About the BCC
Staff & Board of Directors
Blackstone Community Center Staff
R. Keith Houston, Administrative Coordinator
Marco A. Torres, Program Supervisor
Frank Feliciano, Athletic Director
Paul DeVoe-Edwards, Building Manager
Keith Spady, Youth Worker
Jorge Figueroa, Lifeguard
Ernest Williams, Lifeguard
Board of Directors
Catherine Infantino, Interim-President
Catherine Infantino is Director of Operations of Slabmedia, a family run South End website design company that creates custom design, self-edited websites. Catherine is also stay at home Mom of two daughters and an avid rower.
After rowing at Boston University, Catherine spent the better part of 15 years as an Olympic Hopeful in rowing. Results include a US National Championship Title, and numerous other podium results, both in the US and overseas. Catherine trains in Boston on the Charles River at the Union Boat Club.
David Kay, Vice President
David has over 17 years of experience in the fields of: fundraising; event planning; community and youth development; public relations/marketing; arts administration; and violence prevention. Currently, David serves as the Director of Development for IBA-Inquilinos Boricuas En Acción.Working at IBA for the past decade, David’s leadership has helped spur dramatic fundraising and corresponding programmatic growth. During David’s tenure, IBA’s operating budget has grown from $2.2 million in 2003 to $3.4 million in 2013.
Actively involved in the organization’s program development, David has helped shape numerous IBA programs, including: the Cacique Youth Learning Center, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts and the Pathway Technology Campus, a national model of a community-based organization working with a community college (Bunker Hill Community College) for the educational benefits of affordable housing residents. While at IBA, David has written successful grants (e.g. Boston Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Hyams Foundation, the Yawkey Foundation, etc.) and helped IBA garner numerous awards, including: the Massachusetts Commonwealth Award; Citizens Bank Champion in Action and APAP/MetLife’s National Award for Arts Access in Underserved Communities.
David previously worked for four years at Northeastern University’s Mentors in Violence in Prevention Program, a program of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society and NU’s Brudnick Center for the Study of Conflict and Violence. He also served for one year as an AmeriCorps volunteer, which included running a youth program at Nuestra Comunidad. David has a Master’s Degree in Sociology from Northeastern University with a focus on race, class and gender and a Bachelors of Arts from Clark University where he earned the H. Donaldson Jordan Prize, the university’s top history award for an undergraduate.
Guided by these experiences, he has helped to shape IBA’s response to neighborhood youth violence and has served on steering committees for Boston Foundation’s Street Safe Initiative, Youth Unite, the Boston Community Learning Project (MIT) and Critical Breakdown. He currently serves as a Board member of the Blackstone Community Center. David is co-founder of the One Hood Peace Basketball League, a free summer program for youth living in South End/Lower Roxbury housing developments that is entering its eighth year.
A social justice dreamer and community builder, David also has an extensive background in arts administration and has taken a lead organizing role in selecting and presenting multi-media performances at IBA’s Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (Hurricane Season by Climbing Poetree http://tinyurl.com/c397r3j and ReOrientalism, http://www.turbotabla.com/reo/). He also helped conceptualize and implement a public speaking tour for Pepón Osorio http://institute.emerson.edu/pepon_final.pdf. For three years, David served as a volunteer for youth poetry organizations Cloud Place and Critical Breakdown. In 2011, he earned a Berklee College of Music Urban Service Award for his work in helping to develop the Tito Puente Latin Music Series, IBA’s partnership with Berklee College of Music and the City of Boston’s Park Department that bring free concerts to Boston’s Parks. The Berwick Research Institute Awarded David an Artist Grant in 2012 for a project called Coffee Alley.
Amparo “Chary” Ortiz, Treasurer
Anne Smart, Secretary
Caroline Foscato
Haywood Fennell
Haywood Fennell, Sr. is a Vietnam Era Veteran. He is the playwright of the play, “Harlem Renaissance Revisited With a Gospel Flavor” an annually produced play with an intergenerational cast that uses history as source material. He is an author and is in the process of self-publishing his third Coota book to complete the Coota Trilogy and is presently developing an animated 3D movie trailer based on the first book, “Coota and the Magic Quilt” for pitching to potential investors to finance a full featured animated 3D movie. The Coota Trilogy focuses on a little boy who resides in Boston and how he learns to develop positive character traits for positive behavior.
Haywood was a member of the Founders team for Tri-Ad Veterans League, Inc., a Veteran’s advocacy organization for Veteran’s rights and initiated the plan for the Oscar Micheaux Family Theater Program and teaches youth and their families from a thematic theater curriculum and Black History. He helped to organize “The State of Minority Veterans” which was a collaboration between other community based organizations and Northeastern University working closely with the late Dr. Joseph Warren, a Veteran and Dr. Hortensia Amaro to develop a scientific survey tool with findings on Health Disparities felt among Minority Veterans and the VA Health Care System that was later presented by Haywood at a workshop during an annual Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C.
He has written other plays and has been on the speaking tour to colleges as a Motivation Speaker based on the dynamics of the Harlem Renaissance Era. Haywood has received many awards and citations to include the prestigious Otto Snowden Award for Community Development, the Civic Ventures Fellows Award for his work in literacy and Boston Neighborhood Fellows Award for his service in outreach education regarding HIV/AIDS. He is the Host of Speaking About, a monthly BNNTV program for the last nine-years. Haywood goes into the prisons and jails speaking to the residents about the importance of changing their thinking and coming out with a determination not to go back. He is a father, grandfather and Great Grandfather. He served nearly six years in the US Army as a clerk, photographer and lastly as an information specialist. Haywood attended Boston University and graduated from U/Mass Boston with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Fritz Klaetke
The offspring of an architect and a painter, Fritz Klaetke was genetically pre-destined to be a designer. He grew up in Detroit and founded his creative agency, Visual Dialogue, in 1988 while still a student at the University of Michigan. Since 1989 Klaetke has worked in Boston’s historic South End neighborhood, where he lives with his partner Susan Battista and their daughter Ava.
Visual Dialogue’s work ranges from brand identity to music packaging, print collateral to websites, magazines to sculpture, and book design to interiors. Clients include the Cambridge Office of Tourism, Harvard University, Himmel Hospitality Group (Grill 23, Harvest, Post 390), Institute of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, Moshe Safdie and Associates, and Smithsonian Institution.
Klaetke has received recognition from organizations including the Ad Club of Boston, American Institute of Graphic Arts, Art Directors Club, BostInno, MITX, Type Directors Club, Webby Awards, and a Grammy in 2013 for package design. Klaetke’s work has been featured in publications such as The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Communications Arts, HOW, I.D., Novum, Print, and Sports Illustrated. In addition, several of Klaetke’s projects are included in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City. (For more see www.visualdialogue.com)
John P. Puleo, Esq.
John P. Puleo, Esq., is a trial attorney at Hamrock & Tocci in Cambridge, MA. Mr. Puleo has over thirty years of litigation experience, both civil and criminal. Mr. Puleo served as a criminal prosecutor for 19 years, first in Detroit and then in Boston. For the past 13 years, Mr. Puleo has concentrated primarily on civil litigation, with a specialization in medical malpractice defense. Mr. Puleo regularly represents health care professionals and institutions in judicial and administrative proceedings. Mr. Puleo’s practice areas of concentration also include employment matters, administrative law and criminal defense.
Mr. Puleo was admitted to the federal bar and the state bar of Michigan in 1981, and to the Massachusetts bar in 1990. Mr. Puleo received a J.D. from the University of Detroit in 1981, and a B.S. (Accounting and Criminal Justice) from Villanova University in 1978. Over the past twenty years Mr. Puleo has also taught extensively, including at Northeast University, the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Training Council, and numerous other colleges and schools. Mr. Puleo has been a faulty member for the Massachusetts Bar Association and his writing has been published in the Massachusetts Law Review.
Justin Rice
A Metro Detroit native, Justin Rice is a Michigan State University (Go Spartans!) and Northeastern University graduate. Rice lives in the South End with his dog, son and wife, who unfortunately attended the University of Michigan …his wife, that is.He is a freelance journalist who covers local news for the Boston Globe and has a passion for covering Olympic and Paralympic sport as well as Boston Public School athletics.
R. Keith Houston, Administrative Coordinator
Marco A. Torres, Program Supervisor
Frank Feliciano, Athletic Director
Paul DeVoe-Edwards, Building Manager
Keith Spady, Youth Worker
Jorge Figueroa, Lifeguard
Ernest Williams, Lifeguard
Board of Directors
Catherine Infantino, Interim-President
Catherine Infantino is Director of Operations of Slabmedia, a family run South End website design company that creates custom design, self-edited websites. Catherine is also stay at home Mom of two daughters and an avid rower.
After rowing at Boston University, Catherine spent the better part of 15 years as an Olympic Hopeful in rowing. Results include a US National Championship Title, and numerous other podium results, both in the US and overseas. Catherine trains in Boston on the Charles River at the Union Boat Club.
David Kay, Vice President
David has over 17 years of experience in the fields of: fundraising; event planning; community and youth development; public relations/marketing; arts administration; and violence prevention. Currently, David serves as the Director of Development for IBA-Inquilinos Boricuas En Acción.Working at IBA for the past decade, David’s leadership has helped spur dramatic fundraising and corresponding programmatic growth. During David’s tenure, IBA’s operating budget has grown from $2.2 million in 2003 to $3.4 million in 2013.
Actively involved in the organization’s program development, David has helped shape numerous IBA programs, including: the Cacique Youth Learning Center, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts and the Pathway Technology Campus, a national model of a community-based organization working with a community college (Bunker Hill Community College) for the educational benefits of affordable housing residents. While at IBA, David has written successful grants (e.g. Boston Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Hyams Foundation, the Yawkey Foundation, etc.) and helped IBA garner numerous awards, including: the Massachusetts Commonwealth Award; Citizens Bank Champion in Action and APAP/MetLife’s National Award for Arts Access in Underserved Communities.
David previously worked for four years at Northeastern University’s Mentors in Violence in Prevention Program, a program of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society and NU’s Brudnick Center for the Study of Conflict and Violence. He also served for one year as an AmeriCorps volunteer, which included running a youth program at Nuestra Comunidad. David has a Master’s Degree in Sociology from Northeastern University with a focus on race, class and gender and a Bachelors of Arts from Clark University where he earned the H. Donaldson Jordan Prize, the university’s top history award for an undergraduate.
Guided by these experiences, he has helped to shape IBA’s response to neighborhood youth violence and has served on steering committees for Boston Foundation’s Street Safe Initiative, Youth Unite, the Boston Community Learning Project (MIT) and Critical Breakdown. He currently serves as a Board member of the Blackstone Community Center. David is co-founder of the One Hood Peace Basketball League, a free summer program for youth living in South End/Lower Roxbury housing developments that is entering its eighth year.
A social justice dreamer and community builder, David also has an extensive background in arts administration and has taken a lead organizing role in selecting and presenting multi-media performances at IBA’s Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (Hurricane Season by Climbing Poetree http://tinyurl.com/c397r3j and ReOrientalism, http://www.turbotabla.com/reo/). He also helped conceptualize and implement a public speaking tour for Pepón Osorio http://institute.emerson.edu/pepon_final.pdf. For three years, David served as a volunteer for youth poetry organizations Cloud Place and Critical Breakdown. In 2011, he earned a Berklee College of Music Urban Service Award for his work in helping to develop the Tito Puente Latin Music Series, IBA’s partnership with Berklee College of Music and the City of Boston’s Park Department that bring free concerts to Boston’s Parks. The Berwick Research Institute Awarded David an Artist Grant in 2012 for a project called Coffee Alley.
Amparo “Chary” Ortiz, Treasurer
Anne Smart, Secretary
Caroline Foscato
Haywood Fennell
Haywood Fennell, Sr. is a Vietnam Era Veteran. He is the playwright of the play, “Harlem Renaissance Revisited With a Gospel Flavor” an annually produced play with an intergenerational cast that uses history as source material. He is an author and is in the process of self-publishing his third Coota book to complete the Coota Trilogy and is presently developing an animated 3D movie trailer based on the first book, “Coota and the Magic Quilt” for pitching to potential investors to finance a full featured animated 3D movie. The Coota Trilogy focuses on a little boy who resides in Boston and how he learns to develop positive character traits for positive behavior.
Haywood was a member of the Founders team for Tri-Ad Veterans League, Inc., a Veteran’s advocacy organization for Veteran’s rights and initiated the plan for the Oscar Micheaux Family Theater Program and teaches youth and their families from a thematic theater curriculum and Black History. He helped to organize “The State of Minority Veterans” which was a collaboration between other community based organizations and Northeastern University working closely with the late Dr. Joseph Warren, a Veteran and Dr. Hortensia Amaro to develop a scientific survey tool with findings on Health Disparities felt among Minority Veterans and the VA Health Care System that was later presented by Haywood at a workshop during an annual Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C.
He has written other plays and has been on the speaking tour to colleges as a Motivation Speaker based on the dynamics of the Harlem Renaissance Era. Haywood has received many awards and citations to include the prestigious Otto Snowden Award for Community Development, the Civic Ventures Fellows Award for his work in literacy and Boston Neighborhood Fellows Award for his service in outreach education regarding HIV/AIDS. He is the Host of Speaking About, a monthly BNNTV program for the last nine-years. Haywood goes into the prisons and jails speaking to the residents about the importance of changing their thinking and coming out with a determination not to go back. He is a father, grandfather and Great Grandfather. He served nearly six years in the US Army as a clerk, photographer and lastly as an information specialist. Haywood attended Boston University and graduated from U/Mass Boston with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Fritz Klaetke
The offspring of an architect and a painter, Fritz Klaetke was genetically pre-destined to be a designer. He grew up in Detroit and founded his creative agency, Visual Dialogue, in 1988 while still a student at the University of Michigan. Since 1989 Klaetke has worked in Boston’s historic South End neighborhood, where he lives with his partner Susan Battista and their daughter Ava.
Visual Dialogue’s work ranges from brand identity to music packaging, print collateral to websites, magazines to sculpture, and book design to interiors. Clients include the Cambridge Office of Tourism, Harvard University, Himmel Hospitality Group (Grill 23, Harvest, Post 390), Institute of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, Moshe Safdie and Associates, and Smithsonian Institution.
Klaetke has received recognition from organizations including the Ad Club of Boston, American Institute of Graphic Arts, Art Directors Club, BostInno, MITX, Type Directors Club, Webby Awards, and a Grammy in 2013 for package design. Klaetke’s work has been featured in publications such as The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Communications Arts, HOW, I.D., Novum, Print, and Sports Illustrated. In addition, several of Klaetke’s projects are included in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City. (For more see www.visualdialogue.com)
John P. Puleo, Esq.
John P. Puleo, Esq., is a trial attorney at Hamrock & Tocci in Cambridge, MA. Mr. Puleo has over thirty years of litigation experience, both civil and criminal. Mr. Puleo served as a criminal prosecutor for 19 years, first in Detroit and then in Boston. For the past 13 years, Mr. Puleo has concentrated primarily on civil litigation, with a specialization in medical malpractice defense. Mr. Puleo regularly represents health care professionals and institutions in judicial and administrative proceedings. Mr. Puleo’s practice areas of concentration also include employment matters, administrative law and criminal defense.
Mr. Puleo was admitted to the federal bar and the state bar of Michigan in 1981, and to the Massachusetts bar in 1990. Mr. Puleo received a J.D. from the University of Detroit in 1981, and a B.S. (Accounting and Criminal Justice) from Villanova University in 1978. Over the past twenty years Mr. Puleo has also taught extensively, including at Northeast University, the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Training Council, and numerous other colleges and schools. Mr. Puleo has been a faulty member for the Massachusetts Bar Association and his writing has been published in the Massachusetts Law Review.
Justin Rice
A Metro Detroit native, Justin Rice is a Michigan State University (Go Spartans!) and Northeastern University graduate. Rice lives in the South End with his dog, son and wife, who unfortunately attended the University of Michigan …his wife, that is.He is a freelance journalist who covers local news for the Boston Globe and has a passion for covering Olympic and Paralympic sport as well as Boston Public School athletics.
He sits on the Blackstone Franklin Square Neighborhood Association board and helps plan the annual fundraising celebration for America Scores Boston, an after-school soccer and creative writing program for Boston public school students.
He is also a mentor and Advisory Committee member of the Alray Scholars Program, which gives promising Boston students who need a second chance at college through scholarships and mentoring.
Caroline Foscato