About Us

Staff List

Martha Richards is the Founder and Executive Director of The Fund for Women Artists.  Richards has over thirty years of experience as an arts administrator, including nine years at Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College (three years as Executive Director), and five years as the Managing Director at StageWest in Springfield, Massachusetts (1989-93). 

       She lectures frequently on arts issues, and she taught a theatre management course at Mount Holyoke College in fall 1994. In April 2006 she was one of three U.S. nominees (with Quincy Jones and Wynton Marsalis) for the prestigious international Montblanc De La Culture Award for outstanding service to the arts.

       Richards has had a life-long commitment to women's issues and women artists, and she has served as a business advisor to many individual women artists and women-led arts organizations throughout her career. Richards attended the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995.  She was a founding director of the Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts and served on its board from 1997 to 2000.  The Pioneer Valley Girl Scouts honored her as a 1999 Woman of Distinction, and she was inducted into the BayPath College 21st Century Women Business Leaders Hall of Fame in April 2009.

       Richards has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California Berkeley and a J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of Law.  She is a member of the California bar, and she was one of the founding directors of California Lawyers for the Arts, serving as its Vice President from 1976-1978.  In 1979 she was one of seven fellows selected nationwide by Theatre Communications Group for a National Fellowship in Performing Arts Management .  As a National Fellow she served as the assistant to Managing Director Peter Culman at Baltimore's Center Stage.

Melissa A. Wilks is the Director of Design and Marketing for The Fund for Women Artists. She has 20 years of experience in the fields of design and marketing.  From 1989-1996, she worked as an Art Director at advertising agencies in New York City.   Melissa then formed her own design company in Burlington, Vermont and taught design at the Community College of Vermont. In 1999, she moved her company to San Francisco.  She has also worked in San Francisco as Director of Creative Services for a video game developer and operated an online retail business. Melissa has a B.A. in English from the University of Vermont and did graduate studies in Communication Design at Pratt Institute.

Deborah Steinberg is the Online Services Associate for The Fund for Women Artists. She is responsible for editing the WomenArts Network profiles, as well as writing and editing other on-line content and the bimonthly funding newsletters. Deborah holds a B.A. in Creative Writing and Literature from Bard College and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Bordeaux. She is the founding editor and events coordinator of Louis Liard, a Franco-American magazine of creative writing and art (see www.myspace.com/louisliard), and she has over eight years of experience as a freelance editor and an instructor of English as a Second Language. Deborah writes fiction and has sung in musical projects in France and the U.S.