Trustee Biographies

Lakshmi is a physician who specializes in Internal Medicine and Hospice and Palliative Medicine. She is currently the Medical Director of the Palliative Care Program at the University of Maryland Shore Regional Health. In addition to the clinical care of patients, Lakshmi has leadership experience in health care, having chaired and served on a number of hospital committees and initiatives. Her passion is innovation in health care delivery that can improve quality and affordability.

 

Lakshmi completed her medical school at Grant Medical College, Mumbai, India. She then went on to complete a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. A life-long learner, Lakshmi recently graduated from the Executive MBA program at the University of Maryland R. H. Smith School of Business. Lakshmi lives in Easton with her husband, Dr. John Foley and their children Tara (‘23) and Arjun (‘25).

   

Talli Oxnam is the Senior Vice President and Wealth Management Manager of Wye Financial Partners, a financial services firm offering full-service investment and insurance solutions.

Growing up in Baltimore, Talli attended Roland Park Country School and Garrison Forest School and went to college at the University of Puget Sound outside Seattle, Washington. She is a graduate of the American Bankers Association Advanced Trust School, as well as Leadership Maryland.

Talli moved to the Eastern Shore with her husband, Geoff, in 2000 and spent her early career as Chief Operating Officer for custom-builder Ilex Construction, a residential construction and architectural woodworking firm.

Talli has served on the Board of The Country School Parent’s Association, Talbot County Young Professionals, Tred Avon Yacht Club Junior Sailing, and Talbot Country Club. She is the Past President of the Women and Girls Fund of the Mid-Shore, Past Chair of Junior Achievement of Talbot County, and Past Vestry Member, Treasurer, and Investment and Endowment Committee Member of Christ Church - St. Peter's Parish.

Currently, Talli is on the Board of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Camp Wright and a member of the Shore Regional Health Investment Committee.

Talli and Geoff live in Cooke’s Hope with their two children. Charlotte is senior at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Nick is a freshman at the University of Virginia. Both Charlotte and Nick graduated from The County School and Talli and Geoff credit much of their children’s academic success to the excellent foundation they gained from the school.
    

Doug Walker graduated from St. Maria Goretti High School in Hagerston, Maryland in 1995, St. Mary's College of Maryland in St. Mary's City, Maryland in 1999 and the University of Baltimore School of Law in 2002. 

 

After graduation, he immediately began practicing in Towson, Maryland at Royston, Muller, McLean and Reid, LLP. After five years in Towson he accepted a position at Miles & Stockbridge, P.C. and moved to Easton with his wife (Melissa) and daughter (Mia) in July of 2007. In December of 2016 he stared his own law firm (McAllister, DeTar, Showalter & Walker, LLC) and over the last two years the new firm has been representing a variety of mostly local individuals, business, and financial institutions in addition to a handful of national private equity firms and/or financial institutions throughout the state of Maryland. In addition to a variety of local affiliations, Mr. Walker has been Co-Vice Chair (2010-2014) and Chair (2014-2015) of the Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies Committee of the American Bar Assocaition's Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section. 

 

Daughters Mia ('21) and Emma ('23) came to the Country School for the 2017-18 school year and Chloe ('27) will begin Kindergarten in the fall of 2018. 

 

   

JoAnn Asparagus-Murray retired from the position of Caroline County magistrate in 2022 after 25 years of helping families solve their problems through the court system.  She began her legal career at the Legal Aide Bureau, ultimately becoming the Chief Attorney of the Upper Eastern Shore Office.  Later, she worked as an Assistant State’s Attorney, a staff attorney for the Office of the Public Defender and practiced privately for a number of years.  In 1996, she was sworn in as the first Domestic Relations Master (now Family Law Magistrate) on the Eastern Shore for the second Judicial Circuit that includes Caroline, Talbot, Kent and Queen Anne’s Counties.  Jo Ann has a long history of service to the community. Among the many groups she has had the privilege of being involved with are the following: 

•    Past president and member of the Talbot County Board of Education
•    Elected to the Democratic Central Committee in 1990
•    Former Trustee of the Country School
•    Graduate of the Shore Leadership Program
•    Former Mentor, Talbot Mentors, Inc.
•    Member, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority
•    Life Member, NAACP
•    Former Board member Habitat for Humanity Board
•    Former Member Talbot Interfaith Shelter Board
•    Past President of the John Quinton Foundation
•    Advisory Board Mid-Shore Pro Bono
•    Former member Caroline County YMCA Advisory Board
•    Current Member Talbot County Public Schools Education Foundation

Jo Ann was born in Salisbury, Maryland and moved to Easton at the age of six. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh.  She received her Jurist Doctorate from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa.  She resides in McDaniel, Maryland with her husband, Vernon D. Murray, Sr,  and has one son, Vernon Dallas Murray, Jr,  a 2000 graduate of The Country School. 


 

Jessi Walter Brelsford is the Founder and CEO of Taste Buds Kitchen, a franchise brand that offers cooking classes, camps, parties and corporate events in locations around the country. Prior to founding Taste Buds Kitchen, Jessi worked on Wall Street for six years where she was a Vice President at Bear Stearns in fixed income sales and trading. 

 

Jessi was born and raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and is a 1995 graduate of The Country School. She is a graduate of St. Andrew’s High School and Harvard University with a degree in Economics where she was a Division I swimmer.

 

Jessi and her husband Jeff moved to Queenstown in 2014 from New York City. They have three children, including a Pre-K student at The Country School and almost two year old twins. Jessi is looking forward to giving back to The Country School. She has wonderful memories from her time at the school and is excited for her children to share in her experience.

 

 

Tim Cureton is Owner and CEO of Rise Up Coffee, an independent coffee company based out of Easton, Maryland. Tim graduated from Salisbury University, earning both a B.A. in Sociology and a Master’s in Education. After college, Tim’s desire to travel and interest in other cultures drove him to volunteer for the Peace Corps. Tim would have what would prove to be a life changing coffee experience while traveling home from his service in Micronesia. His love affair with coffee had begun. In 2005, Tim along with Abby West opened the first Rise Up Coffee in St. Michaels, Maryland. What started as one small coffee trailer in a parking lot, has evolved into five iconic locations. From the complexity of taste, its global reach and the connection provided to other world cultures, Tim finds continuous fascination through his life in coffee. Any time away from coffee is time spent with the greatest individual humanity has ever known, Tim’s seven year old son, Koa (‘24). Tim Cureton currently resides in Easton, Maryland.

 

 

Eric Del Monaco is an entrepreneur and investment banking professional with 24 years of experience in the global fixed income markets. Eric is the founder of Narrow Pass Partners, an investment firm focused on providing capital solutions to small and medium-sized life insurance companies. Prior to Narrow Pass, he was an initial seed investor and the former Chief Risk Officer at American Life & Security Co. and Midwest Holdings, a publicly traded annuity company. Prior to Midwest, Eric held senior roles in New York at several global banks including Natixis CIB, a division of France-based Groupe BPCE, where he served as the Head of Global Markets Americas, Japan-based Nomura Securities where he also served as a Managing Director and member of the Americas Global Markets Executive Committee. From 2006 to 2009, Eric held senior positions at Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital in New York, where he

specialized in credit. He also spent five years in London as part of Citigroup’s European Credit business where he focused on clients in Emerging Europe and the Middle East. His finance career started at Chase Manhattan Bank as a leveraged credit analyst.

Eric has served on several boards and currently serves as a director for Safeware, Inc. a Maryland-based national leader in protective safety equipment, first responder protection and tactical safety. He is also

an alumnus of Haymakers for Hope, an amateur boxing organization that provides funding for cancer research.

Eric holds a Bachelor of Science in Quantitative Economics from Tufts University.

Eric has two children at The Country School; Lach is in second grade and John is in fourth grade.

   

Harriette is an active affiliated member of St. Stephen’s A.M.E. Church in Unionville (Easton, MD) and a member of St. Ann Catholic Church in Baltimore.  She was born and raised in Talbot County until her family moved to Baltimore, MD at the age of 14.  She was married (47 years) to Eric Lowery and they have one son, Bomani, daughter-in-law, Jacqueline and two awesome grandsons, Brendon & Cameron.  Harriette has spent most of her career working for the City of Baltimore, 25 years in the Baltimore City Health Department as Assistant Training Coordinator for Sexually Transmitted Disease and 10 years as Executive Assistant to the Directors of Budget & Finance at City Hall.  In 1998, her family moved back to the Eastern Shore of Maryland (Talbot County).  For the last 16 years, she has worked at Chesapeake College encouraging and supporting the academic and social growth of the student population.  Two programs in particular are the SAIL program (Success And Interactive Learning) for first semester college students and FOCUS (First-Generation student Opportunity for Career and Ultimate Success) design for first-time male students.  Both programs offer strategies on how to navigate and be successful in college, academically and socially.

 

Harriette’s labor of love has been working with the Frederick Douglass Honor Society in partnership with other organizations on the Eastern Shore to educate, promote and preserve the history and the contributions of African-American citizens past and present on the Eastern Shore, especially in Talbot County.  It all began when she learned of the 18 Civil War Union soldiers (free and former enslaved blacks) who founded the village of Unionville, are buried there, and of which she is a direct descendent. 

   

Ereni Gleason Malfa became the first alumna head of school for St. Paul's School for Girls in July 2019. Prior to returning to SPSG, she was head of the Upper School at Roland Park Country School, an independent school for girls in preschool through grade 12, where she had an exemplary tenure as an administrator and faculty member. Ereni is a lifelong science

educator and school administrator with 28 years of service. A Baltimore native, Ereni earned a Bachelor of Arts in Earth and Planetary Sciences and a Master of Science in Education, both from Johns Hopkins University after graduating from SPSG. Ereni currently serves on the Board of The Heads Network and the Board of Governors for the IAAM (Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland). She has volunteered her time for the Sally Nyborg Foundation and The Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins. She and her husband, Todd, are the proud parents of Tommy, a seventh grader, and Emmalina, a fifth grader.

   

Lori is a native of San Diego, CA, and has lived in Los Angeles, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Barcelona, New York, Durham, NC, and St. Michaels, MD. She earned an MBA from Erasmus Rotterdam School of Management and worked in business development and as a management consultant for over 25 years. Lori enjoys working in start-up operations where creating new products/programs and revenue streams are encouraged and mentoring non-profit organizations. She served on Wye River Upper Schools’ Strategic Planning Committee in 2018/2019 and on the recent WRUS Head of School Search Committee. She is most proud of

founding The Shared Table, a partnership of churches where people of all colors would join together to break bread and discuss community issues. Lori is currently on the advisory board of the Talbot County Senior Centers and a trustee and EMT for the St. Michaels Volunteer Fire

Department. She has also served on the board of Talbot Village Connections and the MRYC Foundation. She is the Executive Director of Temple B’nai Israel in Easton, MD where she recently produced a Contemporary Art Series featuring curators from the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Jewish Museum of New York. Lori, her wife, Kristen, and son Andrew are avid sailors and reside in St. Michaels, MD. Andrew graduated from The Country School in June of 2021.

   

Mike has served as Director of the Horn Point Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge since 2001. He joined the faculty at Horn Point in 1983 having previously worked at the University of Miami and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Mike is an oceanographer who presently studies climate change effects on ocean life. Mike currently serves as a Trustee of the U.S. Consortium of Ocean Leadership, on the scientific steering committee of a United Nations program on climate change effects on the ocean, and previously served as President of the International Oceanography Society. Mike attended Deerfield Academy (class of 67); Lake Forest College (B.A. in Biology,1971), The City College NY (M.S. in Oceanography,1973) and the University of New Hampshire (Ph.D. in Zoology, 1976).

 

Mike lives in Royal Oak with his wife Jennie. Their daughters Alexandra (2004) and Rachel (2005) both attended The Country School K through 8th grade.

   

Richard Tilghman was born in Baltimore, MD In 1947. He graduated from Gilman School in 1965 and received his BA in History, with honor, from Union College, Schenectady, NY, in 1969. He served in the US Naval Reserve, Submarine Service, from 1969 to 1975.  Mr. Tilghman received his JD with honor from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1975, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor of the Law Review.  After serving as law clerk to the Honorable Frederick J. Singley, Associate Judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, he joined the Baltimore law firm of Piper & Marbury (now known as DLA Piper) in 1976.  He became a partner in the firm in 1981. He was a member of the Corporate & Securities Department, serving as Vice Chair for a number of years.  He specialized in the Federal securities laws, representing public companies and securities underwriters, as well as the Maryland and Delaware corporate laws.

 

He retired from the firm in 2006 and moved permanently to Talbot County in order to oversee his family’s ancestral home, Wye House, a property acquired by one of his ancestors in 1659. He and his wife have devoted many hours to restoring the gardens on the property and making sure that the main house and numerous outbuildings are properly maintained.

 

Mr. Tilghman has served on the Boards of Trustees of a number of not-for-profit organizations on the Eastern Shore and in Baltimore.  These include Gilman School, Roland Park Country School (where he was Chair of the Board), Maryland Historical Society (now Maryland Center for History and Culture), Talbot Historical Society and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.

 

He has been married to the former Beverly Wheeler since 1976.  They have one daughter, Elizabeth.