Bennett

Hailey

Kolmstetter

Thompson

At Reunion 2010, Hollins presented the Distinguished Alumnae Award to Betsy McSpadden Bennett '65, Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey '60, Elizabeth Brownlee Kolmstetter '85, and Carol Semple Thompson '70.

Bennett is the accomplished director of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. During her tenure, she helped bring to life the largest natural history museum in the Southeast – the seven-story, 200,000-square-foot $70.5 million complex that opened to great acclaim in 2000. The museum has awed millions of visitors; their holdings have increased to 1.8 million specimens – including the only dinosaur heart in the world.

At Hollins, Hailey studied abroad in Paris, an experience that helped inspire her first novel. A bestselling sensation based on her grandmother's journals, A Woman of Independent Means has delighted millions of readers and was made into an Emmynominated TV mini-series starring Sally Field. Her next three novels, Life Sentences, Joanna's Husband and David's Wife, and Home Free, met with equal triumph and praise. She was Hollins' writer-in-residence in 1998 and was awarded the Hollins Medal in 2004.

Kolmstetter is the Deputy Associate Director of National Intelligence for Human Capital within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. With a Congressional mandate, Kolmstetter was tapped to help start the new Transportation Security Administration after 9/11. She was directly responsible for establishing and managing the standards and hiring system that resulted in the largest civilian workforce mobilization in U.S. history – the hiring of more than 65,000 security screeners at 430 airports across the nation in less than one year. She served on the keynote panel for Hollins' 2009 Conference on Role Models for a New Century: Women and Leadership in Science and Mathematics, and is a class reporter.

Thompson is one of the top women amateur golfers of all time. She is a veteran of more than 100 United States Golf Association (USGA) championships, and owns seven national titles that include the 1973 U.S. Women's Amateur Championship and four U.S. Senior Women's Championships. Thompson has competed a record 12 times in the Curtis Cup, compiling a record eighteen match victories in the most prestigious women's amateur team competition. She was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2008, elected to the National Golf Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2007, named the 2005 PGA First Lady of Golf, and was given the 2003 Bob Jones Award, the highest honor awarded by the USGA, in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. Thompson was among the first to be inducted into Hollins' Athletic Hall of Fame, and served as Commencement speaker.

Persinger

Peacock

Goodwin

Malcolm

Fox

At Reunion 2009, Hollins presented the Distinguished Alumnae Award to Mildred Emory Persinger '39, Florence Fowler Peacock '59, Elizabeth Fentress Goodwin '69, Ellen Reighley Malcolm '69, and Charlotte Fox '79.
    
Persinger has been a dedicated activist on behalf of local, national, and international women's rights, civil rights, and human rights since the 1940s. She served on several U.S. presidential commissions on women and represented the YWCA and the World YWCA at the United Nations. She chaired the first planning committee for the Non-Governmental Organization UN Decade of Women, and helped organize several international conferences and fora.
    

Peacock is a classically trained soprano singer and voice teacher who has performed to critical acclaim all over the world. She has been a frequent soloist at Oberlin College’s Baroque Performance Institute as well as the Classical Music Workshop at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. She was presented in recital in Oxford, England; Tokyo, Japan; Jogjakarta, Indonesia; and Saratov, Russia, and was one of fifteen singers selected to participate in the Franz Shubert-Institute at Baden bei Wien, Austria.
    

Goodwin is the co-founder of the National Down Syndrome Society, whose purpose is to educate, provide funds for research, and advocate at all levels on behalf of individuals with Down syndrome. In 2004 her family was honored for 25 years of involvement at the National Down Syndrome Society with the renaming of the NDSS Information and Referral Department to The Goodwin Referral Center. She remains a leader in the Down syndrome community as an active member of the board of the NDSS.
    

Malcolm is the founder and president of EMILY's List, a network of more than 100,000 women and men from all across the country committed to recruiting and funding viable women candidates, helping them build and run effective campaigns, and mobilizing women voters to help elect progressive candidates nationwide. In 2007, she was named national co-chair for the Hillary for President Campaign, and as such campaigned across the nation for fourteen months.
    

Fox is an internationally known mountain climber with a long and impressive climbing resume, including being the first American woman to reach the summit of three 8,000-meter peaks: Everest, Cho Oyu, and Gasherbrum II. For more than two decades she has worked as a professional Ski Patrol and as an Emergency Medical Technician.

Spilman

Campbell

Hobbs

Ansley

At Reunion 2008, Hollins presented the Distinguished Alumnae Award to Jane Bassett Spilman '53, Nancy Nash Campbell '58, Elizabeth Vann Hobbs '58, and Boyce Lineberger Ansley '68.

Spilman was the first woman to serve as chair of the Hollins Board of Trustees. During Hollins' last campaign she helped raise $47 million, and the third floor of the Wyndham Robertson Library is named in her honor. She has been an active volunteer and philanthropist throughout the state, including for the Virginia Literacy Foundation and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where she was chair from 1999 until 2004.

Campbell is a national leader in the field of historic preservation and former member of the Hollins Board of Trustees. She is chair emeritus of the National Trust for Historic Preservation after serving as chair and vice chair for six years. She served on the Planning Commission for the New York Metropolitan Area, vice chair of the Jamestown 400th Commemoration Commission, and a trustee for the Seventh Regiment Armory conservancy and Historic Hudson Valley. She is active with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation where her husband, Colin, is president and chairman.

Hobbs has a long career of volunteer service to her church, the Episcopal Church Women, and the many communities in which she has lived. She attended the United Nation's Fourth World Forum on Women's issues in Beijing, China as part of the Anglican Women's Network. Recently, she traveled to Suriname to celebrate with a hospital auxiliary she helped start there 25 years ago. Another former Hollins trustee, Hobbs' gift to renovate Bradley Hall as a new home for the Batten Leadership Institute was done in honor of the Class of 1958.

Ansley is a community volunteer, fundraiser, and historic preservation leader. She has served on the boards of the Atlanta Opera, the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, the Atlanta Preservation Center, the Trust for Public Land in Georgia, the Atlanta Girls School and many others. Last year, Ansley was named regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, with whom she has been involved for the past 20 years. Ansley, the daughter of a Hollins alumna and mother of another, also is a former trustee and current member of the Campaign Cabinet.

Smith

Ravenel

Thayer

Dillard

In 2007 Hollins presented the Distinguished Alumnae Award to bestselling novelist Lee Smith '67, editor and publisher Shannon Ravenel '60, attorney and Thoroughbred racing enthusiast Stella Ferguson Thayer '62, and writer Annie Dillard '67.

Smith has published 11 novels and three collections of short stories over the past 40 years. Her 2001 novel The Last Girls, based on a Mississippi River journey she took as a Hollins student, was a New York Times bestseller, a "Good Morning America" Book Club selection, and co-winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. On Agate Hill, her latest book, spans life in the South from Reconstruction through the Roaring Twenties and has received wide acclaim.

Ravenel has been called "the patron saint of Southern literature" due to her mentorship of talented Southern writers. She inaugurated the New Stories from the South series and went on to co-found Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, where she nurtured young writers who could not otherwise get a foot in the publishing door. In 2001, she started her own Algonquin imprint, Shannon Ravenel Books.

Thayer is a prominent attorney, civic leader, and philanthropist. She is also a lifelong Thoroughbred horse enthusiast who has brought her expertise to bear as President of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York, and as co-owner of Tampa Bay Downs racetrack. She served as a Hollins Trustee for six years and has many relatives who are also alumnae.

Dillard has said "I attribute everything I learned about writing to Hollins." As a student she began writing what would become her Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She received her M.A. at Hollins as well, and taught in the English department. She is professor emeritus of Wesleyan University and has served as scholar-in-residence at Western Washington University. Her newest work, The Maytrees, is a short novel of lifelong love in marriage, set on Cape Cod.

Dillard has also been named one of four finalists for the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She was recognized for her second novel and eleventh book overall, The Maytrees, published by HarperCollins. Founded in 1980, the PEN/Faulkner Award is the largest peer-juried prize for fiction in the United States. Dillard will be honored during the 28th annual PEN/Faulkner Award ceremony on May 10 at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

On October 5, 2006, President Nancy Oliver Gray presented Hollins' Distinguished Alumnae Award to Helen Gugenheim Jacobson '28.

Jacobson has been a lifetime advocate for civil rights, religious harmony, women's rights, and civic improvement. She volunteered her services - gratis - to Miss Matty Cocke as Hollins' first publicity director and led the college into a new era of prominence by spearheading the first endowment campaign. She served as the leader of the San Antonio alumnae group and an admissions volunteer for many years. She was also a writer for news and special events with NBC Radio in New York - the first woman in network radio to hold such a position.

In her hometown of San Antonio, Texas, she founded or led many prominent organizations, serving as Chair of the Mayor's Commission on the Status of Women, President of the San Antonio Public Library, and the Women's Committee of the Ecumenical Center for Religion and Health. She served the nation as Chair of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, member of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF, United Negro College Fund, and a Delegate to the White House Conference on Children.

A ground-breaking sportswriter, Mary Garber '38 received Hollins' first Distinguished Alumnae Award on May 25, 2006. Garber, who worked for more than 40 years for the Winston-Salem Journal and the Twin City Sentinel, was the first woman sportswriter to cover the Atlantic Coast Conference. Garber overcame many obstacles to become a sportswriter: she was not allowed to enter locker rooms and had to sit with players' wives instead of in the press box. Because she was a woman, the Atlantic Coast Sportswriters Association and the Football Writers Association refused her membership for years. However, Garber persevered and went on to win more than 40 writing awards during her career, including becoming the first woman to receive the Red Smith Award from the Associated Press Sports Editors.

In May 2008, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, as a pioneer among female sportswriters. Read the New York Times article, which calls Garber "a legend."