1000 Friends of Connecticut 

1000 Friends of Connecticut's Board of Directors is remarkably diverse, including a developer, a housing expert, the retired Chancellor of the Connecticut State University, an environmentalist, economic experts, a new urbanist architect, and even a retired Catholic bishop. The founders came from all walks of community's life, representing their constituencies' frustrations at finding themselves working in silos while watching Connecticut helplessly change for the worse with each passing year. Today, 1000 Friends of Connecticut remains the state's only organization that brings these points of view together and offers them a common language and a sense of common cause with which to approach the task of changing public policy. 

Susan Merrow served twelve years as First Selectman of East Haddam, from 1991 to 2003.  During her tenure, she served on the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and as its President in 1998.  She serves on the Boards of the Connecticut River Watershed Council and the Middlesex County Community Foundation.  She is a member of the Committee to study the Eightmile River for possible inclusion in the Federal Wild and Scenic Rivers program.  Having served in many volunteer capacities in the Sierra Club during the 70’s and 80’s, she became President of the National Board of the Sierra Club in 1990 and 1991.  She still serves on the Sierra Club’s National Political Committee.  She is author of One for the Earth: Journal of a Sierra Club President, Sagamore Press, 1992.  A graduate of Tufts University, Susan lives in East Haddam with her husband of 35 years and three retired horses.  

Dara Kovel has served as the Chief Housing Officer of the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority since January 2010. She received both her Bachelor's Degree and Master's Degree from Yale University. She went on to work as the Vice President and Regional Director of Mercy Housing, Inc. for ten years. She also served as the Regional Director of Jonathan Rose Companies from 2005 to 2009.

Leo Canty is Second Vice President of the American Federation of Teachers - Connecticut. He is a member of AFT Local 3837, University Health Professionals. Leo helped organize his local union at UConn Health Center in 1978 and held offices as Treasurer and President. He has served as the CT AFL-CIO Executive Secretary since 1996, chairs the Communications Committee and is also a Vice President of the Hartford Labor Council. 

He is committed to telling the workers story. He writes a weekly column in the Journal Inquirer entitled CT@Work. He produced and hosted the award winning CT@Work, labor’s only TV show. He serves as President of the AFT Communications Association. Over his communications career Leo has received many awards for journalism and media production. The goal in life – To do a lot – let others be a lot.

Bill Cibes is Chancellor Emeritus, Connecticut State University System. He formerly served as Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management in the administration of Governor Lowell P. Weicker. He was also a member of the General Assembly for six terms, serving as Deputy Speaker and House Chair of the Joint Committee on Finance, Revenue and Bonding. As a Professor of Government at Connecticut College, he taught a full range of courses in political science, concentrating in judicial politics, but including courses in urban politics and state politics in the federal system. He is currently working on a biography of Supreme Court Justice John Catron, and is active in a number of public policy advocacy groups.

Anika Singh Lemar is an associate in the firm's Real Estate, Environmental and Energy Department. She is involved in all areas of Wiggin and Dana's real estate practice, including commercial real estate, affordable housing and land use matters.

Anika is Clinical Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. She has previously taught land use and urban redevelopment at Yale University and the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment at Pratt Institute. She is a mayoral appointee to the City of New Haven's Municipal Solid Waste and Recycling Authority. An active member of the Urban Land Institute, she has organized ULI events specifically targeted to real estate professionals in Connecticut. She is a member of the Boards of Directors of the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut and All Our Kin, a New Haven-based not-for-profit organization, and she co-chairs Friends of New Haven Legal Assistance. She helped to found and later served on the Board of Directors of Next American City, a national urban affairs magazine headquartered in Philadelphia.

Before joining Wiggin and Dana, Anika was a Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center in New York. Anika's work at the Urban Justice Center was featured in the New York Daily News, USA Today, and the New York Law Journal. From 2004 to 2005, she served as a Law Clerk for the Honorable Janet C. Hall of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.

Anika received her B.A., cum laude, in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University and received her J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law where she served as Senior Articles Editor of the Review of Law and Social Change. In 2010, 2011 and 2011/2012, Anika was selected as a "Rising Star" in New England Super Lawyers in the category of real estate

Matthew Nemerson is President and CEO of the Connecticut Technology Council, an organization dedicated to building and strengthening the community of 2,500 technology oriented businesses in the state. These firms represent clusters such as software, IT, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, new media, scientific instrumentation and energy.


Read more about Matthew at the Connecticut Technology Council's website.

Peter A. Rosazza is the retired auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Hartford. He was chair of the CenterEdge Project, initiated by our Office for Catholic Social Justice Ministries, that prepared the way for 1000 Friends of Connecticut. CenterEdge, meaning the cities and the suburbs, both inner and outer ring, was a grassroots effort to raise consciousness within our state of the problem of sprawl and how it impacts on the environment. Sprawl is driven by the high property taxes in our state, one of the highest in the nation because the state government only contributes 37% of the costs for public education whereas the national average is between 58 and 60%. If development occurs where there is already infrastructure, resources can be saved that could give access to opportunity to those, especially the young, living in our cities. CenterEdge was the educational part and now 1000 Friends is the advocacy piece.