PRESIDENT

Don is a visionary and cause-driven leader with an engaging and optimistic personality. With more than 30 years of senior management experience dedicated to relationship-centered leadership, Don is a proven change agent with an entrepreneurial spirit, passionate inner drive and solid business instincts. He believes that programs, institutions, and companies don’t change lives. Rather, the relationships built within those structures do. Holding true to that belief, Don has dedicated his life to the business of relationship building through the creation of innovative student-centered youth development organizations that empower young people to thrive. Don lives on the St. George peninsula in mid-coast Maine with his wife Sheryl.

VICE PRESIDENT

Owen McCarthy is the President and co-founder of MedRhythms, a digital therapeutics company that uses sensors, music, and software to build evidence-based, neurologic interventions to measure and improve walking. In addition to his work at MedRhythms, he has become a leader in the field of digital therapeutics by co-chairing the reimbursement working group of the digital therapeutics alliance and acting as a roster of experts in Digital Health for the World Health Organization.

In the state of Maine, Owen currently serves the higher education system as the Vice-Chair of the University of Maine Board of Visitors (after serving as Chair from 2017-2019). Owen is a graduate of Katahdin High School, the University of Maine, and the Harvard Business School.

Owen is honored and inspired to be on the Rural Futures Fund’s board of directors. He says, “As a first-generation college student from rural Patten, ME, I was fortunate to have a strong support network of mentors that helped me raise my aspirations -- I now want to find a way to give this opportunity to countless others students in rural Maine.” Owen serves on the Communications Committee of the Rural Futures Fund’s board.

TREASURER

After spending 15 years in the nonprofit sector, Erin has been on the leadership team at the Rural Futures Fund in Portland, ME since 2013, and currently serves as Associate Director. Erin also works with the Rocking Moon Foundation, and recently moved into her current role as Executive Director there after serving as a grantmaking advisor since 2016. She earned a Master of Public Policy and Management degree from the Muskie School at the University of Southern Maine in 2005, and recently completed a term as Board Chair at the Maine Philanthropy Center. She and her husband Ben Slayton have two children, ages 12 and 9.