Lisa McMahon—School Board Profile

After her first child was born, she chose Vermont.

New Randolph School Board member Lisa McMahon and her husband Tom grew up in Connecticut and were living in Stamford when their daughter Lindsey was born in 1997.

They decided then to "change our direction," McMahon explained in a Herald interview this week. "We wanted a nice way of life where we could bring up our kids."

Lisa and Tom had skied in southern Vermont and shopped in Manchester but didn't know Central Vermont. However, when a friend at Vermont Law School told them about a home for sale on Highland Avenue, they decided to check it out. They liked it, pulled up stakes in Connecticut and moved up.

Lisa said she couldn't be happier. It's just a great place to be," she said. "There are a lot of young families, and it's a close-knit community."

Their own family is bigger already, with the addition of Tom Jr., who was born at Gifford Medical Center, has been an "I'm One" baby in The Herald, and soon will turn two.

The transition has been a little harder on her husband, Lisa allowed.

Tom works with the National Fire Protection Agency in Connecticut, and lives there during the week. Additionally, he has broken his neck falling off a ladder and was bitten by a spider so badly that he was affected for months.

"He's OK now," she said. He likes it here, too, she claimed.

As for running for the school board, Lisa McMahon said simply, "I just wanted to be involved and help out. I believe when an opportunity comes up, you should take it."

McMahon, who was an office manager in Stanford, is staying home with her kids, so being on the board gives her an outlet for her other energies, she said.

Like the other new board member, Matthew Poirer, McMahon has been impressed with the quality of the school personnel she's gotten to know—and impressed also with how much there is to know about being a school board member.

She's assigned herself to the curriculum committee and to the action planning committee.

"I'll plug along at it, and I'll learn," she said. "It feels so great, in meeting with teachers, just to see the dedication. It really makes me feel so confident and grateful.

"These are nice people," she reflected, "good people."