Melinda Little (Photo provided)

SARANAC LAKE — The Saranac Lake Winter Carnival Committee announced Friday it has chosen Melinda Little as grand marshal for the Gala Parade on Feb. 9.

Little first moved to Saranac Lake full-time 23 years ago and is currently a trustee on the Saranac Lake village board.

An entrepreneur by background, in 2006 she led a successful effort to establish the Community Store, recently renamed the Village Mercantile — a small department store whose stock is owned by local and state residents in limited quantities. In 1996 she co-founded Independent Means, the leading provider of family-centered financial education programs and products in the United States until it was acquired in 2015. In the late 1980s she founded the Company of Women, a national mail-order catalog company. She is currently focusing her entrepreneurial skills on managing Point Positive, an angel investor group which since its inception in 2014 has committed $2.75 million to eight ventures across the greater Adirondack Region, fueling new jobs and a stronger diversified economy in the Adirondacks.

In addition to her ongoing role with the Village Mercantile, Little has served for more than 12 years on the board of the Tri-Lakes Humane Society and just recently stepped down as president. Having also co-fostered several litters of wayward mother cats and their kittens for TLHS, she currently lives with four cats of her own, two of whom were “foster failures,” and until recently with the late Piper McGee, her loyal walking companion and best friend.

Some of Little’s earlier volunteer roles included serving on the board of Pendragon Theatre, as a member of the Human Rights Committee of the Adirondack Arc and for the last four years as the Saranac Lake representative to the board of the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism.

The 2019 Winter Carnival will take place Feb. 1 to 10, with a theme of “Prehistoric Park.”