Staff
Lynn Cloutier
Lynn is responsible for the day to day business operations of Touchstones. She manages sales and inquiries, maintains inventory, and provides support for school, executive, veteran, prison, and community programs. She is the office liaison to the Board of Directors.
Lynn first became involved with Touchstones through the prison program as a volunteer while working in the Advancement Office at St. John’s College. Before coming to Touchstones in 2015, Lynn worked at the Anne Arundel Medical Center Foundation where she was the Executive Assistant to the President. Previous to AAMC, Lynn worked as the Major Gifts Coordinator for the United States Naval Academy Foundation.
Jennifer Macris
Jennifer serves as Touchstone’s advancement coordinator and is responsible for implementing annual and special fundraising campaigns and advancing existing and potential strategic partnerships.
A native of California, Jennifer received undergraduate degrees in sociology and Spanish from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She subsequently earned an MBA in international business from Middlebury College’s Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Stefanie Takacs
Stefanie provides executive management and directs all fundraising and programming efforts within the organization. She also serves as Touchstones primary trainer and coach in school programs and develops and implements new Touchstones programs and innovations. She works closely with the Board of Directors on strategic planning and governance. Currently, she runs two Touchstones programs weekly in the prison school at the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women.
Stefanie first joined Touchstones as a volunteer in 2004 and then as E.D. in 2009, after serving as Director of Development at St. John’s College for four years. Prior to that, she worked as Assistant Director of Abraham House, an alternative to incarceration program in the South Bronx; Director of Educational Content Development for K-12 Services for The Princeton Review; and Prevention and Outreach Programmer at a public youth agency in Connecticut. She received her BA from St. John’s College and an MS in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in education evaluation from Fordham University in New York City.
Stefanie the author of "Touchstones Touchpebbles Volume C" and "Courage to Care: Building Community through Service". She also co-authored the Leader’s Guide to "New Landscapes", "Touchstones Exploring American Perspectives", and "Touchstones ‘Alif". In addition, she is the published author of five titles on First Peoples for Children’s Press (Scholastic): "The Maya", "The Inca", "The Nez Perce", "The Iroquois", and "The Seminole".
Sean Hutzell
As project coordinator, Sean organized and helped facilitate the start of Touchstones Veterans‘ Program, Completing the Odyssey: A Journey Home. In addition to orchestrating the functionality of the program meetings themselves, he also participated and assisted the group leaders throughout the program. Working closely with the Library of Congress, Sean was able to take veterans, who completed a project for the Veterans History Project, to the Library of Congress for a private tour and donation ceremony of their stories. In addition to the veterans’ program, he has assisted on new marketing initiatives, executive programing efforts, and advancement efforts for the Legacy Campaign launched in the Fall of 2018.
Sean received a B.A. in International Studies and Humanities with a European Concentration and minors in Studio Art and History from Washington College. In 2017, he completed his master‘s in the Liberal Arts from St. John’s College.
Sharon L. Thomas
Sharon is a National Board Certified English teacher, instructional coach, student advocate, and writer. She earned a B.A. in English at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and an M.Ed. in secondary education at Towson University in Towson, Maryland. A public high school teacher for nearly two decades, she is now working as a consultant and trainer for the organizations responsible for instructional tools she valued most in the classroom: the Touchstones Discussion Project, the Instructional Coaching Group, and the Strategic Instruction Model writing strategies. She is the founder of the Cecil County (Maryland) Teacher Leadership Network and has presented at conferences across North America on the issues of secondary school literacy and teacher leadership.
Howard Zeiderman
Howard helped to launch Touchstones in 1984 to bring a method of active learning and critical thinking to classrooms around the world. He is the primary author of Touchstones curricular volumes educators working in schools and colleges, including more than 30 Touchstones titles. Howard now designs and develops new programs for executives and adult populations and has written and lectured on the Touchstones method and program outcomes.
Under his leadership, more than 5,000,000 million students around the world have participated in Touchstones programs in at least 47 countries and six languages. Over the last 34 years, Zeiderman has worked closely with educators at the local, district, and state level, as well as in teacher training programs and with college faculty. He has trained more than ten thousand teachers in the Touchstones discussion method and continues to innovate and engage new populations in Touchstone programs each year. Howard is working to expand Touchstones programming with veterans and executives.
Howard attended Dartmouth College in NH and graduated with a BA from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. He completed graduate and post-graduate studies in philosophy as a Princeton National Fellow at Princeton University. Since 1973, Zeiderman has been a member of the St. John’s College faculty. He also served as the Director of Executive Seminar Programs worldwide for the Aspen Institute from 2004-2008 and has worked extensively through Touchstones with groups of executive professionals around the globe.