Our Leadership

Debby Scire, EdD, has more than 25 years of experience in higher education and nonprofit leadership. She has served as President and CEO of the New Hampshire College & University Council since 2019. She has also held leadership roles at partnering organization Campus Compact for New Hampshire, where she continues to serve as Executive Director.

Previously, Scire was the Director of Cooperative Education at Northern Essex Community College. There she was responsible for advancing learning through experiential education and community engagement initiatives, including cooperative education, internships, and service-learning. Before serving in a similar capacity at Merrimack College, she worked in admissions and in residence life.

Scire has a Doctorate of Education from New England College. She also holds degrees from Simmons College and from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Stephanie Soule Lesperance is the State Director of the New Hampshire GEAR UP Alliance, a project of the New Hampshire College & University Council and Campus Compact for New Hampshire. She has been with both organizations since 1999.

As Director of GEAR UP, Lesperance oversees programs to increase college access and success for low-income students. Before joining NHCUC she served as the Program Coordinator at AmeriCorps Hillsborough Reads in Tampa, Florida. She also completed two terms of service as an AmeriCorps member.

Lesperance has a Master of Arts in Public Policy from New England College and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science with minors in Psychology and Women’s Studies from the University of Maine at Farmington. She is also a graduate of the 2010 Class of Leadership NH and a member of the 2008 Class of NH’s “40 Under Forty.”

Larissa Striga serves as the Director of Programs for NHCUC. In this role she supports member engagement, collaboration, and learning among the NHCUC professional communities and the wider membership to advance higher education in New Hampshire.

Before joining NHCUC, Striga served as a College Access and Success AmeriCorps VISTA for two years through Campus Compact for New Hampshire at NHTI, Concord’s Community College. She has also held positions in human resources, digital marketing, community outreach, and training and development.

Striga earned an associate degree in Liberal Arts from Suffolk County Community College and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Human Resources from Granite State College. She serves on Volunteer NH’s Governor’s Conference on Volunteerism Committee and is a member of the New Hampshire Women in Higher Education Leadership, Association for Collaborative Leadership, and NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

In addition to coordinating the New Hampshire Scholars Program, Ciaran Farley serves as the Executive Assistant for all of the New Hampshire College & University Council. In the latter role she supports the NH GEAR UP Alliance, including the GEAR UP New Hampshire and GEAR UP Manchester teams, as well as the AmeriCorps VISTA team and NHCUC staff.

Farley also partners with Maine Campus Compact and Campus Compact for Southern New England on the Fusion project, an online service-learning course series for faculty. Previously she worked as an Academic Advisor at Southern New Hampshire University. She passionately believes in the power of higher education to change lives.

Farley received her Bachelors of Art degree in Drama from the Catholic University of America.