Since August 2011, Claire Parde has served as the Executive Director of the  Healthcare Consortium, a not-for-profit organization that was formed in 1998 to improve access to healthcare and support the health and well-being of people in the rural communities of Columbia and Greene Counties.  In this role, Claire is a member of the Columbia County Community Services Board, the Columbia Greene Addiction Coalition, Assemblymember Didi Barrett’s Human Services Advisory Council, Congressman Antonio Delgado’s Healthcare Advisory Committee, and the Community Advisory Council of the NYSHealth Foundation.  In addition to serving on the board of the Catskill Hudson Area Health Education Center, she is also a Director on the boards of Twin County Recovery Services, the New York State Association for Rural Health, and Columbia Memorial Hospital.

Prior to joining the Healthcare Consortium in 2011, Claire coordinated the Community Health and Wellness Programs at Cornell Cooperative Extension Associations of Greene and Columbia Counties, her first job in the region since moving from her native New Jersey in 2007.  She had previously worked on issues of poverty and justice at the Community Service Society of New York and the Urban Justice Center and on food and farm system policy and practice at the Kansas Rural Center and the New Jersey Urban Ecology Program. Claire has an undergraduate degree from Rutgers University in Natural Resource Management and a graduate degree from Hunter College in Applied Social Research.   She lives in the Village of Athens in Greene County with her husband and two children, ages 10 and 13.  When she’s not reorganizing the kitchen cabinets, she loves reading in bed, gardening, and needlework.