Board of Directors

Keyri Ambrocio

Keyri Ambrocio serves as the Outreach Coordinator and Press Secretary for Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. In this role, she manages the office’s outreach efforts within the community and media relations and communications strategy in Connecticut. Keyri has previously held roles with the office of U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal and the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce handling political communications, public policy, and public affairs. She has a B.A. in Political Science and International Affairs from the University of New Haven. She currently resides with her husband in East Haven, CT.

Jessica Herrington

Jessica Herrington is a senior federal law enforcement professional with over 20 years of experience in investigations, compliance, and organizational leadership. She currently serves in an oversight role, managing internal compliance for a major federal agency.

She previously led a regional office, supervising multi-state investigative operations and a diverse team of agents and support staff. Jessica has also deployed internationally and has facilitated training programs for newly hired federal agents across the country.

A graduate of the University of New Haven’s Henry C. Lee College of Forensic Sciences, Jessica is committed to ethics, accountability, and public service. As a mother of two, she is passionate about early childhood education and supports social justice initiatives in her community.

Kaaren Janssen

Kaaren’s career in science began in the research lab – after graduate school and postdoctoral work, she became a research associate at the Salk Institute in La Jolla. Her growing interest in science communication – teaching, writing and editing – led her into the world of scientific publishing, where she became exposed to a wide range of research topics, discussion and planning with an active and entertaining Editorial Board, helping to sort out the next big application of interest to the readership. At the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Kaaren became further involved in acquisitions and development programs, communications and project evaluation in academic publishing and education, mentoring students. She currently devotes her time to science communication and education, as well as serving as consultant to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, working for the preprint server bioRxiv. Kaaren’s community work has focused on supporting education – as a member of the Guilford Board of Education for 8 years; on the Board of Guilford, A Better Chance for 12. She is now so pleased to be involved with the Friends Center, seeing what a difference can be made when the focus on high quality care and education and family support begins early. Kaaren has two children, now grown – neither went into science, but each married a scientist. Her family all shares a love of hiking and open water swimming.

Jean Lamont

Jean Lamont began her career in education as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, teaching biology in an all-girls high school in Kisumu, Kenya.  Upon returning to the United States, she was hired by the Nashville, TN public school system to teach in an all-black, inner-city junior high school during the first two years of their desegregation initiatives. When she returned to the northeast, she moved into the independent school world. At an all-boys school on the Upper East Side, she took on admissions work and helped launch Early Steps, a collaborative program of over 30 independent schools in greater New York City, to recruit and support students (and families) of color entering first grade. Participating schools paid a membership fee and agreed to dedicate financial aid beginning in kindergarten. A cutting-edge initiative, Early Steps is now over 30 years old. When Jean came to New Haven to be Head of School at the Foote School, she had the opportunity to help the school increase its diversity and inclusivity and implement collaborative programs with neighboring public schools. After stepping down as Head, she joined Educators’ Collaborative, a partnership that worked with independent schools and other non-profits on executive searches, strategic planning, and governance. She has served on several non-profit boards in New Haven, including Horizons at Foote, which offers academics, arts and swimming for underserved k-8 New Haven students. 

Chris McDonnell

Chris McDonnell is a seasoned executive and strategic advisor with over 30 years of leadership experience spanning corporate, nonprofit, and academic sectors. He brings deep expertise in organizational governance, strategic planning, and transformational change, with a proven ability to drive sustainable growth in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.

Chris is known for his ability to navigate ambiguity, lead through change, and build collaborative cultures that translate vision into action. He combines technical acumen, strategic insight, and a values-driven leadership approach to advance mission-critical initiatives and long-term impact.

He currently serves as Board Chair of the Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation and is a board member of Ocean Community YMCA, Guardian Medical USA, and the Biomedical Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is also Co-Founder and Director of the Grace McDonnell Fund, which supports community and educational initiatives.

Chris earned an Executive Certificate in Nonprofit Leadership from the Harvard Kennedy School, holds Master’s degrees in Engineering and Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Villanova University.

Greg Melville

Greg Melville retired in 2005 from a career as a freelance editor and writer for CT businesses and magazines, as well as photographer and reporter for daily newspapers in New Hampshire and Vermont. 

For the past twenty years, Greg and his wife, Susan Fox, have devoted themselves to community service and philanthropic work in Cheshire, Lyme and New Haven, as well as Pomfret – and E. Setauket, NY. In Cheshire in 2006, Greg served as founding Secretary of the Boulder Knoll Community Garden, a CSA in Cheshire – and remains a life member.

Greg and Susan helped direct and fund NextGenLeaders, Inc., a Guilford-based, New England affiliate of PeaceJam, Inc., an international non-profit, founded in 2000. The organization connects Nobel Peace laureates with high-school youth around the globe to support local peacemaking and ecological initiatives.

Under the organization’s auspices, Greg helped produce “Children of the Light,” an award-winning documentary about the late Desmond Tutu’s South Africa by PeaceJam Productions.

From 2010-2017, he served as a member of the Development Committee and the Board of Directors for Woolman Hill Quaker Retreat Center in Deerfield, MA. During his tenure, Greg helped spearhead Woolman Hill’s suit against the application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permit of the Northeast Direct Pipeline proposed by Kinder Morgan – which later resulted in the company withdrawing its application.

A graduate of Pasture Lane Nursery School and New Canaan (CT) Country School, Greg’s a 1968 alumnus of Pomfret School in Pomfret, CT and holds a BA degree, cum laude, in English Literature, from Carleton College, in Northfield, MN, as a member of the Class of 1972. From 1968-70, he was a news reporter, managing editor and co-editor of The Carletonian, the weekly student newspaper.

As a member of the Board of Trustees of the Pomfret School since 2014, he chaired the recent, successful $82.5 M. Amplify capital campaign for the School. With Susan, he helped fund the construction of the J. Timothy and Anne Richards Health & Wellness Center, as well as the newly-completed VISTA, Science and Engineering Building.

In 2022, with Susan and his 1972 classmates, Greg established the Get Started Fund for the Class of 1972’s 50th Reunion at Carleton College. The Fund now provides on-going financial assistance not covered by scholarship grants to first-generation and other students at Carleton challenged by the costs of starting college.

Since 2007, he’s served as Vice-President of the Board of Trustees of Frank Melville Memorial Foundation, a private park open to the public in E. Setauket, NY. 

A longtime financial supporter of Friends Center for Children, he’s a member of Friends Center’s Quaker Advisory Council, as well as New Haven Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, where he was Recording Clerk and Treasurer and participated in several committees of the Meeting. 

Greg serves Friends Center for Children, Inc. as a member of the Board, as well as the Development and Scalability Committees and Construction Task Force.

James Morrissey

James Morrissey is a partner in Massumi & Consoli LLP’s Corporate Practice Group, where he serves as a passionate and pragmatic advocate for the owners and developers of infrastructure and real estate. He prides himself on being a “dealmaker” and team player, leading and advising on deals of every shape and size.

As a member of the Firm’s Energy Transition group, Jimmy knows that the world is rapidly changing, and that companies need attorneys willing to change with it. He believes in the new technologies that will power a net-zero world and in assisting the changemakers developing them. Accordingly, he has counseled clients on renewables, biofuels, battery storage solutions, hydrogen production, cryptocurrency mining and microgrids.

Jimmy has worked in the energy industry for his entire career, and prior to joining Massumi & Consoli LLP, held a variety of legal and non-legal roles at a global energy company, including serving as in-house counsel. In support of the development of energy infrastructure projects, he represents companies in all forms of energy commercial contracting, including power purchase agreements, transmission support agreements, terminal service agreements, EPC contracts and offtake agreements.

Jimmy has a significant national leasing practice, counseling landlords and tenants in transactions for industrial, retail and office space, with a particular emphasis on repurposing existing properties and representing the portfolio companies of private equity funds.

Nnamdi C. Obukwelu

Born and raised in the greater Boston area, Nnamdi attended Boston College High School in Boston, MA and chose to stay close to home for college, attending Harvard College, where he majored in Economics and was a standout athlete. Nnamdi’s passion for youth and education led him to spearhead the Harvard Football after-school program that partnered with nearby elementary schools to provide homework help and after-school sports sessions to students during winter and spring months. In addition, Nnamdi is a coach and mentor for the Next Level Football (NLF) program, a partnership with the Boys & Girls Club of Brockton, MA, that works to provide high school athletes with college visits and exam prep with the goal of placing high-performing student athletes at top universities across the Northeast. Nnamdi resides in New Haven, CT with his wife and their two young children. Nnamdi has been a Friends Center parent since 2022.

Thayer Quoos

Thayer Quoos graduated from Yale Divinity School (1975) and completed CPE training at Yale New Haven Hospital in 2001. She has worked as an On-call Chaplain at YNHH since 1996 and is a member of the Religious Society of Friends, more commonly known as Quakers.

Over the years, she has worked with women leaving Niantic Prison, substance abusers (upstate NY) and teenage parents and their families (Windham Region in CT). In New Haven, she worked for many years at AIDS Project New Haven overseeing services to people living with AIDS/HIV and supervising the city-wide case management team (6 agencies). Thayer then commuted to New London where she served as the Executive Director of the Women’s Center of Southeastern CT, an agency serving victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Thayer worked at Chapel Haven in Westville, supervising programs for adults with cognitive disabilities who live independently. In 2008, she became a fulltime chaplain at Masonicare. She retired in 2022 but remains an On-Call Chaplain at YNHH.

Thayer has also owned a bed & breakfast in Chester, CT and every year hosted the teachers and visiting actors for the National Theater of the Deaf. Thayer loves being a grandmother to Sonia, the best kid in the world! She also enjoys gardening, painting, walking, and bicycling.

Allyx Schiavone

Allyx Schiavone is the driving force behind Friends Center for Children’s rapid growth and innovation. Under her leadership as Executive Director since 2009, Friends Center has grown to three locations across New Haven and serves as a national model for what is possible in transforming a national childcare system that is underfunded and overburdened. Allyx is a passionate advocate for access and equity in early care and education, committed to advancing educators’ compensation and well-being. 

To address the childcare crisis, Allyx has developed several initiatives at Friends Center that serve as a model to the early care and education industry nationwide. Under her leadership, the organization has established programs to supplement teacher salaries and provide holistic support to staff, parents, and children. In 2014, Friends Center launched its Emotional Wellbeing Program which prioritizes the wellbeing of the adults caring for the community’s children. Under Allyx’s leadership, Friends Center established its Teacher Leadership Program, a paid professional learning opportunity for its educators, designed to disrupt systems of marginalization by creating space for educators to nurture their leadership abilities and prepare them to advance to the role of head teacher.

In the midst of the pandemic in 2020, Allyx launched Friends Center’s innovative Free Teacher Housing Initiative, a first-of-its-kind program that offers eligible teachers free housing as a salaried benefit to help them build financial security. The program has been featured by The New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning and Univision. Allyx partnered with the Yale School of Architecture’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project to design and build family homes for the initiative. 

As an expert in early childhood development and elementary education, Allyx is an experienced author of curricula for preschool, elementary and high school students with an emphasis on multidisciplinary studies. She has served as a teacher and administrator in Connecticut and New York schools.

A third-generation New Haven native, Allyx has 25 years of experience in mixed-use commercial and residential development and management. She is responsible for founding six successful businesses and four non-profit entities to date, including two summer programs for children in New York.

Allyx serves as co-chair of Child Care for Connecticut’s Future, a non-partisan coalition representing parents, providers, business leaders, advocates, and community leaders who want to transform how early care and education is funded in Connecticut. In that role, in 2020, she helped launch the now annual Morning Without Child Care across the state, which inspired an annual national Day Without Child Care. 

She currently serves as a member of the National Ideal Learning Roundtable, a group of early childhood education experts who work collectively toward equitable expansion of ideal learning for underserved young children, families, and communities; the mayoral-appointed New Haven Early Childhood Council; and the External Stakeholders Steering Committee for the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood (OEC), to which she was appointed by OEC Commissioner Beth Bye. She is a recipient of the Bank Street College of Education Alumni Association Recognition Award, presented annually to Bank Street graduates honoring outstanding career accomplishments in the field of education that exemplify the spirit and philosophy of Bank Street College; the Southern Black Nurses Association Community Service Award; the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce’s Nonprofit Stars Align Award; the Amity Club Distinguished Italian-American Lifetime Achievement Award; Exchange Magazine’s Master Leader award; and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence’s Marvin Maurer Spotlight Award. Under Allyx’s leadership, Friends Center for Children was recognized with the 2024 Yale University Seton Elm-Ivy Award.

Allyx is a member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and is a former board member of Connecticut Voices for Children; appointee to the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Reading; leader of the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund Community Leadership Program; and co-founder of the Quinnipiac River Community Group. She holds dual Master’s degrees from Bank Street College of Education in Early Childhood Development and Elementary Education and a Bachelor’s degree from Union College. 

Allyx is the mother of two amazing adult children and lives in New Haven with her partner and their dog, Tuck.

David Soper

David is a retired finance executive with 40 years of financial and managerial experience in corporate and higher educational settings. He has also spent over 30 years working with non-profit organizations in the New Haven area serving as treasurer or president of several of them. David’s brings a broad understanding of the financial and organizational structures of corporate and higher education institutions and sophisticated knowledge of financial modeling, budgeting and reporting.

David is pleased to be asked to serve as treasurer of the Friends Center for Children and work with Allyx and the Center’s amazing staff providing childcare to many children in New Haven.

Scot Wrocklage

Scot Wrocklage has a long history with the Friends Center for Children beginning with his daughter’s enrollment in late 2010.  Scot gladly worked within the classroom for his co-op commitments and eventually joined a committee tasked with certifying FCfC to the Friends Council on Education which led to his serving on the Friend Center board.  Over the course of six years on the board, Scot served as board clerk for five years and sat on numerous committees.  In 2023, Scot returned to the board with great enthusiasm. Scot also has a profound appreciation for the Quaker process and the Quaker values that embody the work at FCfC.

Professionally, Scot is a Technical Fellow in the domain of software engineering for Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company.  Scot has been with Sikorsky for 15 years and has served in roles of increasing technical and team leadership.

Scot and his wife Kristen have two wonderful children who both attended FCfC for their infant, toddler, and pre-school years. Through his children and his personal experiences, Scot has witnessed first-hand the incredible impact that quality early childhood education can have.