About Us

The Jericho Road Project's mission is to match the professional expertise of surburban volunteers with the needs of those community-based organizations and small businesses that can help individuals and families become economically self-sustaining. Currently, we are focusing only on organizations, small businesses and communities in nearby Lowell, Massachusetts.

The idea for Jericho Road came from a small, passionate community of successful venture capitalists, bankers, lawyers, entrepreneurs and ministers who sought to create an alternative, participatory and high-impact form of volunteerism.

Over the course of close to two years, from early 2000 to late 2002, the group met regularly and refined its vision of a business-minded, volunteer-driven, social-and-economic-justice-oriented organization. The planners' energy and enthusiasm was fueled by over 300 responses to a skills survey of Concord's First Parish church that allowed Jericho Road to immediately create a valuable database of potential volunteers, defined by skills and experience.

Inspired by this dramatic response, the group, now acting as Jericho's board of directors, raised enough money to hire the organization's first full-time executive director in January 2003.

Paralleling this development, the Jericho group focused its initial efforts on the city of Lowell. While it considered other cities, especially Boston and Maynard, Lowell offered immediate partnership opportunities with community-based, grassroots organizations whose goals paralleled Jericho Road's and allowed Jericho Road to quickly test the viability of its vision and process.

Volunteers

Now in its fourth year of operation, Jericho Road has recruited over 160 professionals to join Jericho's volunteer work force. They have participated in over 170 short- and longer-term projects with more than 65 Lowell nonprofit organizations, totalling over 6000 hours of volunteer time.

Board

Jericho Road's twelve Board members are largely drawn from our volunteer and nonprofit communities. Many of our board members have served as Jericho Road volunteers and have led nonprofits and businesses and bring their commitment and knowledge to their board work.

Staff

Dan Holin, Executive Director

Dan was hired in January 2003 and has served as a catalyst for the success of the Jericho Road Project to date. As Executive Director he works directly with the JRP Board in managing partner projects and mobilizing volunteer resources to successfully provide services to partner agencies. Dan came to JRP with 13 years of experience working as a coalition builder and project developer with communities, funders, government agencies and organizations both in the U.S. and overseas. He served as the Project Start Director with the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and worked as the Director of the Department of International Cultural Affairs in Israel's Ministry of Culture, Science and Sport.

Jodi DeLibertis, Program Director

Jodi joined Jericho Road in April 2007, arriving with fifteen years of professional experience in the nonprofit sector. As a principal with Greater Good Consulting, she helped small to mid-size nonprofits to attain sustainability while maximizing limited resources. She was Project and Grants Manager for the Center for Gender in Organizations (CGO) at Simmons College where she led the center’s visibility and public outreach campaign. Both at CGO and at her previous position as Publications and Events Coordinator at the Harvard Project on Schooling and Children, Jodi forged connections between university-based research centers and community organizations and practitioners. She has served as President on the board of a community nonprofit that provides out-of-school care for the children of working families and saw the organization through the process of incorporating as a nonprofit.

Leslie Koplow, Operations Manager

Leslie joined Jericho Road in July 2005, She worked for 14 years in various IT roles as a Unix systems administrator, systems integration consultant, program manager and Director of Information Systems until 2002, when her interests turned to nonprofit work. Prior to Jericho Road, Leslie worked at Harbinger Partners, a nonprofit specializing in strategic technology planning and volunteer matching for Boston area nonprofits, and was a Jericho Road volunteer before joining the staff. Leslie holds a B.A. degree from Vassar College and an M.A. degree from SUNY-Binghamton.