MVPC finds itself joining the leagues of organizations that have entered a string of hirings geared toward building capacity and expertise around the regional planning work that we conduct on behalf of our cities and towns. We are excited to introduce our latest team members.

Please join us in welcoming Jennifer Arndt, the Arts and Culture Specialist who represents a joint staff position between ECCF and MVPC geared toward bolstering relationships between the arts and culture community and the planning sector.

As the Arts and Culture Specialist under the MVCulture pilot program coordinated between the Merrimack Valley Planning Commission and Essex County Community Foundation, Jenny will not only focus on building relationships between the arts and culture groups with municipal leaders and staff, she will also work to identity impactful opportunities for investment and inclusion of these groups in the rest of the regional planning work that goes on. As part of this pilot program, our organizations hope to fold arts and culture into many of the already great initiatives that are happening across the valley.

Jenny comes to us as a local artist and community organizer with a background in creative placemaking and art-based nonprofits. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in painting from UMass Amherst. In her free time, she enjoys making collage art, riding rollercoasters, and spending time with her husband, two children, and her dog, a giant Leonberger, Rory.

Jenny’s addition marks an important milestone for MVPC in that this is a lane of planning which we have been excited to incorporate more robustly into our long range regional plans like the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, the Priority Growth Strategy, and many others. She isn’t the only milestone hiring we are celebrating this month however.

In addition to this milestone pilot program, MVPC is celebrating the addition of another set of permanent hands in the GIS program to help meet the growing technical needs of the region. We would also like to extend a warm welcome to our new GIS Analyst, Sarah Reny.

As one of two GIS Analysts on staff at MVPC, Sarah is primarily responsible for supporting the mobile and desktop application program which works to facilitate many of the asset management and monitoring initiatives happening at the community level. Her work is to provide technical support for internal, community and partner projects with data development, web mapping and application development where needed. She works in conjunction with our other analyst to manage the different systems that feed into and make up our GIS Ecosystem.

Before joining MVPC, Sarah earned her Master’s in Natural Resources Environmental Conversation and Sustainability at the University of New Hampshire. Her research focused on forest inventory biometric estimation using unpiloted aerial system- light detection and ranging (UAS-LiDAR) and UAS-photogrammetry. To this role, Sarah brings a Federal Aviation Administration Part 107 drone pilot license, imagery and LiDAR data analysis skills, and knowledge of the changing New England climate. Prior to graduate school, she earned her B.A. in Biological Sciences from the University of New Hampshire Manchester and worked as an environmental consultant for Vanasse Hangen-Brustlin. Credentials that make her an excellent fit to ramp up our technical offerings and provide a new level of delivery to our communities.

When she isn’t hanging out in front of the computer, Sarah lives in southern New Hampshire and enjoys spending her spare time with her dog, family, and friends.

We want to take a minute to acknowledge that these hirings and the many programs we speak about here would not be possible without the continued support of our member communities, the confidence in us to provide a high level of service and the commitment of our Commissioners, as well as our staff who are are driven to make a positive change in our region. Thank you!

For more information about the Arts and Culture pilot program or the GIS program’s offerings, check out our programmatic pages and get in touch.