Associate Community Hero Award

Gina Goodwin

Category Specialist - Warterjet Procurement

Congratulations to our Spring 2024 HOPE Community Hero — Gina Goodwin. Gina works as a Category Specialist on our Waterjet Procurement team and is located at our New Brighton, Minnesota facility.

Gina has been an incredible inspiration to fellow Associates at our Minnesota facility, regularly sharing volunteer opportunities or offering to set up group CST events. She is always coming up with new ideas to support our community. As a member of the 100% club, Gina regularly encourages other Associates to use CST and make a positive impact. Gina supports various volunteering efforts including environment green up projects, Second Harvest Heartland, Farmaste Animal Sanctuary, and many others. Her care and concern for others is felt throughout our Minnesota facility and the surrounding community.

Gina’s passion and drive to support our communities does not stop at volunteering. During the winter holiday season, Gina champions a Giving Tree Fundraiser to benefit the Haven Housing organization which has now transitioned to People Serving People. She also supports various fundraisers helping community members with serious medical conditions and women’s shelters.

On any given day you will see Gina helping our community in some capacity; she is very humble and often her work may go unrecognized.  

Martha Barron

Staff Technical Content Developer

Congratulations to our Winter 2024 HOPE Community Hero — Martha Barron. Martha works as a Staff Technical Content Developer on our Corporate Technical Content and Translations team and is located at our Hanover, New Hampshire facility.

Martha has impacted our internal and external community in so many ways it’s hard to list them all. As our Hypertherm Associates Community Garden champion since 2018, Martha has led the garden team in every aspect of the growing season, from preparation to wintering. The garden has grown and thrived under her leadership. Her creativity in adding an Annual Sunflower Contest has increased Associate engagement and awareness of the garden and raised funds for the HOPE Foundation. Her tie-dye shirt raffle for new volunteers also expanded our volunteer team.  

As a member of the 100% club, Martha regularly encourages other Associates to use CST and make a positive impact. Martha supports various volunteering efforts including Meals on Wheels, our onsite blood drives, and the Bradford Area Community Center, and she is an active Assistant Adjunct with the 29^th infantry division of Associate Post 93. Very quietly, she updates our internal community bulletin boards. 

Martha’s passion and drive to support our communities does not stop at volunteering though. In addition to raising funds for HOPE through the community garden, Martha helped to coordinate a 50/50 raffle for the Central Engineering team at their annual holiday party. Recently she also started supporting the organization “Milk with Dignity” as they help improve working conditions in dairy supply chains. 

Her care and concern for the community and our environment is her way of life. She is an incredibly dedicated member of the community and a good neighbor to all who meet her.

Lloyd Miles

Support, Marketing Operation

Congratulations to our latest HOPE Community Hero — Lloyd Miles. Lloyd works on our administrative team to support marketing operations and is in New Hampshire. As Lloyd is a longtime Associate at Hypertherm, he is known and appreciated by many Hypertherm Associates.   
Lloyd has always helped with nonprofit mailings. Many years ago, Lloyd reached out to Stacey Chiocchio and was very insistent that she find him something he could do regularly to be in the 100% club. This is when the Meals on Wheels (MOW) team approach was born. A team of Associates, all background checked and trained, take turns volunteering in pairs. One Associate drives, and one delivers the meal to the seniors’ door. Anyone who knows Lloyd, already knows he must be the driver!! At some point, everyone on the team has had the pleasure of partnering with Lloyd and delivering food. Lloyd exemplifies Community Service Time inspiration and is always the first person to step up when someone has an unexpected urgent conflict, and we need a fill-in Meals on Wheels volunteer.

As a member of the 100% Club, Lloyd encourages other Associates to use CST as he often shares his pride as a MOW volunteer.

Thank you, Lloyd, for leading your fellow Associates by example and being a true Hypertherm Community Hero!

Carolyn Maloney

Corporate Treasurer and is in New Hampshire

Congratulations to our latest HOPE Community Hero — Carolyn Maloney. Carolyn works as our Corporate Treasurer and is in New Hampshire.

Carolyn exemplifies Community Service Time leadership. She has always encouraged Associates on the Treasury team to find ways to serve the community in ways that would be meaningful to them. Over her 33 years at Hypertherm, Carolyn has volunteered at multiple Upper Valley organizations by cooking with her team and participating in walking fundraising events. But of course, her enormous strength is her drive for improved governance and the financial acumen she brings to nonprofit board work. Twin Pines Housing Trust, Granite United Way, and the Enfield Shaker Museum are among a few organizations that have benefited from Carolyn’s financial leadership.

In addition to being a yearly member of the 100% Club, Carolyn encourages Associates she interacts with to use all their CST hours each year.

Thank you, Carolyn, for leading your fellow Associates by example and being a true Hypertherm Community Hero!

Mariah Whitcomb

Mgr, Talent Management & Development

Congratulations to our latest HOPE Community Hero— Mariah Whitcomb. Mariah works as a Leader of the Talent Management and Development team in New Hampshire. 
Many community members in the Upper Valley benefit from the important, impactful volunteer work being performed by Mariah on any given day. As a volunteer deputy chief of the Thetford Fire Department, she works as a first responder to calls, and she uses her teaching skills to train EMTs, AEMTs, first responders, fire fighters, and volunteers. Over the past couple of years, she has also been planning and staffing COVID vaccine sites. 
To say Mariah goes above and beyond is an understatement.
In addition to being a yearly member of the 100% Club, Mariah encourages and enables her team to use all their CST hours each year.  
Thank you, Mariah, for leading your fellow Associates by example, and for being a true Hypertherm Community Hero!

Gabrielle Lucke

Program Manager of Organizational Effectiveness, Learning and Development, United States

Gabe has always held a deep commitment to volunteering throughout her life and this personal value was one of the key reasons she joined Hypertherm three years ago. Naturally, she is a yearly member of the 100% Club. This Community Hero uses her skills and her interests as an active and proud board member of Dismas of Vermont, an organization building a supportive community for former prisoners transitioning from incarceration with transitional housing, and she works with the Briggs Opera House Community Arts Center.

This Community Hero capitalizes on her career skills in organizational effectiveness and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, by facilitating workshops and giving educational talks to many nonprofits in our region. Whether she is leading a workshop on team effectiveness or helping organizations recognize implicit bias, Gabe’s energy and excitement for her work and our community is infectious for who engage with her.

Betsy Van Duyne

Marketing program manager, Americas Marketing, United States

Betsy has served our community throughout her 28 years at Hypertherm, starting early on the philanthropy team. Betsy’s volunteer efforts include reading at lunchtime with students through the mentoring program Everybody Wins. She also serves on the Vermont Disaster Animal Rescue board and volunteers at the Upper Valley Vermont Disaster Animal Rescue Team and Therapy Dogs of Vermont. Betsy also donates blood regularly. In her work role as a marketing program manager, Betsy oversees the Hypertherm “Spark Something Great” grant program, which gives out plasma cutters to selected schools supporting STEM in communities across North America.

Bryan Richardson

Reliability Team Engineer, United States

Bryan’s tragic loss of his son to a substance use disorder (SUD) fueled his passion and boundless energy to help his broader community. He founded a nonprofit, Stand up Newfound (SUN), the Central New Hampshire Newfound Area Drug Awareness Coalition. SUN’s mission is to work as a community to help eliminate substance abuse and misuse by providing information and community resources about awareness, prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery. Our newest hero has helped many families work through prevention, recovery, and sadly, sometimes loss through the nonprofit SUN. Bryan is also a committed member of the UV HOPE Team’s SUD task force.

In addition to helping people with SUD recovery resources, Bryan established football at Newfound Regional High School through the Friends of Newfound Football. This nonprofit helped build and maintain the field, run the press box and concession stand, and continues to ensure that football thrives at Newfound High.

George Caccavaro

Model Shop Team Leader, United States

George is a former HOPE Team member who inspires students participating in SHAPE for STEM events, recruits volunteers and organizes cleanups for the YMCA’s Camp Coniston, and works as a volunteer EMT for the Town of Croydon, New Hampshire. In addition, he helps run the Special Olympics Upper Valley Fall Games hosted each fall by Hypertherm, and even puts his amateur beekeeping skills to work around our campus.

Yotta Bourdakis

European Office Manager, The Netherlands

Yotta is a serious hero to the Happy Hippo Foundation, an organization that assembles and distributes birthday boxes filled with small gifts, decorations, and cake mixes underprivileged children can use to bake treats for their classmates. Yotta’s passion and infectious enthusiasm for this organization has spread throughout Hypertherm’s European office, with Associates there packing Happy Hippo boxes for the past five years.

Sandee Shipley

Receptionist & Switchboard Operator, United States

Sandee’s community passion is cooking dinners for people living at the Upper Valley Haven’s Hixon House adult shelter. She does everything—from planning balanced menus and shopping for food, to recruiting volunteers and cooking dinner—often with her kids in tow, so they too can learn the importance of giving back. In addition to her work planning and preparing dinner, Sandee also works to solicit food donations for the Special Olympics.

Juliana Barbosa

Sales Support and Logistics Team Leader, Brazil

A native Portuguese speaker living in Brazil, Juliana has always loved the English language. When deciding where to focus her volunteer energy, Juliana wanted to share her knowledge of English with others who didn’t have the resources to learn the language on their own. Juliana devotes countless hours to this Cidadão Pró-Mundo (Pro-World Citizen,) an organization that promotes equal opportunities for young people and adults by teaching English classes and offering social integration, all led by volunteers.

Jen Riccio

Senior Legal Counsel

Jen is a Hypertherm champion for the Upper Valley Humane Society, where she serves as board chair, and the Lebanon Opera House. She is Board President for David’s House, a home away from home for families with children receiving care at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and works to photograph Special Olympics athletes during the fall games hosted by Hypertherm. In addition, she contributes legal expertise as a member of the HOPE Team’s Grant Review Committee and Measurable Outcome subcommittee.

James Whitney

Cutting Systems Assembler, United States

James is known as the “silent hero” among his Powermax teammates. Beyond his volunteer service on the team’s yearly Volunteering Project Day, James is a regular volunteer at David’s House, working as a Hospitality Volunteer for several years now. He takes room requests, checks in guests and gives tours. As it requires a regular commitment, the Hospitality Volunteer is a position David’s House struggles to fill. Fortunately, James is passionate about his work at David’s House and more than willing to make a long-term commitment.

Alex Jaccaci

Corporate Improvement Program Manager, United States

Alex is the founder of the Upper Valley Adaptation Workgroup, a bi-state workgroup of 20 organizations working to build economic and community resiliency to natural disasters and climate change, which is now part of Vital Communities, an organization that brings several New Hampshire and Vermont communities together to create positive change. In addition, Alex served on the Board of Governors for Leadership Upper Valley, another Vital Communities group. He is also a volunteer for Revels North, a nonprofit arts organization that celebrates the power of traditional song, dance, and stories and is actively engaged in youth programs, volunteering for the Creative Lives After School Program and coaching youth soccer for the Town of Thetford, Vermont’s Recreation Department.

Scott DeFreitas

Category Manager, United States

Scott is a long-time champion of dinners at the Upper Valley Haven’s Hixon House, a home that provides temporary shelter and educational programming for homeless families and adults as well as food to anyone in need. He has also worked to serve dinners at Dismas House, an organization that helps former prisoners transition to life outside the prison. Beyond that, Scott is a member of the New Hampshire chapter of the Institute of Supply Management where he has worked to coordinate annual professional development and networking meetings, oversee committees, and give final approval of committee recommendations. He is a volunteer flag football coach for the city of Concord, New Hampshire’s Parks and Recreation Department and a member of the acquisition team for the St. John’s Regional School annual fundraising auction.