Renee was born and raised in Lewis County in the town of Watson and was the oldest of seven children. Married to her husband, she has two step-children, a son and a daughter.

Her education background consists of a Bachelor degree in Health & Physical Education; Masters degree in Early Childhood Education, and Doctoral Studies in Educational Leadership.

Throughout the years, Renee’s career and dedication was focused on Early Childhood Education.  She was employed in different school systems within Massachusetts, Florida and Virginia. Upon retiring in 2017, she returned to Lewis County from Virginia to help care for her aging parents and later on, for her husband.

More recently, Renee is dedicated in helping with the local family business, Guignard’s Greenhouses. She is also actively involved with the Lewis County General Hospital’s Auxiliary serving as first Vice-President and is Co-chair of the auxiliary’s annual Candy Sale. She also volunteers for the Auxiliary’s gift shop and snack bar, annual Hollyberry sale, developing the auxiliary’s brochure to recruit new volunteers, and creates their bi-annual newsletter.

This year Office for the Aging honored Renee at their Volunteer Appreciation event on Tuesday, April 21st. Renee volunteered with their Friendly Visiting program with a placement who had no close family or friend supports. Renee would pop in routinely to visit and help out with light housework, errands, and even offered to take the laundry home to do. As time went on, Renee noticed a rapid decline in her placement’s health and was always quick to notify our office of her findings.  Throughout this time, Renee advocated for her placement to receive much needed services from our office, as well as other local agencies. Due to difficulties of living on a second- floor apartment, Renee advocated to help find alternate housing. Shortly after, together with the help of another local agency, they were able to find alternate housing and even were able to reconnect with an estranged family member who had lived out of state. Renee has gone above and beyond with her volunteering services this past year with our office. She had a total of 121.75 hours spent with this individual and we thank you, we appreciate you and your caring heart, and the dedication you have put into our Friendly Visiting program! Congratulations!