Tom Bengtson, Chairman and Co-Founder
Dale Ahlquist, Vice-Chairman and Co-Founder
John Niemann, Headmaster (Ex-Officio)
Emily de Rotstein, Executive Director (Ex-Officio)
Mark Culhane | Daniel Kelly | Judy Shea | Richard Vigilante | Pat Webster
Tom Bengtson | Chairman and Co-Founder
Tom Bengtson is president of NFR Communications, Inc., a publishing company that specializes in niche magazines, and is editor and publisher of a trade magazine covering the banking industry. He is also the managing director of a financial services industry trade association in the Midwest. Tom is the author of two books and writes a column on living your faith at work that appears in the Catholic Spirit, as well as the diocesan newspaper serving Superior, Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and a 2005 Fellow to the Stonier Graduate School of Banking in Georgetown University. Tom and his wife Susan have four children.
Dale Ahlquist | Vice-Chairman and Co-Founder
Dale Ahlquist is the president of the American Chesterton Society. He is the creator and host of the television series, G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense, on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). Dale is the publisher of Gilbert Magazine, author of The Apostle of Common Sense and Common Sense 101 – Lessons from Chesterton. He is editor of The Gift of Wonder: The Many Sides of G.K. Chesterton, associate editor of the Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (Ignatius). He has been called “one of the most respected Chesterton scholars in the world” and has delighted audiences around the country with his variety of talks on the great English writer. He is a graduate of Carleton College (B.A.) in Northfield, Minnesota, and Hamline University (M.A.) in St. Paul, Minnesota. He lives near Minneapolis with his wife and six children. Like Chesterton, Dale is a Catholic convert and a joyful defender of the Catholic Faith. He can be contacted at info@chesterton.org.
John Niemann | Headmaster
John Niemann is Headmaster of Chesterton Academy, supervising the faculty and overseeing the curriculum, in addition to his teaching responsibilities.
John has a law degree from the William Mitchell College of Law, a Master of Liberal Studies degree from Saint John’s College, Santa Fe, NM, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Comparative History from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. He was a teacher of English, history, literature and economics at Eagle Ridge Academy in Eden Prairie from 2005 to 2009 where also served on the Board of Directors, spending one year as Chairman. Prior to that, he was a teacher at Trinity School in Bloomington, Minnesota for four years.
Emily de Rotstein | Executive Director
Emily joined Chesterton Academy in July 0f 2011 as the school’s first Executive Director. She served as a member of the Chesterton Academy Board of Directors for the 2010-2011 academic year. Emily has extensive fundraising, corporate and entrepreneurial experience, most recently as Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Vocal Laboratories, a national customer satisfaction measurement company based in the Twin Cities. She has a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota.