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Our team
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Sarah Suscinski
Executive Director
 Born and raised in the Akron, Ohio area, Sarah received
her Bacholor’s degree with honors from Carnegie
Mellon University in 2000. Upon graduation, Sarah won
a fellowship from Carnegie Mellon to support living and
working Vietnam to do research on a historical memoir
about her father’s experience during the War. She
traveled to Vietnam with a team of American Vietnam veterans
through the Vietnam Veteran’s Restoration Project
(VVRP). The VVRP is dedicated to helping veterans return
to Vietnam to do community service as part of the healing
process. As a member of two VVRP teams, Sarah helped
to build a kindergarden and a residence hall for orphans
in Quang Tri province. After returning to the United
States, she served as a board member for the VVRP and
acted as the Team Coordinator.
In
2004, Sarah received her Juris Doctorate from Case Western
Reserve University School
of Law in Cleveland,
Ohio. During her first year of law school, she won the
Klatsky Human Rights Fellowship and was nominated for the
NALP Public Interest Award. Sarah was a Legal Fellow for
Human Rights Watch in New York, New York after her first
year of law school and the ACLU of Ohio after her second.
She received a 2004 Public Interest Law Fellowship and
worked as a Legal Fellow for a solo practitioner in Clevaland,
Ohio researchig and writing death penalty appeals in the
year following graduation. In 2005, Sarah made what she
describes as the best decision of her life and moved to
Burlington, Vermont. Initially, Sarah worked as an Associate
at Downs Rachlin Martin. She left Downs Rachlin Martin
for the once in a lifetime opportunity to be the Chittenden
Country Regional Field Coordinator for the historic Sanders
for Senate Campaign. She is a board member for the Associates
of the Vietnam Veterans Statewide Council, a member of
the Women Helping Battered Women fundraising group, a regular
volunteer with the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force
as well as an active member of the Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom and the Vermont Bar. Sarah
is thrilled and honored to be the founding Executive Director
of the Service Politics Institute.
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 Matt
Dunne
SPI Board Chair
Matt Dunne has focused his life’s
work on bringing together the worlds of entrepreneurship,
service and politics. Elected to the Vermont House
at the age of 22, he served 7 years before joining
the Clinton Administration as the Director of AmeriCorps*VISTA
overseeing 6000 full-time people working in the fight
against poverty. In 2002 he returned home to Vermont
and was elected to the Vermont Senate where he has
just completed a second term. Outside of the legislature
he as worked in high-tech marketing and more recently
as the Associate Director of the Rockefeller Center
at Dartmouth College creating programs to support students
who wish to pursue careers in the nonprofit and public
sector. He is currently a strategic planning consultant
and lives in the home where he grew up in Hartland
with his wife Sarah Taylor and their son Judson.
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 Becca
Heller
SPI Programs Director
Becca graduated Summa Cum Laude
from Dartmouth College in 2005. She double majored
in Government and a special fellowship project on
AIDS-related malnutrition. Following graduation,
she received a Fulbright Scholarship to go to Malawi,
Africa, and work with the government on nutrition
policy. While in Malawi, she coordinated the writing
of the National Nutrition Policy for the Ministry
of Nutrition, HIV and AIDS, as well as developing
a Therapeutic Feeding program at a local free clinic.
When she returned to the United States, she worked
for Matt Dunne's campaign for Lt. Governor of Vermont,
first as a field organizer for Windsor County, and
then as Communications Director. Becca has been involved
in a number of non-profit organizations throughout
Vermont. She helped found a mentoring program at
Sharon Elementary School, created the program Harvest
for the Hungry to redistribute excess produce from
local farms to area food shelves, and spent a term
as a researcher in the Vermont state legislature.
She is incredibly excited to be part of such a worthwhile
project, and is eager to combine her interest in
politics with her passion for service.
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 Mike
Foote
SPI Interim Director
Mike grew up just north of Chicago.
He spent his summers working at a Boy Scout Camp
in Wisconsin, and became an Eagle Scout while in
high school at New Trier. While majoring in Biology
at Dartmouth College, Mike started up a small program
serving youth living in low-income housing communities.
The program, now called “DREAM,” has
since grown into a state-wide youth mentoring and
adventure organization (www.dreamprogram.org).
Mike, somewhat grudgingly, left DREAM in 2005 to
travel, including five months in South America where
he picked up Spanish (something he never thought
he could do) and explored the continent from Patagonia
to the Amazon. Other travel experience includes teaching
high school in the Republic of the Marshall Islands
and researching Bullet Ants in the rain forests of
Costa Rica. After traveling, Mike consulted for and
hosted Ben and Jerry’s first social entrepreneur
training program and then joined Matt Dunne’s
campaign for Lt. Governor in Vermont as the state
Field Director. He also researches alternative educational
programs on the side, with the firm Char Associates.
Mike’s passion lies in innovative social-change
and entertains himself daydreaming about ideas that
can help people (including himself) lead happier
and healthier lives. Mike was a member of the VT
Children’s Forum’s policy advisory board
and has researched anti-poverty programs in Washington,
DC through the Corporation for National and Community
Service. Mike is an avid juggler, traveler, and motorcycle
rider. He also loves to drive the DREAM bus, which
he helped convert to run on waste vegetable oil so
that he could feel better about the 6 miles it gets
per gallon.
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