WILMINGTON — DVFiber has hired Gabrielle (Gabby) Ciuffreda, of Guilford, as the communications union district's first executive director, effective Sept. 1.
Ciuffreda comes to the organization - charged with “bringing reliable, affordable broadband to all areas of the service region,” she said in a news release - with deep experience in project management and community building, as well as nearly 20 years of legal, asset management, and real estate development experience.
Recently, she helped to oversee the financing and redevelopment of a $31 million rehabilitation of three historic buildings in downtown Bennington that were repurposed for commercial and mixed-income housing. She has focused on mixed-use and industrial development, historic renovation, and brownfields environmental remediation.
She called the infrastructure “critical to the ongoing success of businesses, communities, and individuals in our area.”
Ciuffreda chairs the Windham Regional Planning Commission and its Brownfields Steering Committee, and she has also served at the state level as a member of the Vermont Downtown Development Board, which supports the preservation and enhancement of the state's downtowns and village centers and distributes the state's rehabilitation tax credits as well as various grants.
She served on her town's Selectboard for four years and on a non-profit board whose mission was to renovate and repurpose the historic Guilford Grange Hall into the Broad Brook Community Center.
DVFiber Board Chair Steven John hailed Ciuffreda's “professional education, experience, and local insight to take our municipal corporation from pre-construction to the completion of our universal fiber service plan.”