Ruth Luse, Managing Editor
Five Hopewell Township residents are running for three Hopewell Township seats (three-year terms) on the nine-member Hopewell Valley Regional Board of Education.
They are: Laura Desai (incumbent), of Federal City Road; Roy Dollard (incumbent), of Elm Ridge Road; Adam J. Sawicki Jr., of Caroline Drive; Burton J. Sutker, of Lexington Drive; and Jill Vaughn, of Pennington-Lawrenceville Road.
Four of the five were able to participate in the recent League of Women Voters’ Candidates Night. Mr. Sutker was out of town. The 90-minute program was held in the TV studio at Central High School so interested citizens — particularly those who live in Hopewell Township and were unable to attend — could have the opportunity to see the event on local cable TV. The forum can be seen on Comcast channel 19 or Verizon channel 32. The viewing schedule is: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., and Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m.
The school board/budget election will be held April 27.
About the candidates:
— Laura Desai is a lifelong resident of Hopewell Township and a graduate of The College of New Jersey where she majored in business and Spanish with a minor in human resources. She began her career at Merrill Lynch in their Private Client Human Resources Division. She managed the MBA recruitment program for that division — recruiting, hiring and training high potential MBA students from top business schools across the country to work in one of three Private Client programs.
She had a successful career at Merrill Lynch, but also wanted to use her Spanish degree in a non-business setting. She decided to pursue the alternate route teacher’s program in New Jersey. She began teaching in three Catholic schools in Mercer County, where she designed, developed and implemented the Spanish program teaching PreK to eighth-grade students. Eventually, she pursued an opportunity at Richard C. Crockett Middle School in Hamilton and, in 2009-10 was named Richard Crockett Middle School Teacher of the Year, in addition to being the Hamilton Township District Teacher of the Year, She teaches Spanish to seventh- and eighth-grade students.
In addition, she has coached girls soccer, basketball and softball at Crockett. She also is involved in many aspects of the life of the school, serving as a translator, a member of the CORE team and the School Level Management Team Committees. In addition to teaching, she owns and operates her own jewelry business. She also is involved as an active member of her parish, St. James Church, and has been an active volunteer member of The Pennington School Community, for which she has served as an elected executive member of the Alumni Association.
Roy Dollard is a native of New York. He moved to Hopewell Township in 2000. He is a retired engineer and executive with New York Telephone and, later, NYNEX, where he spent his 40-year career, serving as vice president of personnel, vice president of operations and president of the NYNEX Corp.’s Computer Services Company.
A former member of New York City’s Junior Achievement Board, he served as president of the Avenue of the Americas Association, a civic improvement corporation that promotes the commercial welfare of New York City. He volunteered for more than a decade with the Boy Scouts of America.
Born and raised in Queens, Mr. Dollard graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and went on to Cornell University on a track scholarship. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Cornell and a master’s degree in business administration from New York University.
He lived for 30 years in Briarcliff Manor in New York’s suburban Westchester County where he raised his family and was an active community volunteer. He served for five years on the local school board in the mid-1970s, including three as president, and was responsible for recruiting a new superintendent.
After he retired in 1994, Mr. Dollard and his wife, Barbara, moved to her hometown of Princeton where the couple lived briefly before purchasing 30 acres in Hopewell Township and building the home where they live today. Their settlement in Hopewell Township provides proximity to their grown son, Christopher, a resident of Skillman, and three grandsons. The couple has two other grown children, Cary and John, both of whom live in New York. On the school board, Mr. Dollard chairs its Personnel Committee and is a member of its Finance & Facilities Committee and School Safety Committee.
Adam Sawicki has been a resident of Hopewell Township since 1997 with his wife, Michele, and four children, who attend Timberlane Middle School and Hopewell Elementary School. Their children also have attended Bear Tavern Elementary.
Mr. Sawicki earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT, as well as an MBA from Villanova University. He has been employed as a structural engineer by the Boeing Company in Ridley, Pa., for 20 years. His primary work assignments have included rotorcraft programs. He was named a Boeing Technical Fellow in 2006 for his contributions to the development of advanced composite airframe structures. In 2009, he began serving as a delegate of the FAA for the 787 Dreamliner program, and is working on development of the world’s first commercial jetliner fabricated primarily from composite materials.
Mr. Sawicki has held several leadership positions within ASTM International, a globally recognized leader in the development of international voluntary consensus standards based in Philadelphia. He serves as vice chairman of ASTM Committee D30 on Composite Materials, and has been primary author for six new standard test methods and practices in this technical area. From 2006-08 he served on ASTM’s Committee on Standards, a nine-member board responsible for verifying that procedural requirements were followed and due process was given to all dissenting votes in the standards approval process.
Locally, he has served as a parent evaluator, “scientific community” presenter and organizing committee member for the Hopewell Elementary School Science Fair. He is also involved in the Hopewell Valley Soccer Association.
Burton J. Sutker spent over 40 years in the chemical industry, achieving the position of vice president, Research and Commercial Development for a global enterprise. After he left private industry, he developed an independent consulting company that deals with highway and pedestrian safety. As a volunteer he has taught entrepreneurship at an elementary school in Princeton and conducted a similar program with a group of homeschooled students in Hamilton. He has also developed curricula and taught entrepreneurship at social service agencies, most recently at The Rescue Mission in Trenton. He serves on the Hopewell Township Parks and Recreation Commission and is chairman of the Mercer County Council on Aging.
He and Roberta Sutker, his wife of nearly 56 years, have lived in Hopewell Township for the past five years. He was chairman of Wellington Manor Homeowners Association Finance Committee for four of those years and achieved balanced budgets each year. He has been an advisor to several local organizations in developing long range plans.
Mr. Sutker has five children, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He is an active participant in local 5 K road races.
Jill Vaughn is an educator and six-year resident of Hopewell Township. She worked in industry for 15 years before she made the choice to pursue a career in education. Right out of college, she went to work for Princeton University where she served in an administrative role as a grant manager for what was then known as the Princeton Materials Institute. From there, she moved to Dallas, Texas, where she began a journey in the investment banking industry. After a year at CS First Boston, she worked for Goldman Sachs in its Dallas office. She was relocated by the firm to the Northeast where she worked as an analyst in the firm’s Human Capital Management department, primarily responsible for training and other new-hire responsibilities. Additionally, she served on the firm’s diversity and communications committees. She also worked as a consultant on marketing communications projects for Fortune 100 companies, universities, public organizations, and nonprofits. At the same time, Ms. Vaughn taught human resources and international business courses as an adjunct instructor at Felician College for several years.
She joined the faculty at Lawrence High School in 2008 where she teaches English and serves as the Academy Leader for the high school’s Academy of Arts & Humanities. Ms. Vaughn and her husband, Jason, have two children (Dylan, 9, and Mia, 7) who attend Stony Brook Elementary School. Ms. Vaughn helps coach her daughter’s softball team.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and political science from Rutgers University and a master’s in business administration from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She also received her Graduate Level Teacher Certification from Rider University in 2008.

