FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 9, 2006

Contact: Crystal L. Noble
Phone: (617) 521-0125
Email: cnoble@casamyrna.org

Casa Myrna Vazquez Appoints Director of Finance & Operations

Casa Myrna Vazquez, Inc. is pleased to announce the appointment of Brenda Smith as the agency's new Director of Finance & Operations. Smith is a CPA and seasoned financial professional with more than twenty years of administrative experience in the areas of financial management, information technology, capital resource management, tax-exempt debt & strategic planning. For the past six years, as Vice President for Administration and Finance, she has directed the business wind down of Bradford College in Haverhill, Massachusetts, prior to which she was Vice President for Fiscal Affairs and Chief Financial Officer at Merrimack College. She has also served in a similar capacity at the School for Field Studies in Beverly, MA.

Earlier in her career, Smith completed several overseas appointments in Asia and Latin America during seven years spent with the Agency for International Development (USAID) as a financial and systems management consultant. An accomplished whitewater river guide, she has led rafting trips in the U.S., Ethiopia and Tanzania. She is also the producer, director and editor of several award winning videos. Smith earned a BS from Bentley College and an MS from Suffolk University.

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Casa Myrna Vazquez is a multicultural organization dedicated to ending domestic violence in the lives of women and children through advocacy, prevention and intervention. What began in 1977 as a single shelter accommodating eight families has grown into New England’s largest provider of shelter and comprehensive services for abused women and their children, with two emergency shelters, three transitional living houses, legal services, mental health counseling, children’s services, housing advocacy and educational outreach.