Michelle joined the BWHT Board in 2002. She is 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. 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 GMA Foundations in Boston. Email

Katherine Dibble 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. After retirement, she served for two terms on the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and remains involved with libraries by membership on the board of Massachusetts Friends of Libraries. She continues to be active in 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. Email

Linda Stern has lived in Greater Boston most of her adult life. She has worked in educational settings from pre-school through community college as both librarian and teacher. She has done research with primary sources on the 19th and early 20th century social movements in the Boston area (suffrage movement, abolitionist movement, and Transcendentalism) and worked on a high school curriculum on Margaret Fuller for the Margaret Fuller Bicentennial Committee. In addition, she did research for the concert that commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. The concert was created and performed by Boston Workmen’s Circle’s Yiddish community chorus, A Besere Velt (“A Better World” in Yiddish). Email

Mary’s interest in Boston Women began in 1989, when she participated in the project to establish the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. As she worked on the project, she became more aware of how little of American history actually reflected the impact of women. She teamed with Maria D’Itria on many various projects regarding the role of women in history. She has worked with Maria and her class when they created the Charlestown Women’s History Trail, “Walk Her Way,” with their students. Mary has served on the Teacher Advisory Board for the Boston Women’s Memorial Curriculum and the BWHT Summer Institute. Mary has been a Boston Public School teacher for many years and is currently serving as one of the Technology Specialists for the Harvard Kent School in Charlestown. She has been a Lead Teacher, Mentor Teacher, Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science Standards Facilitator. She has served as “in-house ” Math coach, a postion which she will resume in the coming year. An enthusiastic traveler, Mary has been fortunate to have participated in Children’s Museum Study Tour of Japan and Primary Source Study Tour of China. She also has been a recipient of the Golden Apple Award. Email

Bio to come.

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. Meg was appointed to a four-year term on the Boston School Committee in January 2012. Email

Anita Danker, Ed.D., first became interested in the BWHT while conducting research on Boston’s multicultural heritage trails. A former history teacher, social studies curriculum coordinator, and associate professor of education, she is now retired from Assumption College, where she taught a variety of education courses and supervised students preparing to become history teachers. She has written articles about both educational and local history topics including the role of women in the Harvard Shaker community, the Hopedale Strike of 1913, African American heritage trails in Massachusetts, and Framingham suffragists Josephine Collins and Louse Mayo, as well as the text, Multicultural Social Studies: Using Local History in the Classroom. In 1991 she was the Massachusetts Council for the Social Studies teacher of the year. Email

Helaine Davis is a recent addition to the BWHT board. She is the third generation of her family to live in Greater Boston for (almost) her entire life. After working as an interior design consultant while raising two children, she became a librarian and worked in reference, preservation, conservation and the classification of fine and decorative arts, historic maps, rare books, photographic and other special collections at Mount Ida College in Newton, the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, and at the Woburn Public Library. She is currently working on a project to identify and present to the public the stories of some remarkable and yet (somewhat) forgotten Jewish women from Boston with fellow board member, Linda Stern. She also acts as a consultant librarian, assisting individuals with their personal research in genealogy, American history, rare books, and the arts.

Before her retirement, Maria D’Itria taught in Boston Public Schools for 38 years. Many of those years were spent as fifth grade teacher at the Harvard/Kent Elementary School. She began her involvement with BWHT in 1989 as a participant in the founding of the organization, and her involvement has never ended. She was a major force behind the blazing of the Charlestown women’s history trail, “Walk Her Way,” with Harvard/Kent students; she has worked on grants dealing with women’s history; she led school study groups on Charlestown women’s history; she has worked on the Teacher Advisory Board for the Boston Women’s Memorial and the BWHT Summer Institute; and she presented at the Charlestown Public Library and Women’s Showcase. Maria also has received a Golden Apple Teacher Award for her exemplary teacher and leadership. She has been a Boston Public Schools lead teacher, mentor, math and science facilitator, and “in-school” math coach. Email

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. Email

Laura Pattison has worked for the Boston Public Library since 1992. Ms. Pattison has worked in several specialized library reference departments, including the Social Sciences Department and the Kirstein Business Library, where she also did outreach and program planning. From 2002-2002, Ms. Pattison organized and managed the library’s Local History Collection in a number of library branches. Currently Ms Pattison serves as branch manager of the Jamaica Plain Branch Library. Prior to working as a librarian, Ms. Pattison co-founded and managed a feminist restaurant in Allston, MA (Beetle’s Lunch). A longtime activist and feminist, Ms. Pattison is currently active in the following organizations: Sharing a New Song (community chorus); Social Action Committee (Arlington Street Church); Villages without Walls (anti-violence nonprofit); Professional Staff Association (library union). Her goal in her positions at the library, and in collaboration with local nonprofit agencies, is to help individuals and organizations find the information and resources they need to move forward in their lives, places of work and business ventures. Email

Ferna L. Phillips, PhD has been involved with BWHT since 2010. She is a native Bostonian and is very interested in local history. She enjoys assisting on the guided tours and learning new facts about the city of Boston. She has been involved in higher education for over thirty years. She is currently a Vocational Counselor for the Center for Career Development and Ministry and is also an Adjunct Professor at Boston University’s School of Education.

Previously, she was the Director of the Office of Learning Resources for Student-Athletes, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA. She is an educational consultant, has taught graduate and undergraduate students in education and counseling techniques, and has served as a presenter and guest lecturer at various conferences and workshops on such topics as: diversity, financial management, spirituality, stress management and leadership development.

She has been the President, Parliamentarian and Historian for the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics (N-4-A). She has also received several awards: Distinguished Service – N4A, Outstanding Alumni, Salem State University and Outstanding Graduate Student, Boston College, School of Education.

She is an Ordained Deacon at Massachusetts Avenue Baptist Church, Cambridge, MA, a delegate for the Samuel Stillman Association, (TABCOM) The Association of Baptist Churches of Massachusetts and is also a member of the Board of Directors – Big Brother Big Sister Association of Massachusetts Bay.

Dr. Phillips has a rich legacy of accomplishments and lends her skills and expertise to community involvement and program development. She enjoys assisting with some of the technology needs of BWHT and has contributed to the “guided tour stories of BWHT.”Email

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 and classroom teacher in public and private schools for over thirty years. Since retirement in 2008 Mary has been an active volunteer in the Boston Public Schools, especially at the William Monroe Trotter School and in the Boston Schoolyards Initiative. Email

Cindy Stone joined the Board of the Woman’s Heritage Trail in 2016.  She began her career as a Boston Public School teacher and went on to work in museums.  She worked in the education departments of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston. She served as Executive Director of Old South Meeting House, the North Bennet Street School and Historic Newton.  She has served on the board of the New England Museum Association, Plimoth Plantation, the Craft Organization Directors Association and other non-profits. Old South was an early collaborator with the BWHT during Cindy’s time there and she is pleased to join the distinguished and committed board in its efforts to document and promote the achievements of women in Boston. Email

Marie A. Turley is Senior Policy Analyst for Women and Senior Programs for the Massachusetts Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department. Previously Marie was the Executive Director of the City of Boston’s Women’s Commission.  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 was on 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. Email

Alma Wright is the computer teacher at the William Monroe Trotter School where she has taught for more than 40 years. She is 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.” Email

Julie Crockford is the former president 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 also held the position of  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.

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. Email

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. Email

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. Email

Polly Welts Kaufman 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. Email

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). Email

Gretchen O’Neill joined the BWHT board in 1996 and was treasurer from 1998 to 2011. She is the publications specialist for the Boston Public Schools, responsible for researching, writing, and designing 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. Gretchen lives in West Roxbury, where she is active in community organizations including West Roxbury Saves Energy, West Roxbury Friends of Rosie’s Place, and Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church. She graduated from Yale University. Email

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, 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. Email

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. Email

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 Head of School of the Conservatory Lab Charter School in Brighton (Boston), Mass. 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, Providence, RI and Marston Mills, MA, 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.