Kimberly Sampson is an early childhood educator and director of the Little House School, which is located on their small family farm in Damariscotta. She and her husband were drawn to the prevailing sense of community and down-to-earth lifestyle here in the Midcoast. Kimberly places great value on helping people connect with each other and is excited about taking on the role of volunteer coordinator for The Waldo. Her enthusiasm is much appreciated by her students, her farm animals, and her new friends at The Waldo. 

Chris serves as Executive Director of the Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center and also as an adjunct associate professor of Marine Sciences for the University of Maine. He teaches courses in aquaculture and shellfish biology at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center. Chris is celebrating his 35th year of farming oysters in the Damariscotta River as a founding partner in the Pemaquid Oyster Company. He received his BA from Colby College and Ph.D. from the University of Maine and lives in Waldoboro with his wife Janet, and are fortunate to have their two daughters living nearby.

Raised in Belfast and Washington Maine, Maya is a passionate educator with degrees in Microbiology and Journalism from the University of Rochester. She pursued a graduate degree in Marine Science from the University of Maine and hopes to engage in further research in learning sciences towards a PhD. Sprinkled in between, she has been a cook, biotechnologist, editor, shellfish biologist and instructional designer. Her diverse education and experiences reflects her multifaceted interests, blending the realms of science, writing, and human cognition. Outside of work as Director of Applied Learning at Lincoln Academy, she explores nature, travels and enjoys culinary experiments. Maya strives to embody a cephalopod-like spirit of curiosity and resourcefulness, and hopes to leave a lasting impact on her students and community. "One of the things that drew me back home to Maine was the powerful effect of a small community coming together. The Waldo Theatre has been a catalyst towards growth in the midcoast, and I want to help it reach its vision of connecting and enriching lives for community members of all ages."

Barbara is an architectural and landscape designer and a certified organic farmer. She fell in love with Maine while attending College of the Atlantic and later did her graduate studies at Harvard School of Design in Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Moving to Waldoboro in 2000 with her family she became an active member of the Waldoboro Planning Board, the Comprehensive Plan Committee, and the Waldoboro Farmers Market. As a member of the Building Committee her focus is the renovation and maintenance of the historic structure. She strongly feels that The Waldo’s reinstatement into the cultural life of our community is key to local economic development.

Michael Amico is a historian, performer, community organizer, and author whose work explores how emotions shape our lives. In 2025, he founded Open House of History (OHOH) in Waldoboro—a community space devoted to building empathy and connection through history and emotionally engaged encounters with the past. OHOH guides communities to inhabit the emotional histories that continue to shape them, while helping people gain a sense of identity and purpose alive with historical potential. Michael holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University. His dissertation, The Forgotten Union of the Two Henrys: A History of the “Peculiar and Rarest Intimacy” of the American Civil War, is the first full historical account of a same-sex couple in the war and shows how emotional bonds shaped the moral and political imagination of the period. From 2018 to 2023, he was a Research Scientist at the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where he wrote about President Franklin Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats and on the role of blackface in the rise of anti-slavery sentiment in antebellum America. He also has an extensive journalistic background writing on sexuality and is co-author (with Michael Bronski and Ann Pellegrini) of “You Can Tell Just by Looking”: And 20 Other Myths about LGBT Life and People (Beacon Press, 2013), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Nonfiction. He has more than fifteen years of experience in theater and film and performs regularly with Everyman Repertory Theatre, the Midcoast’s professional company. Michael is an Associate Trustee of the Waldoborough Historical Society and an elected member of the Town of Waldoboro Budget Committee.

Maia Zewert started her career at The Lincoln County News, the only weekly newspaper locally owned, printed, and published in Lincoln County, in August 2015 as a general assignment reporter. In November 2017, she received the Maine Press Association's Bob Drake Young Writer's Award, which recognizes the top young journalist in the state. In January 2023, she was named the 12th editor in LCN's century-plus history. Maia, an Iowa native, graduated from Iowa State University in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and English. When not on assignment, Maia enjoys reading, cooking, and watching basketball. She lives in Waldoboro.

Susan is a writer whose book, Brilliant Disguise, was a finalist for the 2024 Maine Literary Awards in Memoir. Her full-time career began at Rolling Stone magazine when reporters were still throwing typewriters across the office and concluded as a senior communications expert in domestic policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. She moved to Maine 15 years ago because of her love of the ocean and open space. Doing so proved to be one of the best decisions of her life. She holds degrees from both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Johns Hopkins University. Being part of the Waldo Theater board gives her the opportunity to both give back to the community and take part in the expansion of this cultural institution into ever more exciting endeavors that can entertain, educate, and connect.

Rebecca Cooney is the creator of “Waldoboro Voices,” a website and a column in the Lincoln County News to which she adds to weekly.  Taken as a whole, the testimonies make a portrait of Waldoboro as told by the people of Waldoboro, spanning professions, age, geography and income, and touching on all the major issues of our time, with the hope of generating more understanding between us.  It was a natural outgrowth of moving permanently to Waldoboro in 2020, after summering with her family for every year of her life because her father’s roots were here.  But it was also a natural progression of her professional life which has included directing the public education for INFORM, an environmental non-profit; being a Clio-winning (TV) art director at Benton & Bowles; working as a New York Times freelance photographer and photo editor; and of organizing around human rights.  When she started volunteering The Waldo in 2022, she was struck by a profound sense of home and belonging -- perhaps because she’s a great niece of founder Carroll T. Cooney.  And being there, she has embraced The Waldo’s eclectic selection of music, art and movies.  But along the way, her vision has expanded into one of this theater being a place for everyday expression, a place for the unknown, the quirky, and the surprise.  In 2024 she launched The Waldoboro Talent Show, the first talent pageant in almost 50 years.  She held it three days before the election.  It was meant to showcase townspeople’s dreams to perform on that stage, and it filled the house.  Even months later, people said they still felt the fairy dust from that evening.  This is the vision she holds for The Waldo.