REC Council Officers
Gregory Stasik
Chair – 2020-Present (Greg is the one with the hat on).
Greg has been serving in the REC prison ministry since 2009. He is a regular member of the Greene Team but has also served on team at both Washington and Great Meadow facilities. Greg is a retired Engineer and is very interested in volunteering and helping people recover from addictions.
“God has never been more present to me than while serving in the prisons.”
Fausto Franco
Vice-Chair of the REC Council – 2023 – present
Fausto Franco is the oldest of four children born of immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic and raised in the Bronx, New York. Currently Fausto Franco works in Information Technology with a focus in secure application development as a Director of Application Development for state government. He was a member of the Secretaria Juvenil Nacional (National Youth Secretariat) for the Hispanic Catholic Charismatic Renewal for the United States and Canada and was on the Albany Diocesan Service Committee. He served as the national coordinator and was published in the summer 2018 and Fall 2023 edition of Pentecost Today magazine. He was also the Hispanic Youth/Young Adult coordinator for Ministerio Juvenil at the Hispanic Catholic Charismatic Center for the Archdiocese of New York. Fausto was a speaker at the Golden Jubilee 50th anniversary for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in July 2017 and was a participant at the V Encuentro of Latino/Hispanic Ministry representing ecclesial movements. He is also a member of the Locos por Jesus ministry that travels to the Dominican Republic on mission and a speaker who has traveled throughout the United States and abroad to evangelize. He and his family currently reside in Albany, New York, and are parishioners at the Shrine Church of Our Lady of the Americas. He actively plays baseball in the Albany Twilight League, one of the oldest amateur baseball leagues in the country.
Ellen Cooper
Secretary of the REC Council – 2023-present
Ellen Cooper has been a member of REC since 2017 and has served at Greene County Correctional and Great Meadows. Ellen has a BA in Community and School Health Education from Russell Sage College, and is retired from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Albany County. As an CCE educator, she taught programs on parenting, anger management, organizational skills, resiliency, infant nurturing and child care, discipline, and nutrition. Her audiences were teens, expectant mothers, and adults at libraries, schools, drug and alcohol rehab residences, jails, and prisons. She taught court mandated classes of “Anger Management” and “Parenting After Separation and Divorce” for The Fulton County Family Court System and Albany County Jail System. Her programs were available for all groups who requested a one time, or series of classes. Ellen is currently Secretary for the REC Council, is happy to be on the REC Team, and looks forward to working with the REC Teams and sharing the love of Jesus to residents in our local prisons.
Don Wilson
Treasurer – 2009-present
Don is a Communicant & Spiritual Director at Corpus Christi Parish in Round Lake, NY. He converted from Dutch Reformed, (Protestant faith) to the Catholic faith in 1986 via the RCIA program. After a 39-year career in the Computer/Tech industry, he pursued and graduated with an M.A. in Theology/Pastoral Services from St. Bernard’s College of Theology & Ministry in 2015 – followed with an advanced certification in Spiritual Direction in 2017.
He has been a REC Retreat Counselor for over 11 years, serving at the Coxsackie, Greene, Hale Creek, Washington, and Great Meadow correctional facilities.
He has served as Asst. Director and Director of past Spiritual Retreats and also volunteers at the Saratoga County Jail in Ballston Spa, NY.
“It is always both a pleasure and a privilege to be bringing a new Resident or group of Residents, (inmates) to the threshold of establishing a relationship with Jesus Christ. Bringing our semi-annual retreat into the prisons has always been a very moving experience for not only the REC Counselor Staff but the Residents themselves.
Please consider this wonderful ministry.”