A month after the death of Paul Bruhn, the organization that he built — and ran for decades — has announced a new interim director.
Former St. Albans Mayor Liz Gamache will step into the role at the Preservation Trust of Vermont, leading the organization in its mission of preserving and protecting the state’s architectural heritage.
“It is hard to imagine the Preservation Trust without Paul Bruhn at the helm, working his quiet magic to make Vermont a better place, but he built the organization strong and charged us to carry on its extraordinary work,” board chair Neale Lunderville said in a statement. “Liz Gamache is a smart, skilled, and experienced leader who will guide the trust forward during this important period in our history.”
The job starts in November, and is set to last for one year, while the trust’s board of directors conducts a search for a permanent leader. Gamache said the idea is that the interim director won’t be eligible for the permanent position.
“At least that’s how it was envisioned,” she said. “Just to give the board a chance to steer the organization forward and have space to conduct its search.”
And Gamache is well-acquainted with the inner workings of the board — that’s how she came to be a part of the organization. She’s been serving on the board for the past year, though she first got to know the nonprofit more than a decade ago through economic and community development work she was doing in St. Albans.
When she became mayor in 2012, a position she held until 2018, Gamache said she started to get an even better sense of the kind of impact the trust could have on a downtown — or on a rural community, for that matter.
So after her term was up, she joined the board. But when Bruhn died in September, it started to look as if she’d have an even bigger role at the organization.
“One conversation led to another, and I had the passion for this kind of work, inspired by the legacy that Paul left for us,” Gamache said. “And I’m just honored and humbled and really pleased to be able to take on a different role within the family.”
She said she’s not looking to make any big changes in the coming year. Instead, she wants the trust to continue to have the impact its always had on buildings and communities.
“A big piece of this is about keeping a strong organization rolling,” Gamache said. “We don’t want to skip a beat. This revolves around shepherding an organization through a transition time as we look for our next president.”
Gamache said she’s not sure who should take over the job next, but that she thinks the right person would honor the organization’s values of loving Vermont, its communities and its history — just as Bruhn did.
“You really can’t go into a town where you can’t point to an influence that the Preservation Trust has had and that Paul has played a role in,” she said. “Every community in Vermont was special and unique to him.”
Gamache will start full time in November, working with the trust’s staff of seven other full- and part-time employees.
“Paul is irreplaceable,” Lunderville said, “but his life’s work is the granite on which Preservation Trust will build, grow, and endure.”
