Location: Brighton Town Hall Gymnasium

NEK Chamber Coffee & Connections by Three Branches & Jasper Hill Farm

Location: Brighton Town Hall Gymnasium

Essex County: People, Places & Possibilities Panel

• Moderated by Cynthia Stuart - Essex County Resident & Stuart Consulting

Northeast Kingdom Profile & Building Rural Data

• Michael Moser - The Center for Rural Studies at UVM & Vermont's Census State Data Center

• Serena Buono - UVM Extension, Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships

Reimagining Rural Healthcare: How Direct Primary Care Drives Local Economic Resilience

Location: TBD

• Dr. Umair Malik & Jen Olsen, FNP - Blue Spruce Health

Traditional fee-for-service healthcare often strains rural municipal budgets and small business bottom lines. This session demonstrates how direct-membership health models remove insurance friction, lower health overhead for local employers, and keep care accessible in rural towns across Caledonia, Essex, and Orleans counties.

Resilience on Main Street: Helping Businesses & Organizations Prepare for Disruption

Location: TBD

• Molly Rand - Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility

• Peter Plumeau - Reframe Lab

Small businesses and organizations, the backbone of our downtowns, face growing climate-driven risks from extreme weather and infrastructure disruptions, but frequently lack preparedness tools. This session presents ClimateReadyVT, a resilience program developed in response to Vermont’s catastrophic 2023 floods. Drawing on the program’s work to date with over 70 firms and organizations, the session will guide participants through a simple framework to help strengthen resilience in their communities.

Access to Land and Homes for Community Care Panel

Location: TBD

• Grace Gershuny - Cooperation Vermont Community Land Trust

• Michelle Eddleman McCormick - Cooperation Vermont

• Linda Ramsdell - Headwaters Community Trust

• Barbara Delzio - Glover Community Trust

• Connor Timmons - HomeShare VT

This session will introduce the concept of the community land and home trusts and how it can help address intersecting problems and needs in our NEK communities, enhance democratic self-governance skills, and be adapted to the eco-social context of the particular community. Panelists representing several community land trusts and Home Share programs operating in the NEK will discuss the current status of our projects that aim to support community resilience and mutual aid networks by providing affordable access to land and housing for prospective farmers and homesteaders, increasing small scale production of food, medicines, and value-added products for local consumption, developing land-based rural enterprises, helping elder homesteaders age in place on their land while offering guidance to a younger generation of land stewards.

Mapping the NEK's Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Location: TBD

• Annie McLean - Northeastern Vermont Development Association

• Evan Carlson - Northeast Design Lab

The NEK has a wealth of organizations, resources, and entrepreneurial talent, but how well are we connected, and where are the gaps? Do North is mapping the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem to better understand the resources available to entrepreneurs, identify gaps and overlaps, and strengthen coordination among the organizations working to support business growth. This session will share what we’re learning through stakeholder interviews and resource mapping, as well as our work to identify emerging market opportunities in sectors such as forestry, manufacturing, agriculture, and aerospace. The session will also include an interactive portion where attendees will help us do some of this mapping work in real time by sharing resources, identifying connections and gaps, and adding their perspective to the emerging regional picture. The goal is to move from a collection of individual resources to a more connected, actionable regional strategy for supporting entrepreneurs and growing the NEK economy.

Vermont Education Transformation Through a Community Schools Framework and Community Partners

Location: TBD

• John Castle - Vermont Rural Education Collaborative

• Jessica DeCarolis - Catamount Community Schools Cooperative & Education Consultant

The Vermont Rural Education Collaborative is advancing Community Schools initiatives across its eight SU/SDs, with six member districts among the eleven statewide recipients of Community Schools grants. This workshop will introduce the five pillars of Community Schools and highlight examples of successful community partnerships, demonstrating how collaboration among schools, families, and community organizations can strengthen student support and help school communities thrive. We discuss how the Community Schools framework offers a local, systemic approach in the context of the broader "School Transformation" initiatives around redistricting called for in Act 170.

Location: Brighton American Legion

Provided by local chef Ali Vallieres

Location: Brighton American Legion

Priorities for Improving Online Health Care Access in the NEK: Delivering Care & Food to the NEK’s Vulnerable Populations 

Location: TBD

• Anaka Aiyar - Community Development and Applied Economics UVM

• Claire Whitehouse - Center for Rural Studies UVM

• Pindar Yawulda Mbaya - Food Systems UVM

• Christa Shute - NEK Broadband

Internet-based technologies such as tele-health services, and online education and service delivery, bring with them the promise to improve health and productivity of individuals and their communities. By reducing the costs of accessing health related services, reducing barriers that prevent access to physical spaces (such as time, or the need for reliable motor services), increasing the flow of timely and relevant information, and reducing transaction costs for delivering health related services, online tools have the power to increase the resilience of rural, remote, or poor and excluded, communities across Vermont by bringing new opportunities for improved health, growth, and development. In this session, researchers from UVM will present data collected in early 2026 on risks and opportunities for the NEK for the utilization of telehealth, food service delivery for the NEK. The goal is to facilitate discussions from policy makers, community leaders, and other service providers, on what is driving use of online services, what are some challenges that communities face with regards to health care access, and what needs to be done to support local community members improve health and food security in the NEK. Participants will work together to bring experiences, concerns, and ideas, to the team so that we can better inform the NEK Together collaborative on strategic areas for improvements on the topics of health care, human services, and community and economic development over the next decade.

Housing Hubbub Roundtable

• Pollaidh Major - Vermont Housing & Conservation Board

Location: TBD

The Housing Hubbub is an ongoing regional housing convening, a gathering open to anyone working on or impacted by housing in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, including municipalities, nonprofits, developers, service providers, funders, employers, and community members. The purpose of the Housing Hubbub is to create a consistent, welcoming space for connection, information sharing, and collaboration across the region. By building relationships and improving communication, the Hubbub will help spark ideas, identify efficiencies, and possibly even catalyze collective action to address the NEK’s most pressing housing challenges.

The NEK’s Outdoor Recreation Economy: Looking back, Moving Forward

• Jackie Dagger - Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative

• Luke O’Brien - Vermont Dept. Forests, Parks & Recreation

Location: TBD

The Northeast Kingdom’s outdoor recreation economy has undergone tremendous growth over the past 25 years. From the development of flagship trail systems like the Northern Forest Canoe Trail and Kingdom Trails to the growing network of trails and recreation opportunities across Northern Essex County, communities throughout the region have increasingly embraced outdoor recreation as an important part of the local economy and quality of life. What can we learn from the past—and how can we use data, partnerships, and local knowledge to shape what comes next? This interactive session will explore the evolution of outdoor recreation in the NEK and opportunities on the horizon, while introducing participants to the Vermont Community Outdoor Recreation Economy (CORE) Toolkit and its CORE Data Dashboard. Participants will explore county-level outdoor recreation economic data, consider what it reveals about their communities, and identify opportunities to strengthen partnerships among municipalities, nonprofits, businesses, agencies, and volunteer groups.

Building the NEK Workforce: Data, Job Quality, and Community Solutions

• Katy Morley - Vermont Dept. of Labor

• Loralee Tester - NEK Chamber of Commerce

Location: TBD

The session will provide an overview of the Northeast Kingdom Workforce Expansion Program and the impactful work with regional manufacturing and healthcare employers to date. We will share data and feedback from our recent job seeker survey alongside the regional workforce challenges identified by employers. We will discuss Social Determinants of Work and Job Quality Drivers and how we are working to shift perspectives and develop solutions that work for employers, jobseekers, and the community. Finally, we will highlight our recent networking event which brought together key community partners and regional employers. Attendees will learn about the actionable solutions that emerged from this meeting designed to help employers become aware of the resources and support that are already existing in our community.

Stitching Together Support for Working Lands and Conservation

• Clara Fernandez Odell - Essex, Orleans & Caledonia Natural Resources Conservation Districts

Location: TBD

This session will explain the history, role, and partnerships of Natural Resource Conservation Districts in Vermont. Staff from all three NEK counties will share farmer- and partner-led projects currently ongoing in each county, our collective community engagement strategies, and work with participants to expand our vision for locally-led conservation on the NEK's working landscape.

See you at NEK Day at the Statehouse January 28, 2027!