Yestermorrow's future. There is still a world of people eager to learn the value of design and craftsmanship, and there is still a need for more beauty, ecology, and wonder in the places we build.

As one longtime friend put it: "Just make the classes kick ass."

For the last eight years, I've done my best to make that happen. I hope I've helped move us a little closer. And I eagerly await the new team's progress toward that goal.

With much gratitude,

Britton