Our Team

About KDC
Our Team
Board of Directors
Client Highlights
Client List
Partners

The KDC Team

KDC has a unique team of professional consultants, all with many years of cooperative business experience. Our highly skilled experts are available to assist clients with all aspects of business development. We have centers of excellence in business planning, financial forecasting, and legal advising

KDC Staff Members

We have a small, but experienced staff with over 50 combined years of experience, ranging from grassroots organizing to running cooperatives to non-profit administration to Fortune 500 consulting.

Peggy Fogarty

Peggy Fogarty, M.S. is the Executive Director of the Keystone Development Center. She is responsible for providing a broad range of economic, marketing, and organizational development services to groups and associations. Mrs. Fogarty has a deep background in cooperative development and was instrumental in the start-up of Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative, a high-profile success story. Peggy has over 18 years of program development and administration and 15 years teaching in adult education.

She has used her leadership skills to help re-establish our local food system. By focusing on the need to develop physical and social infrastructure, she has served as a resource for farmers, fisheries and agricultural businesses to develop and implement their innovations into financial benefit. She specializes in niche marketing, value added product development, farm business profitability, and food safety. Her strengths as a cooperative development practitioner include:

Feasibility and Business Planning, creating and analyzing financial pro-formas including multi-year revenue modeling, cash flow, balance sheets, and income statement
Market Research, focus groups, surveys, distribution and content management logistics
Organizational Development policy and bi-law development, strategic planning, and board development

Peggy has worked as an Extension Educator with Penn State in Agricultural Economic Development and as the Program Coordinator for the Farm Food Safety Program. Ms. Fogarty is a graduate of University of Arizona where she received her Master’s Degree in Family and Consumer Sciences and Rutgers University where she received her Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Urban Studies.

KDC Consultants

KDC regularly contracts with individuals to provide specific assistance to our cooperative clients. Our consultants have a great depth of experience.

Anthony Adonizio, Esq.

Anthony Adonizio, Esq. has served as counsel to KDC, and has advised KDC clients on a broad scope of cooperative formation and other legal matters, for a number of years. He has 38 years of experience in cooperative, energy, corporate, tax and administrative law, as well as related project development, regulatory, acquisition, finance and legislative matters. He maintains a private legal practice in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, focusing on cooperative, utility, transactional, municipal and corporate law matters.

As part of his legal practice, Mr. Adonizio represents, advises and acts as counsel to a number of cooperatives, corporations, associations and municipal entities. In his energy law practice, he serves as counsel to electric, gas, telecommunications, broadband, renewable energy and fuel supply clients. Additionally, over the course of his career, he has advised and represented virtually all types of cooperative businesses on a broad scope of legal matters. He has served as special counsel in a variety of business acquisition matters, corporate formation and restructurings, and project and corporate financing matters for his clients. He is the author of all of Pennsylvania’s current laws relating to cooperative corporations and cooperative contracts.

Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Adonizio served as Vice President and General Counsel to the Pennsylvania Rural Electric Association and Allegheny Electric Cooperative, Inc. In that capacity, he was responsible for all aspects of the organization’s legal matters, directed the risk management, environmental, property and human resources functions of the organization and advised and represented all of the electric cooperative distribution systems in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

He has served on the Advisory Committee of The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, a national publication for lawyers in corporate practice, and the Editorial Board of Competitive Utility, a nationwide utility trade publication. He has been a frequent guest speaker on cooperative, energy and corporate law subjects before various management and lawyer groups. He has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Waynesburg University, and is active in various civic groups in the Harrisburg area.

Lori Burge

Lori brings with her two decades of co-op business and community organizing experience. She has completed both the Cooperation Works! Cooperative Business Development Training Program and the Democracy At Work Network Peer Advisor Training Program. In addition to her consulting career, she has provided dynamic, visionary, and steadfast leadership in key positions including serving as the General Manager of New Orleans Food Co-op in Louisiana for over five years, and working as the Development Manager of People’s Food Co-op in Portland, Oregon for over seven years.

Her professional emphasis includes co-op education, start-up/expansion, strategic planning, financial feasibility/ budgeting, supply feasibility, capital campaigns and fundraising, community outreach and ownership growth, human resources and staff development, governance, democratic group process, management support, alternative management models, operational systems analysis, as well as diversity and social-justice initiatives.

In addition to her work with Keystone Development Center, she has provided training, resources, and consultation to consumer, worker, producer, shared-services, and hybrid co-op sectors through her work with the Democracy at Work Network, the Northwest Co-op Development Center, People’s Food Co-op, and as a freelance consultant. She was a contributor to Cooperative Grocers’ How to Start a Food Co-op Manual (2010), was a co-founder of both the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives and the Democracy at Work Network, led an ongoing Co-op 101 series in Portland, and has presented as a panelist at numerous conferences and events.

Lori resides in Philadelphia with her partner (another co-op enthusiast), her young daughter (a future cooperator who loves math and spelling), two three legged cats, and her dog (one of eighteen puppies rescued after Hurricane Isaac).

Jen Christopher

Jen Christopher is KDC's IT consultant. She has seven years of experience in the IT industry, with a background in systems integration, software deployment, and technology based business solutions. She has worked with several Pennsylvania based cooperative businesses, including Weavers Way, CreekSide, Swarthmore and Mariposa. Her specialties include point of sale systems, web design, data reporting and analysis, employee training, technical documentation, and inventory management.

Prior to working with KDC, Jen was Director of IT at CreekSide Food Co-op. During that time she also provided point of sale system and general IT support to Swarthmore Co-op. She briefly worked for an IT company in New Orleans before moving back to Pennsylvania to work as an independent consultant

Jim Johnson

Jim Johnson has been in small business for over thirty-five years, and has spent over twenty of those years working with and for co-ops. He's a co-founder of the Democracy At Work Network (www.dawn.coop), the technical assistance service created by the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and currently serves on DAWN's Board of Governors. Jim also currently serves DAWN as a certified Peer Advisor, actively providing technical assistance to worker co-ops, start-ups, and conversions. Jim is a graduate of the CooperationWorks! Training for Cooperative Development Practitioners, and served several years in the CooperationWorks!
(www.cooperationworks.coop) leadership as Chair of CW's Networking Circle

Kurtis Groff

Kurtis Groff, CPA, is a Partner at Simon Lever LLP, one of South Central Pennsylvania’s premier public accounting and consulting firms. He has more than 14 years of accounting and tax experience serving agri-business and cooperatives. He specializes in the unique accounting and tax rules for cooperatives, including patronage allocations and dividends, equity targets, domestic production deduction, 1099 reporting to patron members, and financing. Kurtis has considerable experience establishing budgets for cooperatives and offers guidance to board members on managing finances for success. His goal is to provide exceptional service, honest value and original thought in every client relationship and to maximize the success of those he partners with. He is a member of the AICPA, PICPA, Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and is a board member of the Farm & Home Foundation of Lancaster County

Patricia Russell

Patricia Russell has a diverse background that includes more than 20 years of experience in non-profit administration and corporate management including business consulting, project management, contract management, procurement management and team leadership. She has led diverse teams, creating synergy and unified goal attainment. Patricia also volunteers her time to help organizations that support those who are under served or in need of life skills to care for themselves and their households. Patricia desires to apply her skills to facilitate the growth of nonprofits with a vision to provide hope, direction, and resources at the community level.

KDC Board of Directors

KDC continues to be governed by a volunteer board of directors mostly comprised of professionals in rural development, economic-community development, and education. They are a hands-on board and regularly assist in KDC projects.