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Board Member Profiles

Patricia S. Baptiste, Chair

Patricia “Pat” Baptiste is a lifelong resident of Chevy Chase and has resided with her husband Bob at 7 Grafton Street for 34 years. It was there that Pat and Bob raised their son and daughter. She is a graduate of Georgetown Law School, and in a past life was an appellate attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Long active in all aspects of Village life, Pat served on the Board of Managers from 1982 to 1991 and was the first woman (of only two) to serve as Board Chairman. In recent years she has been a member of the Village Personnel Commission. Last year she was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Board of Managers. Since rejoining the Board Pat has been active in assisting with legal issues including a settlement of the Euwer litigation, protecting our common green spaces for the use of all residents, working to establish a separate capital budget with a dedicated source of funding, seeking greater transparency on other budget issues, and communicating with the leadership of adjacent municipalities in areas of common interest and concern.

In addition to her efforts within the Village, Pat has worked on many local zoning and land use issues first as chair of the Friendship Heights Coordinating Committee and later as a two-term member of the Montgomery Park and Planning Commission. More recently she has been a member of the County Task Force on the Base Realignment of Walter Reed at Navy Medical Center (BRAC), served as a member of the Planning Board’s Advisory Group on the Purple Line, and currently sits on the Zoning Advisory Panel consulting with County planners on revisions to the County Zoning Code. She is also on the Board of the Capital Crescent Trail Coalition, and has recently helped to organize the Connecticut Avenue Corridor Committee to insure that the broader community has a voice in rezoning proposals at Chevy Chase Lake. Pat has served on the Board of a number of nonprofit organizations focusing on education, historic preservation and delivery of medical services to the poor.

Pat is delighted to be serving again on the Board of Managers.

Peter T. Kilborn, Vice-Chair

Peter T. Kilborn, of 4007 Oliver Street, is an author and former New York Times editor and reporter who has lived in Chevy Chase Village for twenty-eight years.  He and his wife Susan Woodward Kilborn, an avid gardener and parks committee member, have two grown children, David Kilborn, of Charleston, South Carolina, and Elizabeth Wilhelm, of Buena Vista, Virginia, and six grandchildren.

 

Mr. Kilborn led the successful opposition this winter to the Village’s proposed acquisition of Taser electronic stun guns on grounds that they both inadvertently kill.  As a member of the budget committee, he is a voice for property tax stability and spending restraint, particularly in the face of the current budgets’ large deficits.  He is also chairman of the new parking committee.

 

Mr. Kilborn grew up in Providence and Little Compton, Rhode Island.  He has a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College in Hartford, where he was editor of the student newspaper and years later a trustee of the college.  He has a master’s in journalism from Columbia University, and was a professional journalism fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto.

 

After a stint as an Army private, he became Paris correspondent, Los Angeles bureau chief and a staff editor at Business Week magazine, and then business editor at Newsweek.  At the New York Times, he was economics correspondent in London, the editor of the Sunday Business Section, and Washington economics correspondent covering the White House, the Treasury, Congress, and the World Bank.  Then for fifteen years, he was the Times’ roving national correspondent, based in Washington, covering the American scene.  Last year, Henry Holt & Co. and Times Books published his Next Stop Reloville, Life inside America’s New Rootless Professional Class.  He is a co-author of a related Holt/Times book, Class Matters.

 

“We love this place,” Mr. Kilborn said.  “Throughout Susan’s and my time here, Chevy Chase Village has carried on, maintaining its live-and-let-live community values, timeless character, and uncommon, even heroic services.  Within hours this winter, whole days ahead of most Washington-area communities, the Village Public Works Department cleared our roads of the worst snow accumulation in more than one hundred years.  Lately, because of the toll of the national economy’s reversals on the Village’s normally robust finances, we could face some unappealing choices.  My first priority is to protect what’s important to us, at no additional taxpayer cost.”

Allison W. Shuren, Secretary

Allison Weber Shuren lives at 108 Hesketh Street with her husband, Jeffrey Shuren, MD., J.D.  They have lived in Chevy Chase Village for five years.  Allison is a partner at the law firm of Arnold & Porter LLP where she specializes in health care law.  Jeff is the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Medical Devices and Radiologic Health.  Prior to her legal career, Allison was a practicing pediatric nurse practitioner specializing in the care of infants and children born with heart disease and other critical congenital problems.  Over the course of her clinical career she held management and leadership positions.  Allison’s legal practice regularly involves interaction with the federal and state governments, and she understands from experience the balances that must be drawn when making difficult decisions impacting a broad community of stakeholders with differing opinions.  Her work requires her to be adept at negotiation and consensus building.  Allison served as the treasurer for the townhome community where she and Jeff lived prior to moving to the Village.  In that role, she gained experience in managing the fiscal, political, social and legal challenges of a diverse community.  She is privileged to serve in such a capacity again, this time on behalf of the Village community.

Richard Ruda, Assistant Secretary

Richard Ruda of Newlands Street is a lawyer who has practiced state and local government law on the side of state and local governments and government officials for over 20 years. He has lived in Chevy Chase Village since 1994. His three children, Julia, Alex, and Rachel, grew up on Newlands Street and attended Montgomery County public schools. Prior to his election to the Board, Richard served on the Village's Democratic Process & Good Governance Committee.

Richard was born and raised in New Jersey, an experience that helped make him an inveterate optimist because everywhere he has lived since then has been nicer. He thinks Chevy Chase Village is a wonderful place to live and is honored to serve on its Board. Richard has a B.A. degree from Yale University, graduate degrees in history from Yale and the University of London, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. 

Lawrence C. Heilman, Treasurer

Lawrence Heilman has resided at 46 Grafton Street since 1977 where he and his wife, Anne, have raised two children, Elin and Carlos.  During his first several years in the Village, Larry coached a soccer team made up several boys from the Village.  Starting in the Nineties, he has been active on the:  (1) Personnel Committee (PC): He served for three years as the Chair of the PC.  With the Village Manager he helped draft personnel position descriptions for Village employees and revised the pay scale. (2) Budget Committee (BC): For several years, he was a member of the BC.  He focused on reviewing the budget submission prepared by the Village Staff; advocating fairer pay for all staff; and promoting a rational method for reviewing the plethora of civil works projects that was being promoted by the Village Manager.  He advocated reducing taxes as long as the Village’s Reserve was excessive. (3) Public Safety Committee (PSC): He promoted the creation of the PSC and served as its first Chair. His focus was to create a committee that would serve as a bridge to the community. (4) Energy and Environmental Committee (EEC): He advocated the creation of the EEC and is currently serving as its first Chair. His goals for the ECC are to reduce the Village's carbon footprint and assist the Board and Staff in making our Village a model of sound environmental and energy practice.

Currently, Larry is a Research Associate in the Anthropology Department at the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian. He also teaches a course in Meso-American Archaeology at the Institute for Learning in Retirement, which is affiliated with American University.  Larry has a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. with concentrations in Latin American History and Archaeology.  Larry retired from the Agency for International Development (AID) in 1987 where he had served as a Senior Foreign Service Officer and was responsible for managing development programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His particular interests were community development, civil society, and nutrition improvement activities.  Subsequently he was with Management Systems International where he managed a variety of development activities including strategic plan development for AID field missions in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. In 1998-9, he was the resident technical advisor in Poland for monitoring and evaluating a local government project that had as one of its major objectives promoting greater citizen participation in the local government process. 

 

Gary Crockett, Assistant Treasurer

Gary Crockett of 142 Grafton Street, moved to the Village in 2008 with his wife Marla. They have two grown children, Emily and Jeff.

Mr. Crockett's professional background is in software, telecommunications, and technology. He has been a developer, a manager, and CEO of a company that built innovative products and achieved success by doing so. He received seven U.S. patents related to his work. He retired from the company he ran and for the past seven years has been mentoring early-stage startups in various technology fields.

Mr. Crockett's comfort and experience with information and technology would add to the range of talent and experience already present on the Board. His work has also sharpened his ability to produce practical solutions for complex problems.

The Crocketts moved to the Village from Texas not for work-related reasons, but because this is where they wanted to be. “We were attracted by the beauty and character of the Village, by its excellent public safety record, and by the first-rate services the residents enjoy,” Mr. Crockett said. “I'll be very reluctant to compromise any of those things, but beyond that I'm not bringing any rigid ideology to the table. To the extent that I'm biased, it's a bias against pretending problems don't exist or kicking them down the road.”

Mr. Crockett looks forward to doing his part to ensure that the Village remains such a wonderful place to live.

David L. Winstead, Board Member

Mr. David L. Winstead and his wife, Page, have lived in the Village for twenty-four years. They are the proud parents of three children: a son living in New York City, a daughter at Middlebury College and a daughter at University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. Mr. Winstead previously served as Board Secretary from l987 to l989.

Mr. Winstead is an attorney with the law firm of Ballard Spahr LLP, where he practices in the areas of real estate, transportation, public-private partnerships and legislative/regulatory matters. From 2005-2008, he served as Public Buildings Commissioner of the United States, and from 1995-1999 as Secretary of Transportation for the State of Maryland. He has also served as Vice Chairman of Montgomery County's Board of Social Services, and in 2002, as Chairman of the Federal Commission to Ensure Consumer Information in the Airline Industry.

 

As a member of the Chevy Chase Village Board of Managers, Mr. Winstead's expertise in real estate and transportation matters, as well as his experience with the officials and governance in both Montgomery County and the State of Maryland provides an important perspective to Board deliberations. During this current term, he has assisted in numerous transportation, development and traffic issues, as well as state assistance with enhancements along Connecticut Avenue and Brookville Road.