Q&A

After 40 years in the banking business, longtime New Hampshire banker Joe Reilly will be retiring from the industry at the end of December.

‘The law school should be woven into the fabric of the community, not a separate entity that’s just placed here,’ says Megan Carpenter, dean at UNH School of Law.

State Sen. David Watters, D-Dover: ‘I have found in New Hampshire that businesses and industries and their lobbyists in Concord want to find ways to work together.’

‘My advice has always been, “study what you love,” because if you love it you’ll be happy, you’ll be good at it and you’ll find your way,’ says Michele Perkins, president of New England College since 2007.

‘Librarians see the potential libraries have to change things, but the political world moves very slowly, and it’s affected by so many things,’ says Michael York, New Hampshire’s state librarian.

‘Small government helps find solutions, and we really need to get back to that approach,’ says Taylor Caswell, commissioner of the recently created Department of Business and Economic Affairs.

Janet Laatsch, CEO of Goodwin Community Health in Somersworth is helping to oversee the merger of her organization with Portsmouth-based Families First Health & Support Center.

‘Opportunity is not abundant around the world, but talent is something we all have,’ says Elmira Bayrasli, author of ‘From The Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs.’

‘The New Hampshire North Country is part of a broader four-state region that is complicated and dynamic,’ says Rob Riley, president of the Concord-based Northern Forest Center, which focuses on economic development in the northern forest areas of New York, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.

Nonprofits ‘are major job creators, and they need to tell people about that. We’re an essential part of the economic ecosystem,’ says Robert Egger, founder of DC Central Kitchen and L.A. Kitchen.