Andrews, a former advisor to President George W. Bush and the World Bank, has been a strategist and consultant to corporate, public sector, and nonprofit clients all over the world. She earned an M.P.A. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where in 2010 she was a resident fellow in the Institute of Politics.…

(1946 – 2016) Ansley served on the boards of the Atlanta Opera, Atlanta Botanical Gardens, Atlanta Preservation Center, Trust for Public Land in Georgia, Atlanta Girls School, and many others. For three years she served as regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, with which she had been involved for more than two decades. Charged with the mission of educating the public about George Washington,…

(1903 – 1992) Ashworth was a friend of the historian Douglas Southall Freeman, who enlisted Ashworth’s help in editing and writing footnotes for his multivolume biography of George Washington. After Freeman’s death in 1953, Ashworth continued with the project, first as a liaison between the staff working on the series and the publisher, and then, on the seventh and final volume,…

Atwell holds a B.A. in English with a  concentration in creative writing. She is the author of the novel Wild Girls (Scribner 2012). Her short fiction has appeared in journals including Epoch and Alaska Quarterly Review, and in the anthologies Best New American Voices and Best American Mystery Stories.…

Austin has dedicated herself to preserving and restoring the biodiversity of the borderland region between the United States and Mexico. She and her husband established the foundation Cuenca de Los Ojos, which translates to “Watershed of the Springs.” This network of educators, scientists, ranchers, and governmental agencies has brought to fruition more than 20,000 rock dams to slow flooding rainfall and repair grasslands,…

Barmeyer is an Atlanta-based leading environmental attorney. She earned her law degree from Harvard in 1971, cum laude. For 17 years she worked on environmental and natural resource cases as assistant attorney general for the State of Georgia, arguing in the United States Supreme Court a dispute over the boundary line between Georgia and South Carolina.…

Baruch retired from National Association of Securities Dealers as Executive Vice President, Policy and Oversight, in September 2003 and was president of Dumbarton Group LLC, consulting on securities industry regulatory issues until January 2007. Baruch serves on the boards of 72 mutual funds in the American Funds family, 66 of which she serves as chair; and The Swiss Helvetia Fund.…

Batten (shown, right) is widely known as a generous philanthropist. She is the widow of Frank Batten, former chairman of Landmark Communications. They provided the funding for Hollins’ Batten Leadership Institute, which was founded in 2002. Hollins honored Jane Batten with the honorary doctorate of laws in May 2008, the year she was the featured speaker during the commencement exercises.…

Bayless, a resident at Duke University Medical Center in the Department of Community and Family Medicine, is part of an innovative program that trains family doctors to be community leaders. Growing up in South Boston, Virginia, Bayless always knew she wanted to study medicine and help people, and she chose Hollins partly because of its small science classes,…

(1937 – 2017) A sociology major at Hollins, Belk earned a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1963. A 50-year legal veteran in the Charlotte, North Carolina, community, she is a retired U.S. district court judge. Before taking the bench in 1968, she served as assistant clerk of Mecklenburg County Superior Court.…

Bell has written 13 novels, among them The Washington Square Ensemble, Waiting for the End of the World, Straight Cut, The Year of Silence, Doctor Sleep, Save Me, Joe Louis, Ten Indians, Soldier’s Joy, which received the Lillian Smith Award in 1989, and The Color of Night. All Soul’s Rising was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf award for the best book of the year dealing with matters of race.…

Bennett is a teacher, scientist, environmentalist, and the recently retired director of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. During her tenure the museum grew into the largest natural history museum in the Southeast. It has awed millions of visitors and the holdings increased to 1.8 million specimens – including the only dinosaur heart in the world.…

Berman is a renowned expert and pioneer in the field of female urology and female sexual medicine. She earned an M.S. degree from the University of Maryland Medical Center and a medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine. She cofounded the Female Sexual Medicine Center at UCLA and founded the Berman Women’s Wellness Center in Beverly Hills.…

Berner is a leading female entrepreneur in the energy conservation business and has developed a reputation as a national voice for health care reform and women’s issues. When her husband died unexpectedly, Berner stepped in to run the family company, Berner International. In her first two decades as president and CEO, the Pennsylvania company saw a triple-digit increase in growth and profits and has become an industry leader.…

Boysko majored in psychology and French at Hollins, but found herself in politics immediately after graduation, working in the U.S. Senate office of Richard Shelby from her home state of Alabama. Later she took a job at a D.C. government-relations firm as a legislative assistant. Boysko paused her career to be a stay-at-home mom to her two daughters,…

Betty Branch earned both her B.A. and M.A. in studio art from Hollins University. Proficient in both painting and sculpture, she served as an apprentice to acquire technical skills (Miles and Generalis Sculpture Services in Philadelphia), and embarked on periods of independent study to expand and reinforce her knowledge of art history and art techniques in Greece,…

(1910 – 1952) Brown wrote hundreds of children’s books and stories during her brief life (she died in 1952 at age 42), but she is best known for a handful of classics, including The Runaway Bunny (1942) and Goodnight Moon (1947). Brown was one of the first authors to write specifically for children aged two to five.…

Butler has spent most of his career as a photographer and documentary filmmaker. His photographs of Arnold Schwarzenegger illustrated Charles Gaines’ 1974 essay “Pumping Iron,” which was the title of Butler’s first documentary. Butler also directed Pumping Iron II: the Women. In 2000, he made a well-received documentary, Endurance, about Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Antarctic expedition.…

Campbell is chair emerita of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. With a master’s degree in architecture and urban studies, she served on the Planning Commission for the New York Metropolitan Area, as vice chair of the Jamestown 400th Commemoration Commission, and as a trustee for the Seventh Regiment Armory conservancy and Historic Hudson Valley. The College of William and Mary presented Campbell and her husband,…

After graduating with an English degree from Hollins, Blanche married, had children, and volunteered in her community. Within a few years, she started taking courses in genetics, an interest that was spawned by a class at Hollins, and eventually earned a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. Following her postdoctoral research in London,…

In 2009, Carr (seated) was the first Hollins alumna to be elected to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates. An English major, Carr didn’t take a direct route to her political career. Working as outreach director at Richmond’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, she was a founder of the Micah Initiative, a program that organizes members of congregations to mentor,…

(1924 – 2017) Lee Stuart Cochran died in her hometown of Staunton, Virginia, on December 21, 2017. Devoted to Hollins throughout her lifetime, Cochran served on the Alumnae Board, the Board of Overseers, and the Board of Trustees. The daughter of a Hollins alumna, Marion Lee Stuart ’19, she was also the mother-in-law of Emily Cart Cochran ’75 and Dupre Cates Cochran ’73.…

Class of 1874 (1855 – 1938) Miss Matty Cocke succeeded her father as president of Hollins in 1901, becoming the first woman college president in Virginia. Although reluctant to take on such a visible role, she oversaw many fundamental changes in the institution she led for 32 years. Matty Cocke received her entire education at Hollins.…

Susan Cofer is a visual artist living and working in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work has two distinct manifestations: drawings inspired by biomorphic forms painstakingly rendered in a series of vertical lines; and, sculptural portraits commissioned by friends and private patrons constructed mostly of papier mâché also with exacting detail. She has had solo exhibitions since 1976 in commercial galleries,…

Describing her as “incomparable,” Dance magazine praised the performances of Achille, stating, “It’s a sure bet that when she takes the stage, she will deliver not only the movement but the core, the bedrock, the very meaning and spirit of a dance.” In addition to teaching at Connecticut College, where she joined the faculty in 2009,…

Compton is a pioneering broadcast journalist. She was the first woman ever hired as a reporter at Roanoke’s WDBJ-TV. She joined ABC News in 1973 and just one year later became the first female assigned by a network television news organization to report from the White House on a full-time basis. Compton covered presidents, vice presidents,…

Connolly is an associate professor of French at Centre College. She earned a master’s and Ph.D. in French and francophone literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where as a teaching fellow and course coordinator she won the prestigious Tanner Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. In 2007 she joined the faculty of Centre College in Kentucky as assistant professor of French,…

Culp is curator for the Historic Charleston Foundation, where she oversees the preservation and conservation of the foundation’s collection of fine and decorative arts. In 2011, she curated the New York City Winter Antiques Show loan exhibition, Grandeur Preserved: Masterworks Presented by Historic Charleston Foundation, and coauthored the book of the same name.…

Das Thakur works at Genentech as a biomarker lead for pediatric oncology, combining her first passion for medicine and her love of research. She received a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and genomics at Washington University in St. Louis, conducting research in cancer genetics, specifically melanoma. From 2010 to 2014, she was a skin cancer research investigator for the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in San Francisco.…

In 1980, Davis founded her first direct-selling luxury fashion company, the Carlisle Collection. In 1991, she and Jay Rosenberg and Richard Kaplan founded Worth New York, a direct-selling company that contracts with women to sell Worth’s high-end line of fashion. Twenty-five years later, Worth New York works with some 1,200 women stylists all over the country.…

Desai was the youngest woman ever to receive the prestigious Man Booker Prize. She won the award in 2006 for her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, which she began writing while still a student at Hollins. The Booker Prize is one of the world’s most esteemed and influential awards in literature. Author Salman Rushdie,…

Detlefs graduated from Hollins in 1975 with a degree in economics and earned an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Organization and Management in 1980. She joined the Hollins Board of Trustees in 2016. Detlefs is the former vice president and Chief People Officer of ChoicePoint Inc., currently a division of Lexis Nexis, and the former general manager of ChoicePoint Precision Marketing.…

Dillard won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, written while she lived near the Hollins campus. She also wrote two novels, The Living and The Maytrees, and several works of nonfiction, among them Holy the Firm and The Writing Life.…

Donaldson earned an M.D. from Indiana University School of Medicine and completed a residency in neurosurgery. She is a neurosurgeon at the Community Health Network in Indianapolis. She is a member of many professional organizations including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, Alpha Omega Alpha, Phi Beta Kappa, and the American Medical Association.…

Donley graduated from Hollins with a B.A. in economics with a concentration in business, and received both her J.D. and I.M.B.A. from University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business in 2001. Although she started out in the investment banking field, she has spent most of her career in contracts management. She has managed contracts and supply chains for multibillion-dollar programs and moved on to running both for a division within Northrop Grumman.…

Donnelly worked as a reporter for Time magazine for 20 years, serving as the magazine’s correspondent for the Iraq War, the Moscow bureau, and on the aviation and airline beat. She was the head researcher of the 1988 book Mikhail S. Gorbachev: An Intimate Biography and worked on the 1989 book Massacre in Beijing.…

Dugger has worked as the director of federal relations at AFLAC, the supplemental insurance giant since 2014. Before joining AFLAC, she was the senior director of political affairs at Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a lobbying association of U.S. shareholder-owned electric companies. Its members serve 95 percent of the customer base in the shareholder-owned segment of the industry and represent approximately 70 percent of the U.S.…

As chief external relations officer for the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Ellison oversees internal operations related to professional education, corporate communications, regional administration, research, patient services, and community affairs. She served from 2003 to 2011 as assistant executive director for federal affairs and as project director for the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN).…

Elstad is global director of human resources for NIKE, Inc. She has coached and mentored all levels of managers through the lifecycle of employee management, including hiring, retention, performance management, pay decisions, and succession planning. She was a member of the NIKE Bauer Hockey Leadership Team, which focused on short- and long-term strategic direction. While at NIKE,…

Emmons was the architect of the largest 10K road race in the world, the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta, with 55,000 runners. After a 16-year career as associate professor of library and information science at Emory University, Emmons became the first woman executive director of a track club in the United States and served for 22 years as head of the 10,000-member Atlanta Track Club.…

Fischer earned a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from Vanderbilt. She served as a senior research fellow at the University of Washington and an independent consultant to a Thai-U.S. collaboration fighting emerging infections. On the staff of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, she worked on issues related to medical emergency preparedness and the consequences of biological and chemical exposures during military service.…

Flynn served in a variety of roles with NBC News, including senior producer of foreign, environmental, and Olympic coverage (of seven games); manager of daily foreign news coverage for many of the biggest international stories in the 1980s and ’90s; and producer of notable interviews with such world leaders as Castro and Putin. In 2012 she was appointed senior producer for editorial planning for NBC News.…

(1957 – 2018) Fox summited peaks around the United States and the globe. She was the first American woman to climb three of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks, including Mount Everest. She was a member of Hollins’ Athletic Hall of Fame and received the Hollins Medal. The climbing wall in the Hollins gym is named in her honor.…

Frazier was a history major at Hollins and earned her master’s degree from Boston University. Frazier served on the Hollins Alumnae Board from 1999-2002, and her first term on the Board of Trustees began in 2003. Frazier serves as chair of the Committee on Enrollment Management. Frazier is the managing member of Tandem Public Relations, a boutique firm she founded in 2005.…

Gaillard has been a pioneering theoretical physicist, researcher, and esteemed professor. She earned a master’s degree in 1961 from Columbia, and then two doctorates from the University of Paris. She worked as a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research and as a visiting scientist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.…

(1916 – 2008) Garber always wanted to be a journalist, but the only job she could get after graduation was writing a society column for the Twin City Sentinel (later the Winston-Salem Journal) in North Carolina. World War II changed that. When the newspaper’s sportswriter went to war, Garber covered sports for the next 40 years,…

Although Gecek, a sociology major, had planned to become a social worker, she married an Austrian and found a job with the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies. Founded in 1947, the seminar was envisioned as a forum where scholars and leaders from across Europe could gather in the historic palace to discuss American literature, art, history,…

Goldsmith-Vein has had an outstanding career as an investment banker, talent manager, movie producer, and business owner. In 1994 she founded the Gotham Group, which quickly grew into the largest representation firm in the world, focusing on creative talent in the animation and family entertainment business and recognized as the powerhouse management firm in the animation industry.…

When her daughter, Carson, was born with Down syndrome, Goodwin dedicated herself to gaining knowledge and creating opportunities for Carson to learn and grow. When she found resources and support lacking, she founded the National Down Syndrome Society. Since 1979 Goodwin has been a leader in the Down syndrome community, serving on school boards and founding parent support organizations,…

Granade earned a law degree in 1975 from the University of Texas School of Law. She is the granddaughter of Richard Rives, the federal judge who wrote the majority opinion in Browder v. Gayle, which found the bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, unconstitutional. She served as assistant U.S. Attorney and then interim U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Alabama.…

Graves is the executive director of the Mississippi Access to Justice Commission, where she works to expand access of civil legal services to the impoverished. While a student at the University of Virginia School of Law, she received the Powell Fellowship in Legal Services. Graves used the fellowship to work at the Mississippi Center for Justice in Jackson,…

Green grew up in a middle-class family in Jackson, Mississippi, where she worshipped at an all-white church. When she was 14, she attended a mixed-race national convention of the Episcopal Church and realized that segregation was wrong. In 1962, she became politically active at Milsaps College, where she organized Mississippians for Public Education. This group of women protested the legislature’s attempts to close the public schools to avoid integration.…

Hailey is a critically acclaimed playwright and author of best-selling novels, including A Woman of Independent Means, which examine the changing roles of women in society. With her late husband, she collaborated on several television series, including McMillan and Wife, Love of Life, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. She served as writer-in-residence at Hollins in 1998,…

(1887 – 1934) Hale entered Hollins Institute at age 13 (her name while here was Lillie Ruth Hale) and stayed two years. A determined, ambitious, and talented writer, Hale worked as a reporter, sportswriter, critic (according to The New York Times, she was the “first female movie critic”), and drama publicist. She was also a feminist and activist.…

Hale is the founder and senior pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Georgia. The congregation began with four people who met for Bible study and has grown to nearly 9,000 members since its founding, with an average of 2,000 members participating every Sunday. Hale was the first woman to serve as Chaplain of the Day to the U.S.…

Hatten received a Ph.D. in biochemical sciences from Princeton University and did post-doctoral research in neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. She joined Rockefeller University in 1992 and was appointed the university’s first female full professor and the first female to lead a research laboratory there. Her work has implications for conditions that are partially due to developmental abnormalities in the brain,…

De Heinrich and her husband are the owners of Omorovicza, a Budapest-based spa and skincare line. After graduation, she moved to New York City to work in publishing. She served as special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to Hungary Nancy G. Brinker and then as chief of staff to the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. While in Budapest,…

Hendrix is a senior vice president for investments with UBS Financial Services Inc. She started her career as a financial advisor with Merrill Lynch in 1977, and then joined PaineWebber in 1985. Her bicoastal practice, HSG Wealth Management Group, specializes in advising high net worth individuals, families, and small corporate clients in the areas of estate planning,…

Henshaw received a B.A. in biology from Hollins, an M.S. in microbiology from the Medical College of Virginia, and a Ph.D. and M.P.H. from the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She had a postdoctural fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at the UNC School of Medicine. Her Ph.D. research studied the pathogenesis of pneumocystic carinii,…

Heyward is a civil rights attorney with years of experience in the field of disability discrimination law and disability management. She is the president of Salome Heyward & Associates, Ltd. A leading authority on the Americans with Disabilities Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, and Rehabilitation Act, she has written Higher Education and Disability, The FMLA Handbook,…

Hipple is one of the few women who have led major home furnishings retail chains. She rose through the ranks of This End Up Furniture Company, from a part-time sales associate to a district manager with nine stores. Within five years she had opened 86 stores and become executive vice president of sales, merchandising, and marketing.…

Hobbs has a long record of volunteer service to her church and the many communities in which she has lived. She and her husband, Worth, moved 29 times during their marriage, and in every new location she made an impact on the community. She wrote about her experiences in a memoir titled Always an Open Door.…

Hopkins earned an M.A. from Indiana University and began her career in aerospace at IBM, developing mathematical models of scientific and weather satellites. In the 1970s she moved into project management, working for one of the Big Eight national accounting firms. In 1978 Hopkins joined Price Waterhouse, continuing her already successful career of helping clients solve their financial and administrative problems.…

(1908 – 2012) After graduation, Jacobson volunteered to be Hollins’ first publicity director and worked under the direction of Martha Louisa “Miss Matty” Cocke, Hollins’ second president. She later became a journalist for NBC Radio in New York City, for which she interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt. She spent much of her adult life volunteering for the temple in San Antonio for which her husband was the rabbi.…

A political science major, Joseph earned a J.D. from Louisiana State University in 1970. She was the first woman invited to practice with a large law firm in Baton Rouge. In 1983 she formed a new firm, Rubin, Curry, Colvin & Joseph, and has amassed more than 40 years of experience in the area of collections and creditors’ rights.…

Keeley attended medical school at the University of Louisville and completed her residency at Baylor University. In 1978 she won the Louisville Pediatric Society Award for the most outstanding student in pediatrics. Keeley’s accomplishments abound: she became chief of staff of the Sarasota Memorial Hospital; received the Role Model of Excellence at Sarasota Memorial; received the Summit Award for being the outstanding medical director for child protection in Florida;…

Kay Kendall is the chair of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the arts agency of the District of Columbia. Kendall brings more than four decades of arts, education, and community outreach experience and leadership to this vital post. She was a 25-year board member of the Washington Ballet, including eight years as its chair,…

Kolmstetter, an industrial and organizational psychologist (she earned a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech), excelled in the male-dominated world of national law enforcement while working for the FBI. She currently works for NASA as the director of the Workforce Engagement Division in Washington, DC. After 9/11, Kolmstetter was tapped to help start the new Transportation Security Administration.…

Lambeth received her J.D. from Wake Forest University School of Law in 1977. She served as in-house counsel to three Fortune 500 companies—DuPont, ConocoPhillips, and Reynolds American. Her legal career has included a wide range of assignments in corporate, commercial, environmental, and international law and litigation. She began her career with the DuPont Company in 1977,…

Larsen’s area of specialty in law is in land use planning, environmental preservation, and urban and community growth management. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and earned a bachelor of divinity degree from the University of Chicago. In 1973, she earned a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law. Now a director with Gray Robinson, Attorneys at Law,…

Lawrence-Beswick is a Supreme Court justice in her native country of Jamaica. She earned her LL.B. from the University of the West Indies in 1977 and began practicing law. As an assistant director of public prosecutors, the Jamaica equivalent of the district attorney’s office, she prosecuted major crimes. She was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2001,…

Lawson received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Virginia. She has been a consultant for the Kettering Foundation; president of the Alumnae Board Association; and chair of the Hollins Board of Trustees. She has served on the boards of North Cross School, Total Action Against Poverty (chair), Family Service of the Roanoke Valley (president),…

Legum-Wenk obtained her M.A. in bioethics from the University of Virginia in 2004 before proceeding to the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she received her D.O. in 2008. In 2012, she completed her obstetrics and gynecology residency training at Memorial Health Medical Center, through Mercer University in Savannah, Georgia. She obtained her board certification through the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and is currently in private practice at Commonwealth OB/GYN Specialists in Richmond.…

Long received an M.A. in social work from the University of Michigan. She was executive director at Marcy Manor, Inc., in Dayton, Ohio, and before that was a member of the General Secretariat of the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women for the United Methodist Church. She also served as a corporate executive for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.…

Long retired from Time Inc. in 2001. She had been executive vice president with senior management responsibility for consumer marketing, customer service, newsstand distribution, production, human resources, legal affairs, and corporate communications. She was the first woman to be named publisher of any Time Inc. magazine when she was named publisher of Life in 1986.…

Lorimer retired from Yale in May 2016 after 32 years serving the university. She was a trustee and vice president for 21 years, which included serving as vice president for global and strategic affairs. She was also president of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College for more than six years. She was a director of McGraw-Hill, Inc., for 20 years and served as its presiding director for five years.…

Lykes earned a master’s degree of divinity from Harvard, followed by a doctorate in community and social psychology from Boston College in 1984. She is associate director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice and professor of community cultural psychology at Boston College. The American Psychological Association honored her achievements three years in a row with the Ignacio Martín-Baró Lifetime Peace Practitioner Award in 2012,…

MacKethan is one of the nation’s foremost scholars in the literature of the American South. She is the author or editor of six books, including Daughters of Time: Creating Women’s Voice in Southern Story and the co-edited Companion to Southern Literature, which was named a “best reference work” by the American Library Association.…

Macy was for many years a reporter for The Roanoke Times and won more than a dozen national reporting/writing awards. She received a Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard and the 2013 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress award for Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local—and Helped Save an American Town,…

Malcolm founded EMILY’s List, an acronym for Early Money Is Like Yeast—it makes the dough rise. EMILY’s List is a national network of more than 100,000 women and men that recruits and funds viable women political candidates. Malcolm and her organization believe in the power of women as candidates, as contributors, as campaign professionals, and as voters to bring about great change.…

Mann is a nationally recognized photographer and writer. Her early photographs of her husband and children became the series Immediate Family. She has won numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts. In 2001 she was named America’s Best Photographer by Time magazine. Her books of photographs include Immediate Family,…

Marsh is the director of experimental sciences for AbbVie (formerly Abbott Laboratories) in Lake Forest, Illinois. She received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of Kansas. Marsh has published more than 250 scholarly articles in scientific journals and holds nearly 50 patents. She works at the interface between discovery and development, helping move new compounds through animal studies and into clinical trials.…

Maynard is a jewelry designer in Taylorsville, Kentucky. She earned an M.A. from the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture. Her company, Elva Fields Jewelry, which she started in 2003, is named after her great-grandmother, Elva Fields Bivens Cooke. Her jewelry has been featured in such magazines as People, Marie Claire, Martha Stewart Weddings,…

McKellar is a rising opera star and accomplished artist in classical and music theatre. At Hollins, she studied in Milan, Italy, at the Verdi Conservatory and Civica Della Musica. She received a master’s degree in music from the Boston Conservatory, where she was a member of the Opera Studio and received first place in the conservatory’s chamber music competition.…

Miller’s first job was in arts management in her hometown of Toledo, Ohio. She fell in love with New York City on a visit to see a friend and moved there three months later. Her first position was with Van Nostrand Reinhold, a publishing company. She left five years later as acquisitions editor. In 1995, she joined John Wiley &…

(1840 – 1912) Moon arrived at the Female Seminary at Botetourt Springs in 1854 at the age of 14. The school would be renamed Hollins Institute in her second (and final) year. She was known for her intelligence and knack for languages, and she also helped to found the Euzelian Literary Society. But she was frequently marked down in her behavior grades,…

In 2010, Newman received the North Carolina Award, the highest civilian honor the state bestows. She was recognized for her long history of public service in the areas of arts and culture. Among her many roles: chair of the N.C. Arts Council (1993-2005); past president and board member of the Southern Arts Federation; president of the board of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies,…

A renowned soprano, Peacock has performed across the country and in such countries as Canada, England, Indonesia, and Russia. She has served as president of the Chapel Hill Music Teachers Association and on the boards of the North Carolina Symphony, Opera Company of North Carolina, and Early Music America. She served on the Presser Hall Leadership Committee,…

Peattie earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard University in 1980, followed by an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1996. She founded Valeo Medical, Inc., and Pleiades Advisors. She served as founding scientist for Vertex Pharmaceuticals and was a founding member of the asset management division at MPM Capital, helping to raise the initial $230 million BioVentures I private equity fund.…

Persinger attended graduate school at Bryn Mawr, moved to Auburn University in Alabama to teach philosophy, and then moved to New York with her husband. By then, World War II had started, and she joined the national board of the YWCA. She helped organize an international committee against discrimination in the war effort and went on to battle Goliaths such as Senator McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee,…

Phillips and Vanessa von Bismarck created Bismarck Phillips Communications and Media (BPCM) in 1999 to serve the luxury goods, fashion, beauty, and hospitality industries. The agency, which has offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London, focuses its efforts on public relations, marketing, and strategic consulting. Clients include Fendi, Chanel, Carolina Herrara, Starwood Luxury Collection Hotels and Resorts,…

Polan studied at the Tyler School of Art, Corcoran College of Art and Design, and École du Louvre. A noted instructor of contemporary American portraiture, she painted the official portraits of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former West Virginia Governor Gaston Caperton, among others. She was chair and founder of Faces of the Fallen, an exhibition of 1,323 portraits by 230 American artists that honored American servicemen and -women who died in Afghanistan and Iraq between October 10,…

Potter is a globe-trotting attorney who works with a wide variety of clients, from major multinational corporations to migrant agricultural guestworkers. After graduating magna cum laude from Hollins, Potter received her law degree at Georgetown University. She was then awarded the prestigious Skadden Fellowship, a program described as the “legal Peace Corps,” which allowed her to represent migrant farmworkers in federal employment litigation.…

Potterfield is a judge on the Iowa Court of Appeals. She was appointed to the court in 2008 as a replacement and was retained in 2010. Her current six-year term ends in 2017. She received a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. Before joining the bench, Potterfield worked as an attorney in private practice, served as a public defender for Linn County,…

Margaret Pritchard is a senior curator at Colonial Williamsburg. Pritchard grew up in Newport News and graduated from Hampton Roads Academy (HRA) in 1972. She attended Hollins College where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in studio and art history. After graduation she moved to Wilmington, Delaware, to work with the textile curator at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.…

(1885 – 1966) Randolph was the third president of Hollins, serving from 1933 to 1950. After receiving her A.B. degree from Hollins, she remained at the school for three years to teach history. She received both an M.A. and Ph.D. from Radcliffe and taught political science at Florida State College for Women until she returned to Hollins as its president.…

After graduation from Hollins, Ravenel joined the staff of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., in New York and then worked for 11 years for Houghton Mifflin, accepting the publisher’s invitation to serve as series editor of Best American Short Stories in 1977. She co-edited 11 volumes of that anthology. In 1982 she joined her former Hollins teacher Louis Rubin Jr.…

Redpath spent her entire professional career at CBS News, first with the CBS Evening News and then as the senior coordinating producer for 48 Hours. She won numerous awards during her career, including three Emmys. She is on the board of directors for the School of American Ballet, the feeder school for the New York City Ballet.…

Robertson worked at Standard Oil of New Jersey before joining Fortune magazine in 1961. She quickly climbed the ranks—research-reporter, writer, associate editor, columnist, member of the board of editors, and assistant managing editor. She published articles on the status of women in American corporations and in 1972 received the Gerald M. Loeb Achievement Award for distinguished writing on investment,…

Rose-Smith received a J.D. from Vanderbilt in 2003. She joined Goodwin Procter (Washington, D.C.) in 2008 as an associate in the firm’s litigation department and was made partner in 2010. Her practice includes defending financial institutions against consumer class actions and government-enforcement actions. She also provides regulatory compliance counseling for banks, credit card issuers, mortgage lenders,…

Roy received a B.A. in mathematics and business from Hollins and an M.B.A. in finance from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business in 2011. Roy started her career as a regulator with New York Stock Exchange Regulation (subsequently FINRA), overseeing the capital computations for the five largest broker-dealers through the 2008 financial crisis. After business school,…

Russell earned a B.A. in history from Hollins and a master’s degree in Russian history from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has spent her career working on arms control and nonproliferation at nonprofits and for-profits, and for the U.S. government. She is currently the deputy director of the Office of Counterproliferation Initiatives at the U.S.…

Shaughnessy earned a law degree from Yale University Law School in 1975, clerked for two years for a U.S. District Court judge in Maryland, and then practiced law for five years in Baltimore. She stopped practicing law in 1982 and taught part time at the University of Maryland Law School. Shaughnessy’s daughter, Mary Helen, was born in 1984 and went on to become one of the top amateur equestrians in the country.…

Slaughter was a professional horseback rider until 2011. She was diagnosed with lupus in 2007, and the illness forced her into early retirement. She found herself in a cycle of what she has termed “cumulative poverty.” She founded a nonprofit organization, the Chronic Illness Relief Fund (2012-15), which provided short-term financial and cost-of-living support for individuals with chronic illnesses.…

Slutz was a career member of the senior Foreign Service and served as U.S. ambassador to Burundi; ambassador to Mongolia; deputy director of the American Institute in Taiwan; chief of the political section in Jakarta; director of the Office of Regional and Security Policy in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs; and deputy director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs.…

Smith is the retired executive director of the Samantha Smith Center. Named in memory of her daughter, the Maine center was founded in 1985 to foster better relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1982 Samantha Smith had written a letter to Yuri Andropov, the president of the Soviet Union, about her concerns over the USSR and the United States starting a nuclear war.…

Smith is a bestselling novelist who has won national acclaim. She has published numerous novels, among them On Agate Hill, The Last Girls, Saving Grace, and Fair and Tender Ladies; four collections of short stories; and a memoir, Dimestore: A Writer’s Life. In 1999 she received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters;…

While she was chair of the Hollins Board of Trustees, Spilman was instrumental in raising $47 million during the World of Possibility Campaign. She was the first woman to serve as chair of the board. She left her mark on many other institutions and organizations, including the Virginia Literacy Foundation and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,…

Swensson served from 1974 to 1993 as composer and conductor for OperaDelaware and Delaware Children’s Theatre. There she conducted 20 operas/musicals for family audiences. She composed 12 works in 12 years, bringing some of the most beloved works of children’s literature to the operatic stage, among them The Adventures of Beatrix Potter, The Jungle Book,…

Swift is an award-winning broadcast journalist and a prominent national media consultant. She began her media career in Washington, D.C., at PBS, then produced for ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC, and Harpo Productions/Paramount Pictures in New York and Los Angeles. She returned to Washington as a consultant and founded her own firm, Swift Global Media. As the company’s senior media strategist and executive managing partner,…

Taylor has written more than 15 books of poems. His book The Flying Change won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1986. He taught literature and codirected the graduate program in creative writing at American University from 1971 to 2003.…

Thayer is a partner in the Tampa, Florida, law office of MacFarland Ferguson & McMullen. She owns Tampa Bay Downs with her brother and is the president of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. She was recently named as one of the most influential women in Tampa Bay sports. She was the first woman to serve on Post Properties’ board of directors.…

Thompson is a veteran of more than 100 United States Golf Association championships and holder of seven national titles that include the 1973 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship, four U.S. Senior Women’s Championships, and two U.S. Mid-Amateur Championships. She has competed a record twelve times in the Curtis Cup, compiling a record 18 match victories in the most prestigious women’s amateur team competition.…

Tillery is the director of programming for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. The native of Raleigh, North Carolina, knew in high school that she wanted to study film and photography but didn’t want to go to an arts-only school because she wanted a liberal arts education. At Hollins, she began a film-studies program with classes taught by the late Klaus Phillips,…

Upon graduating with a B.A. in economics and membership in Phi Beta Kappa, Towe found that many divinity schools would not admit women. When her youngest child started school, she started her journey at Yale Divinity School, earning her Master of Divinity degree in 1987. She served as pastor of Stanwich Congregational Church in Greenwich, Connecticut,…

Treadwell served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi­­­. She later worked as a health policy advisor in Tanzania, where she became interested in the interconnectedness of policy issues. In 2009 she received an M.A. from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and joined the State Department. After working in Washington, D.C., on U.S.…

Trethewey was the 19th poet laureate of the United States and is the author of four collections of poetry, Domestic Work, Bellocq’s Ophelia, Native Guard—for which she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize—and Thrall. She has also written a book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.…

Trower has been executive vice president of global communications at the Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., since 2008, directing the company’s overall communications strategy as it relates to consumers, employees, and stockholders. Before joining Estée Lauder, Trower was senior vice president of media relations for Bank of America. From 1997 to 2003, she was a managing director at JPMorgan Chase,…

(1941 – 2014) Vance served for decades on the faculty of the University of Kentucky and received the university’s alumni association’s Great Teacher Award. She published two full-length collections of poetry, a chapbook, and a short history of her hometown of Athens, Kentucky. Her work appeared widely in journals, literary magazines, and reviews. In 2007 she was appointed the state’s poet laureate,…

When Votypka took a last-minute internship at the local ABC television network affiliate instead of the month-long medical internship her father had set up for her, the die was cast. Hooked on television and armed with a communication studies degree, she headed to New York and her first real job as a page at CBS doing “whatever needed to be done.” From The Evening News with Dan Rather she worked up the ladder to 60 Minutes,…

Vowell earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She moved to Texas, where she worked on environmental issues and eventually earned a master’s degree in that field from the University of Texas at Dallas. She returned to Alabama in 1980. Her lengthy résumé includes serving as a founding member of the Freshwater Land Trust and of the Women’s Fund,…

For more than two decades, Walker served as executive producer of CNN’s Larry King Live. In 2005, King presented Walker with the First Amendment Service Award at a dinner hosted by the Radio and Television News Directors Association and Foundation. Before starting at CNN—Walker was at the network from its founding—she had been a secretary at the Washington,…

Wannamaker earned a master’s degree in biology from North Carolina State University and in 2003 received her law degree from Stanford University. After clerking for the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, she drew upon her background in biology and served three years as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division,…

Warner is director of the comprehensive writing program at Spelman College, where she is also an associate professor of English. She received an M.A. from Hollins and a Ph.D. from Emory University with a specialty in U.S. literature. She has published articles on Harriet Jacobs, Toni Morrison, John Berryman, early African American literature, and writing and technology.…

(1908 – 2002) Wilson graduated with a degree in chemistry and went on to become an accomplished actress on Broadway and to receive a Tony nomination. She directed plays, performed with the USO, and worked in television and movies. She pursued her interest in art by studying with Margaret Stark and Rafael Soyer in New York City.…

Wolf was a founder and then executive director of the Environmental Action Coalition, which started New York City’s first Earth Day celebration in 1970. After retiring from EAC, she became an environmental education consultant and coauthored the book Plastics: America’s Packaging Dilemma. She has introduced inner city youth to the joys of nature through the Urban Woodlands Project and has worked to include environmental education in standard school curricula.…

Woodie apprenticed with Philadelphia sculptor Alex Generalis and his partner, Tom Miles, after graduation. After five years in their studio, she moved to New York City, where she worked for a model maker, often producing props for photo shoots. She created her own business that makes models for toys before they are mass produced. Her clients include Nickelodeon,…