Show 94: Consultant, Author & Director of the Biddeford RiverWalk Coalition

Show Information

Show: 94
Air date: Saturday, January 4
Guest: Alix Hopkins
Host: Steve Woods (Stevoe)
Studio Contributor Debi Davis
Executive Producer: Shannon Maguire

Alix Hopkins is a consultant, an author and the director of the Biddeford RiverWalk Coalition.  Hopkins grew up on a farm outside of Baltimore, Maryland.  She attended Goucher College.  As a child her family often came to Mount Desert, where her love for the outdoors and Maine began.

Long associated with conservation efforts in southern Maine, Hopkins has more than 30 years of work on local, regional and international projects.  She has served as staff, volunteered as a board member, and advised others. She specializes in giving life to good ideas, working on projects that join the environment, economy, art and culture, and social justice.

Alix Hopkins

Host of TideSmart Talk with Stevoe Steve Woods (left) recently sat down with the Director of the Biddeford RiverWalk Coalition Alix Hopkins (right).

Hopkins was the first full-time director at Portland Trails in the early 1990s. At the time, public/private partnerships were more unusual, requiring a certain civic entrepreneurial leadership style, combined with a talented, dedicated, perseverant group of volunteers.

Hopkins told Stevoe that after she left Portland Trails, she traveled around the U.S. gathering stories and how it became an empowering experience of collaboration.  The outcome of this experience became Hopkins’ book, “Groundswell:  Stories of Saving Places, Finding Community”, and has helped inspire and train emerging community leaders across the country.

Presently she directs the Biddeford-Saco RiverWalk Coalition, promoting an urban trail along the Saco River, uniting the two cities and enhancing the renaissance in these two redeveloping mill towns.

Alix lives in Pownal and is active on a number of local and regional conservation and community development-oriented boards. She is at work on a new book of stories from the Middle East, based on her experiences as an exchange facilitator in the region. While in the region, she was astounded by the talent, dedication, resourcefulness, kindness and courage of the people she met there. Their projects are becoming quiet but powerful peace building tools because they transcend geographic, cultural and geographic boundaries.


Posted on Friday, January 10th, 2014 and filed under Show Recaps.