Advisors
Marianne Jackson, M.D.
Marianne Jackson, M.D., served New Hampshire’s North Country as an ob-gyn for 25 years before leaving to complete a master’s degree in public health at the University of North Carolina. There she worked in patient safety and quality until happily returning to the Mt. Washington Valley in January of 2015.
Now retired from health care and living in Madison, she is executive director of the Gibson Center for Senior Services in North Conway. Among her many efforts there, she co-coordinated the 12-town Age-Friendly Community initiative that uses the AARP/WHO model of Livable Communities to bring improvements in Housing, Health, Transportation, Community Connections and Outdoor Spaces to the region.
Marianne is dedicated to making conversations about end-of-life decision making a natural and comfortable topic for families. She’s presented “The Natural Causes of Death,” promoting informed-decision making in end-of-life choices, in many communities and she’s worked with Memorial Hospital to have all employees familiar with Advanced Directives. She serves on the state’s Health Care Decisions Coalition which is part of the Foundation for Healthy Communities in. She attends the Governor’s Commission on Aging with an ear toward end-of-life and age-friendly issues. For fun, she sits on the Tin Mountain Energy Team that promotes renewable energy and reduction of energy waste.
Marianne was honored to receive the Joseph A. Vaughan Award given by the governor to a person from each county in recognition of exemplary volunteer efforts on behalf of New Hampshire’s older adults. The MWV Age-Friendly Community Action Plan that she drafted with other Gibson Center leaders won the New Hampshire Plan of the Year Award in 2019, and most recently it won the Northern New England Planners Association award for Plan of the Year.
She is pleased to be an advisor to NH Options with other very talented and experienced advocates.
Valerie Lovelace
Val is the founder and executive director of Maine Death with Dignity, a 501(c)(3) non-profit established in 2014.
The overall mission of Maine Death with Dignity is providing services, education, and end-of-life advocacy to people who wish to actively explore the meaning of life through embracing the certainty of death.
From 2013 through 2019, Val organized and led Maine’s grassroots effort to pass a medical-aid-in-dying law. The Maine Death with Dignity Act went into effect on September 19, 2019. Val mentors and collaborates with grassroots leaders in other states still trying to pass this legislation.
Among other end-of-life topics, Val educates on the history of medical assistance in dying in the U.S., how the laws work, and the eligibility requirements for receiving life-ending medication a terminally ill patient may take on their own to end their life peacefully and humanely at a time of their own choosing.
She is the mother of three adult children and an accomplished artist. When she isn’t “doing death stuff” (her son’s description), she spends her time enjoying two amazing grandsons and working on a variety of creative projects.
Val is a retired Navy veteran of 20 years. She holds a Master of Science degree in human relations from Husson University in Bangor, Maine, and a B.S. in industrial technology from the University of Southern Maine.
Val received ordination in June, 2022 from the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine.
Betsy McConnell
Betsy McConnell is a retired psychotherapist who has recently taken up full time residence in Sugar Hill.
Betsy worked as an intern in a hospital setting, and she has had private practices in New York City, Boston, Seattle, and Pittsburgh. She has deep regard for the stories that animate people’s lives and especially how they confront illness, death, and loss. They’ve motivated her to try to help reduce the trauma that can be accompany these challenges, and help people find meaning in the midst of loss that makes life worth living.
Betsy has been an active participant in the Episcopal Church. Betsy and her husband, Dorsey, have helped support Pilgrim Africa by teaching and offering trauma training in Uganda since 2007.
Betsy has enjoyed camping and sea kayaking in British Columbia, and loves hiking and cross-country skiing in the White Mountains. She has a reverence for this region and the people who live here.
Robb Miller
Robb has spent the past 20+ years as an activist for better end-of-life care and expanded choice, including medical aid in dying.
With advanced degrees in applied science and kinesiology, and American College of Sports Medicine certification, he started his career working as an athletic director and kinesiologist.
After witnessing his father and his own long-time partner experience bad deaths in the mid 1990s, Robb embarked on a new career in end-of-life advocacy. He became executive director of the organization now known as End of Life Washington (EOLWA), which he led from 2000 – 2015. Robb was a leader and spokesperson for the initiative to pass the Washington Death with Dignity Act, which received nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2009.
Robb is the author of several groundbreaking advance planning documents, including EOLWA’s Hospital Visitation Authorization for LGBTQ people, a comprehensive Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare that set a new standard for advance planning documents in Washington, and two first-of-their kind advance planning tools for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia: the “Living With Dementia Mental Health Directive” and “My Instructions for Oral Feeding and Drinking.”
Currently, Robb is executive director emeritus of EOLWA and serves on its public policy and legal committee. He is a member of the National Voluntary Stopping Eating Drinking Advance Directive Committee. In addition to working with NH Options, he is an advisor to Arizona End of Life Options, End of Life Choices California, and the New Zealand Ministry of Health.