Meet Our Board Members
With diverse backgrounds in business, medicine, law, teaching, theology, theater and social work, our board and extended Quest community bring a wealth of knowledge and creativity to their endeavors for Connecticut Quest for Peace (CT Quest).
This unpaid talented staff handles all of CT Quest’s administrative duties, including program development and management, fundraising, communications, marketing and financial oversight.
Linda and Randy Klein are CT Quest’s coordinators. Randy claims that he and Linda became organizational leaders for CT Quest by default: Randy says, “We were the only people who showed up” for the organization’s first informational meeting in 1989.
Randy and Linda were soon joined by Gail Faithfull and her husband, Leo McDonnell. The two couples are responsible for the creation of CT Quest.
To coordinate CT Quest’s programs, oversee funding and develop new initiatives, the Kleins and other CT Quest members traveled to Nicaragua several times each year. The Kleins have made 26 extended visits to Nicaragua since 1991.
As of December 2008 the Kleins permanently moved to Managua, Nicaragua in order to oversee all 22 of our programs and to determine where the greatest need lies.
Randy and Linda met 45 years ago in college and married soon afterwards. Though they began their professional lives as teachers, the couple switched careers in 1967 to start their own electronics manufacturing business.
The couple share a deep commitment to social action, and over the years Randy and Linda have carved out significant service time for CT Quest, Maryknoll Affiliates, prison ministries and Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker hospitality houses.
Bill Evans is President of Ct. Quest for Peace. Bill first traveled in 2002 with Randy and Linda Klein and eight other Americans to Nicaragua to visit missions and centers supported by Connecticut Quest for Peace.
“I have not been the same since,” says Bill. “I was bit by the Nicaraguan bug and have grown to love the people, especially the children we met there. It has been a delight to work with CT Quest for Peace.”
A native of Indianapolis, Bill lived in Northern Kentucky from age 2-10 years and has resided in Connecticut since 1965. He attended Catholic elementary schools, graduated from Fairfield Prep, and received a BS in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
For the last 36 years Bill has owned and operated the William Evans Painting Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The company manages a wide variety of residential, commercial and industrial painting projects.
Seven years ago, “I volunteered,” recalls Bill, “to drive around Connecticut for a couple of days to pick up donated materials” to be sent to Nicaragua. Today Bill’s 8,000 square foot company warehouse serves as the storage center for CT Quest’s humanitarian aid cargo. It is perennially overflowing with donations earmarked for Nicaragua.
“We give so much,” says Bill, adding, “But we get back much more.”
Timothy McCaffrey, Secretary of Ct. Quest for Peace, is the retired General Counsel of General Reinsurance Corporation of Stamford, Connecticut, a global insurer and reinsurer operating worldwide with subsidiaries and offices in locations around the world.
Timothy served as a legal and executive officer for several major insurer and reinsurers for 35 years before retiring from his position at General Reinsurance. He holds a B.A. with honors at Harvard University and a law degree from Columbia University Law School. A member of the Bar in New York and in Connecticut, Timothy is active as an arbitrator in resolving insurance and reinsurance contract disputes.
After several years of volunteer work collecting goods, loading container trucks, and making contributions to CT Quests’ fund-raising appeals, Timothy joined the Board.
Wulfran Polonius, Treasurer of Ct. Quest for Peace, was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1934. The Second World War dominated his childhood: In the post-war years, he lived with hunger and deprivation and this experience has made him especially empathetic to the lives of the poor.
As a young man, Wulf studied pharmacology in Muenster and received his PhD in chemistry in Wuerzburg, Germany. For over 30 years he worked in the pharmaceutical industry in Germany, Brazil and the USA, retiring in 1995.
It was during Wulf’s six year-sojourn in Brazil that he began to volunteer—assisting slum dwellers in Sao Paulo and a leper colony in Curitiba.
In 1976, the Polonius family experienced a whole new culture when they moved to the United States. In the US, the family volunteered on a daily basis through the Cursillo-based Emmaus Retreat Program for High School students.
In 1987 the Program expanded to the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, CT. Since that time Wulf and his wife have ministered to incarcerated women on a weekly basis.
Wulf soon became involved with CT Quest for Peace and he has served as its treasurer for the last ten years. Wulf and his wife, Ingrid, have traveled several times to Nicaragua to visit the people of our programs.
Each visit reminds Wulf of the importance of helping people in dire need.
Maureen Shanley is Vice-President of Ct. Quest for Peace. Her vocation was teaching, but her avocation is community service. After teaching for ten years, Maureen became a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia. When she returned to the United States she joined the board of Appalachian Volunteers, Inc. and started numerous community service programs at Helen Keller Middle School in Easton, CT. Since 1985 she has served on the board or been president of Connecticut Returned Peace Corps Volunteers where she helped create the CTRPCV Community Service Fund Grant Program for PCVs and RPCVs who are involved in local or international service projects. She is also an elected member of the Connecticut Education Association – Retired advisory board.
In 1996, Maureen started attending mass at the Grange where she has found her spiritual home. The caring and kindness of the community is observable in the multitude of community service projects that church members have created or support. The summer of 2002, Maureen joined a concerned Quest for Peace group who were traveling to Nicaragua to witness the various projects that CT Quest for Peace help to support. After the whirlwind tour of Nicaragua, Maureen stayed for a month to work with a school for street boys in Granada. This was a humbling experience because one always receives so much more than one gives.
Maureen joined the board of CT Quest for Peace with the following credentials: an MA in Corporate and Political Communications, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT; an MS in Secondary Education, University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT; a BA in English, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT; and has attended the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain and the Sociedad de Entrenamiento y Assessoria, Ltda., Bogotá, Colombia for intensive coursework in language ans cultural studies in Spanish.
In addition to the executive Board, our Quest community includes the following dedicated and highly talented volunteers: Carl Bailey, Kathryn Anderson, John Anderson, Ruth Ayers, Ed Ayers, Barbara Caroselli, Douglas Capozallo, Marie Cohen, Ann Deignan, Kathleen Deignan, Gail Faithfull, Kevin Funk, Anna Kish, Laura Klauberg, Cherril Kolesik, Jane McCaffrey, Leo McDonnell, Susan Pfeil, Ingrid Polonius, Pam and Chris Rogalin, Ann Stubbs, and Lorraine Thompson.