Staff

Lavonne (Von) Rathbun is the Assistant Projects Director for the Facilities and Campus Services Career Ladder. Von is excited to be a part of the Partnership for Worker education team and its mission. Von holds a B.A. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as an M.Ed in Curriculum & Teaching from Fitchburg State University.  Prior to joining the Partnership for Worker Education, Von spent time as a business analyst and project manager with prior experience as a trainer and a teacher. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her family and coaching her children’s sports teams.

Midori Tabery has over two decades of experience teaching ESL in a variety of settings. Before joining the Partnership for Worker Education in August 2022, she taught art, coordinated the international student program, and served as the ESOL Department Head at Eaglebrook School. She has a BFA in Studio Arts and Painting from UMass Amherst, an art teacher certification from the Mass College of Art, and a master's degree in Education and Teaching from Elms College. She also received a Fulbright Hayes Teacher Award to study in Japan. Midori is active in the community as a volunteer at the Center for New Americans, the Deerfield Public Library, and the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

Donna Vanasse has over 26 years of experience working at UMass Amherst. She is very fond of Excel spreadsheets and working with the financial systems used on campus. She has been an officer of the University Staff Association since 2016 and currently serves as treasurer for the union. Donna has participated in several Building Bridges classes and has performed original music at Worker Artist Showcases. She plays guitar and prefers group singing although she is probably willing to sing a solo at any moment with the most subtle invitation. She is a founding member of the UMass Unions United Labor Chorus. Donna and her husband of 43 years live in Belchertown with their two rescued Labrador Retrievers, Lovey Dove and Harmony.

Larissa is the Associate Director of the Culinary Career Ladder (CCL). She has over 20+ years of experience in developing and managing projects in education, including capacity building for multicultural, multilingual stakeholders at local, national, and regional levels.

She is also the PhD Candidate in International Education at the UMASS Amherst (GoogleScholar). Her living and professional experience comes from Kazakhstan and Central Asia. She is fluent in Russian and English languages.

In her role at CCL, Larissa supports program strategic planning, manages data reporting, develops, implements and reports on the program training.

#InternationalEducation #AdultEducation #TrainingDesign #TrainTheTrainer #Multicultural #ApricotSolutions #CentralAsia #CareerLadder

Joseph Connolly co-founded the program in 1987 and served as its director until 2023. Joe is now serving as a Senior Technical Advisor to provide ongoing support for grants and contracts as well as to support the leadership transition. He has a doctorate in worker education and comparative teaching methods, a Master's in labor studies, and a Master's in educational counseling. He has a strong interest in participatory teaching, and issues of voice, visibility, and social justice. He also worked for AFSCME 1776 from 1981 until retiring in 2016.

Leslie Fraser is the Coordinator of Communications and Campus Career Initiatives for The Partnership for Worker Education. She teaches writing, communications, leadership, workplace wellness, and career growth classes, offers career and education advising to UMass staff members in the AFSCME, USA/MTA, and PSU labor unions, and coordinates publicity for The Partnership for Worker Education programs. Leslie also teaches job skills, communications, leadership, and teamwork classes for Community Works. She worked as a writer, editor, nonprofit manager, and educator for more than 20 years before joining The Partnership for Worker Education in 1997. Her undergraduate degree is in women’s studies and human services education, and her graduate studies and degrees include labor education, counseling, and chaplaincy.

Gretchen Hohmeyer is a graduate research assistant with PWE since Spring 2022. She is a Ph.D. candidate from the College of Education's Language, Literacy, and Culture program. She also has a Master's of Library Science and a Master of Arts in Children's Literature, which she previously put to work in her job as a librarian at public libraries in Western Massachusetts. Her current academic work combines children's literature, history and history education, and social justice work.

Melissa Kane is an avid lover of travel and communicating with people from around the world. Melissa thrives in bringing people of various cultures together to learn and share their commonalities and individuality. After years of running a manufacturing business while also teaching group and individual fitness classes on the side, she finally completed the SIT Graduate Institute Intensive TESOL Certification program. Now Melissa is realizing her dream as she teaches workplace English in the classroom and tutors students from various countries on an individual basis. With years of studying French language, music, and culture, she lived in Paris for a semester abroad, and now travels regularly to Senegal, West Africa, to be with her family and friends and to study African dance and the native Wolof language. She discovers through her experiences that the beauty of our human connection is deeply rooted in the power of communication.

Michele Kenney is the project director of the Southern Hilltowns Adult Education Center.  She has a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an M.Ed. in Secondary Special Education from Westfield State University, with teaching certifications in 5-12 Special Needs, High School Art and Mathematics, specializing in remediation and teaching of students with language-based learning disabilities. Michele began as a SHAEC teacher in 2010, teaching GED and sustainability classes. In February 2012, Michele became the project director, expanding the focus of the program to include classes to support small business owners and economic development. In addition to her 30 years of teaching experience, Ms. Kenney is the owner of a small business, Custom Thermal Shades, manufacturing and sales of custom made Insulated Window Treatments.

Nyari is the Senior Projects Director for the Facilities and Campus Services Career Ladder and Building Bridges. She completed her Ph.D. from the UMass College of Education, International Education program, and brings a wealth of experience in participatory adult education, and action research along with project management experience.

Philip is a first-generation Asian American with an M.S. in Business Analytics whose professional journey began as a work-study student at UMass, supporting ESOL employment. This experience led him to his current role as a Case Manager, where he focuses on recruitment and retention for new employees in dining services. He's am deeply passionate about health, wellness, and advocating for equitable employment opportunities for everyone.

#businessanalytics #training #humanresources #AAPI #GoUMass

Martina Ochiel is a lead instructional design specialist and trainer with the Culinary Career Ladder (CCL) Project. She is a multidisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on digital integration in education, teacher education, adult education and curriculum design. Her work also critically engages with decoloniality of knowledge and recentering the epistemologies of the global south. She has more than 10 years of experience designing and successfully implementing literacy and skills-based training for culturally heterogeneous and linguistically diverse groups of refugees and out of school youths with varying levels of literacy in East Africa.  She successfully designed the Culinary English online training that has been successfully implemented and is being rolled out in all trainings within CCL.

Danielle Pappo is a graduate project assistant for Building Bridges and campus classes. She is a current PhD candidate in Composition and Rhetoric, focused in community literacy studies. Danielle is a Writing Fellow for the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department, where she provides full-time writing support to both instructors and students in the major. Danielle is also a 2021-22 Herstory / CCW Fellow, in which she works alongside a cohort of scholars and activists to practice and develop empathy-based writing pedagogy. Danielle is also a runner, a writer of poetry and creative non-fiction, and a home-baker.

Kaushik Suryanarayanan is the Data Management and Online Educational Designer in the Culinary Career Ladder Program. They have been part of the program since October 2022. They completed their undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Psychology in June 2020 at the Illinois Institute of Technology and is currently a graduate student in Data Analytics and Computational Social Science at UMASS Amherst.