About Us

Board Officers

Marea Wexler, President - Senior Development Officer at Smith College.  Currently in her thirteenth year as part of the development team at Smith College, Wexler has twenty years of experience designing and implementing donor development and fundraising programs for national non-profit progressive and women's organizations, including, but not limited to:  MADRE, National Museum of Women in the Arts, NOW, NARAL, NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Kennedy Center, and the International Center for Development Policy.

Eileen Sorrentino, Clerk - Attorney. Sorrentino specializes in divorce mediation, children's issues, family law, domestic issues, and non-profit corporations.  Prior to becoming an attorney, Sorrentino worked as a children's book editor at McGraw Hill and as a freelance writer and copy-editor.  She has served on the boards of StageWest, Early Childhood Centers, and the Longmeadow Planning Commission.

Martha Richards, Treasurer - Executive Director of The Fund for Women Artists.  Richards has over thirty years of arts management experience, including nine years at Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College, and five years as Managing Director at StageWest.  Richards is licensed as an attorney in California and was a founding board member of California Lawyers for the Arts.

Board Members

Barbara Schaffer Bacon - Arts management consultant. Bacon's work includes training, program design, and evaluation for government arts agencies and national foundations. Her recent clients include the state arts councils for New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, as well as the Howard Heinz Endowment, Pew Charitable Trust, and William Penn Foundation.  Bacon previously served as Executive Director of the Arts Extension Service at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Susan B. Lantz - Susan Lantz was the chair of the capital campaign that raised $2 million for the Ronald McDonald House in Springfield, and she has been active on the boards of StageWest and many other non-profit organizations.  Lantz holds a masters degree in Library Science from Simmons College.

Gayle Pemberton - Gayle Pemberton is a Professor of African-American Studies at Weslyan University in Middletown, CT.  Pemberton received her Ph.D. in English and American Language at Literature at Harvard, and is the author of The Road to Gravure: Black Women and American Cinema, and  The Hottest Water in Chicago: Notes of a Native Daughter.

Catherine H. Smith - Theatre Professor at Smith College and freelance costume designer.  In addition to her teaching and designing duties at Smith College, Smith has designed costumes for theatre, dance and puppet companies from New York to Maine, including Shakespeare and Company, Sandglass Theater, and Kristin Linklater's Company of Women.

Advisory Board Members

Linda Belden - Graphic Artist, Fundraising Consultant

Mary Ann P. Cofrin - Educational Consultant

Pearl Cleage - Playwright, Novelist, Journalist

Kate Clinton - Comedian, Author

Anne W. Ellsworth - Freelance Artist

Lisa Enzer - Co-Artistic Director, Serious Play!

Magdalena Gómez - Poet, Playwright, Performer, Educator

Andrea Hairston - Artistic Director, Chrysalis Theatre, Professor of Theatre at Smith College

Priscilla Kane Hellweg - Artistic Director, Enchanted Circle Theater, Mount Holyoke College Lecturer

Terry Jenoure - Director of the Augusta Savage Gallery, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Kate Nugent - Co-Artistic Director, Sleeveless Theatre