Learning from BIG mistakes
April 4th, 2011
It was 1986. I just had to scratch the entrepreneurial itch again. I had helped start a parent-cooperative elementary school, The Schoolhouse, ten years earlier, and wanted to start something in my ‘new’ field, energy conservation / energy management, which I entered back in ’79 after six years as an educator. Bernie Sanders 
had been elected Mayor of Burlington by a 10 vote margin five years earlier and Burlington was just beginning to be a hotbed for progressive politics, food and business, my real passions.
I answered an ad in the Burlington Free Press titled “Wanted: General Manager/Entrepreneur” to start-up and head-up an employee-owned and managed energy services company, that was to be the for-profit part of Vermont Energy Investment Corp’s (VEIC) double business plan.