Sylvia McDowell, a retired librarian, attended Simmons College where she received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees. Her plan was to return to Washington after graduating. She got her first professional job as a medical librarian at Boston University and over a half century later she is still in Boston.

In her youth, she could not decide whether to pursue a career as a librarian or a historian. She has succeeded in working in both fields. She worked as a librarian throughout her professional life working at Boston University, MIT and Harvard. She became interested in women’s issues while working at MIT, of all places, because of its Women’s Studies Program. This interest culminated in a highly successful tenure at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University.

In retirement, she continues to use her interest in research conducting historical research among her tasks as president of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail, which is steadily gaining attention nationally and internationally. She continues her professional affiliations as a member of the Massachusetts Black Librarians Network, the American Library Association, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and the Association of Black Women Historians.

She is active in community and civic activities. In 1996, she received the Crystal Stair Award granted by the Simmons College African American Alumnae Association for “her dedication to community service via her sorority and her professional affiliations.” She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority which has chapters in Africa, the Caribbean and Europe. She serves as historian of her local chapter. She is a member of several other community and educational organizations in the hope of making the world better.

Susan Goganian is the director of the Beverly (Mass.) Historical Society & Museum. She has spent 15 years researching and interpreting Boston history, particularly the stories of Boston’s neighborhoods. During 10 years at the Bostonian Society, she was responsible for all operations and visitor services for the Old State House, the seat of colonial government before the American Revolution. She was the Director of Education and Public Programs, responsible for the Boston Historic Markers Program, school programming, teacher training, public lectures, and special events. Sue is a member of the Boston Landmarks Commission and served eight years on the board of MYTOWN (Multicultural Youth Tours Of What’s New). She has organized oral history projects for the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Moakley Archive at Suffolk University Law School, and has taught public history courses at Suffolk University and Northeastern University. She has a M.A. in public history from Northeastern University and a B.S. in business administration from the University of Maine.

Secretary Michelle Jenney joined the board of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail in the fall of 2002. She is a member of BWHT’s nominating committee and serves as Secretary. Michelle is also active in community outreach projects at the Boston Public Library where she has been a volunteer in the Art and Architecture Tours Program since 1991. Michelle’s interest in public art led to the installation of a mural in the lobby of the library’s Boylston Street entrance that honors achievements of nine women from Boston. In 2001 Michelle received a special award from the Library and the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston for outstanding contributions to the library. Michelle is a foundation administrator at Grants Management Associates in Boston, where she is staff photographer and assists with marketing and public relations projects.

Gretchen O’Neill joined the BWHT board in 1996 and has been Treasurer since 1998. She is the Publications Specialist for the Boston Public Schools, responsible for researching, writing, and designing dozens of publications for BPS families, staff, and the public. Her particular BWHT interest is working with BPS teachers and students to develop neighborhood women’s history trails. She has supported and created brochures for trails in the South End with the Blackstone School, in Roxbury with the Dearborn and Trotter schools, in Charlestown with the Harvard/Kent School, and in West Roxbury with the Kilmer School. Gretchen lives in West Roxbury, where she is active in community organizations including West Roxbury Saves Energy and the West Roxbury Friends of Rosie’s Place. She has been a leader in the revitalization of the Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church. She graduated from Yale University.

A Boston Public Schools veteran teacher of 34 years, Sue Mortensen received The Massachusetts Service-Learning Teacher Leader Award (2007) and was recognized as a Leader Teacher for her commitment to service learning as a teaching methodology by the Massachusetts Department of Education. She is an active member of the CHESP Advisory Council (Community Higher Education School Partnership) and editor of the BWHT newsletter ProclaimerHer.

Kirstin Gamble Bridier works in fundraising at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Formerly Director of Exhibit Development at Krent/Paffett/Carney, Inc., Kirstin researched and developed exhibitions for the Louisiana State Museum, The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Old Sturbridge Village, and the New Jersey Historical Society. Before joining KPC, Kirstin was Curator of Education at the Nantucket Historical Association, where she served on the exhibit development team for the recently expanded Whaling Museum. She also developed an alternate use for a historic house museum, which today houses space for hands-on instruction in traditional decorative arts. Previously, Kirstin worked at Philadelphia’s Elfreth’s Alley Association, the Historic House Trust of New York City, and Historic New England. Kirstin holds an M.Sc. in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from Smith College.

Liane Curtis writes and researches about historic women composers and has a Ph.D. in Musicology. Liane began working with the BWHT as part of her quest to have Amy Beach’s name added to the 87 names of male composers that adorn the Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade. Beach was added to the Shell in July 2000, and the Boston Pops performed some of Beach’s music at the unveiling. Liane joined the BWHT Board in the fall of 2000. She is affiliated with the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and also taught at Brandeis in the spring of 2007. She is the founder of The Rebecca Clarke Society, Inc. and edited A Rebecca Clarke Reader, the first book on that composer.

Katherine Dibble recently retired as Director of Public Services for the Boston Public Library after a career of 37 years with the library. Her various positions there acquainted her with all sections of the city of Boston and gave her the opportunity to work with many different organizations. Katherine continues to be active with the Boston Chapter of the Women’s National Book Association and has held several offices in that organization, including president of the Boston chapter and chair of the national award committee. She served for five years on the Board of Trustees of the French Library and Cultural Center.

Although retiring after 40 years in the Boston Public Schools, Barbara Locurto continues to serve BWHT. Between 1984 and 2007 she developed and directed the Boston IMPACT II model designed to identify, recognize, reward, and disseminate successful classroom-based, teacher-developed programs. As BWHT board member since 1993, she coordinated Women’s History Showcases/Materials Grants, and featured Boston Women’s Memorial projects on Boston TeachNet. Recognized nationally and locally for her commitment to promoting good citizenship, she served as Massachusetts State Coordinator of Center for Civic Education’s We the People… Program. Awards include: Virginia M. White Service & Support to Girls & Women’s Sports; Boston Municipal Research Bureau’s Henry L. Shattuck Public Service; City Year Moccasin/Community Service; and Freedoms Foundation George Washington Honor Medal, Constitutional Studies. Other board membership includes: BPS Student Engagement Advisory Council; BPS Access Technology Center; Massachusetts Board of Education Service Learning Advisory Council (past); and Extras for Creative Learning/Recycle Center (past).

Jane Skelton was Senior Program Director for English Language Arts in the Boston Public Schools before accepting the position of Director of Humanities in the Malden Public Schools in 2007. She coordinated BWHT’s Perseverance Essay Contest for middle school students.

Doryce Smith has been a teacher in the Boston Public Schools for over 20 years. Currently, she services the special education population in the upper elementary grades at the Lucy E. Stone School, in Dorchester, Ma. She has received numerous service awards from the Coalition for Social Justice/Coalition Against Poverty and the Black Educators’ Alliance of develop a program targeted for educators and the populations they serve. Helping students make history and in their own lives create a story through written expression in print. Her passion includes community mobilization through political activism and the art of couture.

BWHT is one of her passions! Mary Smoyer has been actively involved ever since 1989, when she was inspired by her mentors, Polly Welts Kaufman and Barbara Clark Elam, to start working with the trail. She especially loves giving guided tours, developing the mini neighborhood trails and helping with programs in the Boston Public Schools. Mary worked as a librarian in public and private schools for over twenty years. The last 11 years of her career she worked at the William Monroe Trotter School in Roxbury. She retired in 2008. Now she can focus on another passion: her seven grandchildren.

Marie A. Turley is the Executive Director of the City of Boston’s Women’s Commission. The Commission promotes equality and economic opportunity and works on policy issues impacting women and girls in the city of Boston. Ms. Turley has been on the board of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail since 1995. The Women’s Commission has often collaborated with the BWHT. One such collaboration is the Boston Women’s Memorial. This public art sculpture honors three prominent women, Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phillis Wheatley, who each had progressive ideas that were ahead of her time and left a legacy through her writings. The memorial will be installed on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall on October 25, 2003. In 1999, Ms. Turley received the Massachusetts’s Women’s Political Caucuses Wonder Woman Award for her work on the creation of the Massachusetts State Commission on the Status of Women in 1998.

Alma Wright is a first grade teacher at the William Monroe Trotter School, where she has taught for more than 35 years. She is the Trotter’s math facilitator and technology support teacher as well as an active member of the Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association.

Alma has won many awards, including the Golden Apple Teacher Award, the Henry Shattuck Public Service Award, and the Milken Award. Alma and her class worked with fellow board member Mary Smoyer to develop “Stepping Back, the Roxbury Women’s Heritage Trail.”

Meg Campbell is a founding BWHT board member. She is founder and Head of School at Codman Academy Charter School, a college preparatory Expeditionary Learning high school in Dorchester. She was founding Executive Director of Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound, a comprehensive school reform design working with 120 schools nationally. She has served as Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education where her focus was experience-based education. A poet, she is the author of Solo Crossing and editor of Split Verse: Poems to Heal Your Heart (Midmarch Arts Press). She is also editor of Literacy All Day Long (Kendall Hunt) and a Dorchester resident.

Julie Crockford is the Executive Director of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, a public-private partnership created to protect, restore, maintain and promote the landscape, waterways and parkways of the Emerald Necklace park system created by Frederick Law Olmstead. She is former Director of Development and Communications for Boston’s Museum of Afro-American History, whose collections of nineteenth century artifacts include the African Meeting House, a National Historic Landmark, and Abiel Smith School on Beacon Hill, and the African Meeting House on Nantucket Island. Her career includes working at National Public Radio and the National Endowment for Humanities, serving as Deputy Director of the Boston History Collaborative, a non-profit historical tourism organization, and a long tenure as Executive Director of the Boston Institute for Arts Therapy. Julie is the founder of the Big Draw Camp, a summer arts camp for girls launched in 1996. A feminist and human rights advocate, she supports educational reforms to include all those missed in traditional history telling. A mother of two young people who inspire her, Julie is a long-time advocate for children’s rights through UNICEF and Project Concern International.

Jean Gibran taught for 25 years in the Boston Public Schools. Still a teacher activist, she now serves as Project Assistant for Boston TeachNet where she helps teachers broadcast good news about themselves and their Service Learning projects. Jean became interested in early twentieth century women when researching material for her biography, Kahlil Gibran His Life and World (co-authored with her husband). Determined to tell the stories of the artists, poets, and social workers who influenced the young Lebanese immigrant, she was an original contributor to the first curriculum published by BWHT and served as Board Secretary for five years. A South End resident and frequent Back Bay walker, Jean looks forward to many more stories by and about women achievers from these Boston neighborhoods.

Erica Hirshler is Croll Senior Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she has worked since 1983. She organized the highly praised exhibition A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940 and wrote the book of the same title. Dr. Hirshler has a special interest in American paintings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in art and patronage in Boston, and in women artists. She has written and lectured extensively on these topics, and among her publications are essays on Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Edmund Tarbell, Dennis Bunker, and Sarah Sears. She has nurtured her interest in the historical achievements of women since her days at Wellesley College, and she was very pleased to join the BWHT Board in 2002 after working with them to co-produce a walking tour and brochure of sites relating to Boston’s women artists.

Vera Johnson is principal of the Ellis Mendell Elementary School in Roxbury (a neighborhood of Boston). Formerly a teacher at the Joyce Kilmer School in West Roxbury (Boston), Vera and her grade 2 class developed “We Will Walk in Her Steps -The West Roxbury Women’s Heritage Trail” in 2001.

Polly Welts Kaufman, advisory board member, is one of the founders of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail and the former program director of elementary and middle school libraries for the Boston Public Schools. She now lives in Maine where she teaches history at the University of Southern Maine, and has developed women’s history trails in Portland and Brunswick. During her recent year as a Fulbright lecturer in American studies in Norway, she developed a walking trail to statues of named women in Oslo, printed in both Norwegian and English. She is co-editor of a new book: Her Past Around Us: Interpreting Sites for Women’s History. She is also the author of National Parks and the Woman’s Voice: A History; Boston women and City School Politics, 1872-1905; and Women Teachers on the Frontier.

Susan Wilson is a professional photographer, writer, and educator, who first encountered the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail when writing history features for the Boston Globe. A BWHT board member since the mid-1990s, Susan has shared her skills as photographer, editor, art critic, trailblazer, website consultant, and occasional spokesperson for the trail; in 2001, she helped develop the walking tour to accompany “A Studio of Her Own” exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. After earning a B.A. and M.A. in history from Tufts, and teaching history at both the secondary school and college levels, Susan moved into journalism, photojournalism, studio photography (www.susanwilsonphoto.com), feminist activism, historic consulting to area trails and sites, and authoring accessible, multicultural books on Boston history, which include Boston Sites and Insights, Garden of Memories, Literary Trail of Greater Boston, and The Omni Parker House. She is a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Boston Athenaeum, on the board of Boston by Foot, and a longtime consultant and instructor for the New England School of Photography.

Stephanie Wong Fan is co-president of the Chinese Historical Society of New England (2002-2003) and a member of a project it sponsors with the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe, the Chinese American Women’s Oral History Project. The Chinese Historical Society documents and promotes the legacy of Chinese immigration and the Oral History Project is a volunteer group that interviews Chinese American women who lived and/or worked in the New England area prior to 1965. She was a board member during the first years of BWHT. Stephanie is a former teacher and administrator in the Boston Public Schools Bilingual Department. She is currently a consultant working with non-profit organizations in the Asian American community.

As one of the founding Board members of BWHT, Barbara Clark Elam helped to conceptualize the initial trail and institutionalize the contributions of Boston’s women in the Boston Public Schools. She vividly recalls the excitement as BWHT board members had the opportunity to acknowledge and include largely unsung Boston women from a variety of ethnicities and persuasions on the Trail. As co-director of the Boston Public Schools Library Program and a life-long resident of Boston, Ms. Elam was particularly interested in the inclusion of African-American women and community women and in curriculum materials for teachers and libraries. She recalls researching and writing biographies of Melnea Cass, Muriel Snowden and Myrna Vasquez for BWHT’s Twenty Notable Women curriculum guide. Her involvement has been exciting and rewarding!! Ms. Elam retired from the Boston Public Schools in 1990.

Charlotte Harris is a founder of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. In 1989, she co-wrote the original proposal to establish the trail. A former Connecticut high school teacher, she worked for the Boston Public Schools from 1981 until her retirement in 2005, most recently as Director of External Funds for BPS. She is most interested in the trail programs in the schools and in connecting women’s history in Boston over the centuries to current student interests and issues.

Diana Lam is an education consultant. A founding BWHT board member, she was Community Superintendent of District A in the Boston Public Schools when the federal grant, the seed idea for the BWHT, was awarded. She has been a superintendent of schools in Chelsea, MA, Dubuque, IA, San Antonio, TX and Providence, RI and was Deputy Chancellor leading the Teaching and Learning division for the New York City Department of Education. She has written a chapter touching on gender issues in the book Courage, passion and vision: A superintendent’s guide to leading systemic school improvement and, with Meg Campbell, a chapter on “Gender and Public Education: From Mirrors to Magnifying Lens,” published by the National Society for the Study of Education.

Elaine Taber is a founding board member of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. While serving as Mayor Raymond Flynn’s Advisor on Women’s Issues, she helped to launch the trail in partnership with the Boston Public Schools. As Director of the Boston Women’s Commission, she chaired the Boston Women’s Memorial committee, resulting in the choice of the three women to be memorialized in a sculpture on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. Currently working as the Director of Education Policy for Project Bread, the State’s leading anti hunger organization, she works to reduce child hunger in an effort to increase academic achievement for the state’s neediest children. Prior to this, Elaine served for six years as the Policy Director for the Massachusetts Speaker of the House. During that time, she focused public policy on childhood literacy and other early learning efforts.

Sara Masucci is an educational consultant who has worked with the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail for two years; she first became involved while pursuing a Master of Education focused on gender and curriculum. She is committed to bringing women’s history into schools and providing teachers with tools and strategies for integrating women into their teaching. Sara recently created the Boston Women’s Memorial Curriculum for the trail and the accompanying Summer Institute staged in August of 2002. This project introduced students and teachers to the lives and messages of Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley, and Lucy Stone. Sara also organizes student art contests for the trail about women’s history. In addition to her work with the trail, Sara has designed curriculum materials for the Patriot’s Trail Girl Scouts and worked with the City of Boston Women’s Commission. Before becoming a consultant, she taught English and history.

Bonnie Hurd Smith joined the board in 1997 while she was directing the State House Project to Honor Women for the state Humanities Foundation. She helped research, write, and design BWHT’s guidebook. In 1999, she became BWHT executive director where she developed collaborative programs, expanded membership, helped create BWHT’s web site, published research findings, and other methods to promote the trail. At the end of 2000, Bonnie became a consultant to the BWHT. She designed the trail’s first color brochure, and remains involved in special projects.

Bonnie’s recent women’s history initiatives include creating a women’s heritage trail in Salem, Mass., writing and designing its guidebook, contributing a chapter to Her Past Around Us on reinterpretting house museums, and contributing a chapter on the eighteenth century women’s rights advocate Judith Sargent Murray to Her Past Around Us. Bonnie is an expert on Murray’s life, and has published and spoken widely on her.