Anna Faith Johnson Jones is an American community activist who was the first Black woman to lead a major community foundation.
Jones is the youngest child of Howard University's first Black president, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson. [1]
Jones graduated from Wellesley College in 1954 with a bachelors in music history. She went on to study musicology at Columbia University, graduating with her master's degree in 1956. [2]
Prior to her work at the Boston Foundation, Jones worked as a real estate broker and a music librarian at MIT. [1]
Jones joined The Boston Foundation in 1974. She served as assistant director and later as associate director. In 1985, she was named president of the foundation, [3] becoming the first Black woman to lead a major community foundation, and she held that leadership role until 2001.
In 1985, Jones was appointed as a board member for the Bank of New England. [4] In 1998, Jones was elected chair of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foundations. [5] She also served as a Senior Director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. [6]
The Anna Faith Jones and Frieda Garcia Women of Color Leadership Circle, a program run by the Boston Women's Fund, was inspired by Jones and Garcia and named in their honor. [7]
Shirley Verrett was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles making her a Soprano sfogato. Verrett enjoyed great fame from the late 1960s through the 1990s; she was particularly known for performing works by Giuseppe Verdi and Gaetano Donizetti.
Marian Wright Edelman is an American activist for civil rights and children's rights. She is the founder and president emerita of the Children's Defense Fund. She influenced leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr, and Hillary Clinton.
Nannerl "Nan" Overholser Keohane is an American political theorist and former president of Wellesley College and Duke University. Until September 2014, Keohane was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. She is now a professor in social sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, where she is researching the theory and practice of leadership in democratic societies.
Mary Patterson McPherson has served as the president of Bryn Mawr College (1978–1997), the vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (1997–2007), and the executive officer of the American Philosophical Society (2007–2012). She is considered to be "a significant figure in American higher education and a leader in the education of women".
William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. was an American attorney and judge. Coleman was the fourth United States Secretary of Transportation, from March 7, 1975, to January 20, 1977, and the second African American to serve in the United States Cabinet. As an attorney, Coleman played a major role in significant civil rights cases. At the time of his death, Coleman was the oldest living former Cabinet member.
Jacqueline Novogratz is an American entrepreneur and author. She is the founder and CEO of Acumen, a nonprofit global venture capital fund whose goal is to use entrepreneurial approaches to address global poverty.
Catherine Bertini is an American public servant. She is the 2003 World Food Prize Laureate. She was the Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program from 1992 to 2002. She served as the UN Under-Secretary for Management from 2003 to 2005. Currently she is a distinguished fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Chair of the Board of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and the Chair of the Executive Board of the Crop Trust.
Mildred Robbins Leet was an American entrepreneur and philanthropist. She was a co-founder and Chair Emerita of the Board of Directors of Trickle Up, a New York–based international non-governmental organization dedicated to alleviating poverty.
The Boston Foundation is a community foundation established in 1915. Serving the city of Boston, Massachusetts, it is made up of nearly 1,100 separate charitable funds established by donors over more than 100 years. Funds are set up for the community or for special purposes, such as supporting individual non-profit organizations or particular causes. Since 2001, the Boston Foundation has commissioned and published research, hosted forums and platforms for discussion and public policy development, and joined or formed coalitions addressing issues around individual-, systems- and root-level causes of inequity facing Boston and the region.
Anne St. Clair Wright (1910—1993) was an American historic preservationist. A central figure in the foundation, in 1952, of Historic Annapolis Incorporated, she served four terms as president and as chairman emeritus of the board. She was responsible for the preservation of the historic center of the city of Annapolis, Maryland. Her preservation work, advocacy and achievements inspired many preservation movements around the United States. She is considered a leading 20th-century American preservationist. Among many civic offices, she served as the director of the Society for the Preservation of Maryland Antiquities; chairman of the board of Preservation Action; was a member of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Advisory Committee of the U.S. National Park Service; director of the Southern Garden History Society; and a director of the Nature Conservancy.
Agnes Gund is an American philanthropist and arts patron, collector of modern and contemporary art, and arts education and social justice advocate. She is President Emerita and Life Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Chairman of its International Council. She is a board member of MoMA PS1. In 1977, in response to New York City's fiscal crisis that led to budget cuts that virtually eliminated arts education in public schools, Gund founded Studio in a School, a nonprofit organization that engages professional artists as art instructors in public schools and community-based organizations to lead classes in drawing, printmaking, painting, collage, sculpture, and digital media, and to work with classroom teachers, administrators, and families to incorporate visual art into their school communities.
Callie Crossley is an American broadcast journalist and radio presenter in the Boston area.
Louise Frankel Rosenfield Noun was a feminist, social activist, philanthropist, and civil libertarian.
Ann Beha is an American architect. She is founder and partner of Ann Beha Architects in Boston, Massachusetts.
Grace E. Harris., was an administrator from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Anna Johnson Julian, born Anna Roselle Johnson was the first African-American woman awarded a PhD in sociology by the University of Pennsylvania (1937), a civic activist, and fourth national president of Delta Sigma Theta, a historically black sorority. In the 1930s, Julian studied factors inhibiting children's education and taught sociology at the University of the District of Columbia then known as Miner Teachers College. Her doctoral work was an analysis of the case records of 100 families receiving income support. She was married to prominent chemist, Percy Lavon Julian, from 1935 to his death in 1975, and had three children. The couple and their children faced down a violent and abusive campaign of intimidation when they moved into an upscale home in Oak Park, Chicago, with attacks on their home, including two fire bombings. The Julians founded the Chicago Chapter of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Jean Emily Fairfax was an American educator, civil rights worker, community organizer, and philanthropist whose efforts have focused on achieving equity in education, especially for poor African Americans. She served as Director of Community Services of the NAACP from 1965 to 1984.
Antonia Hernández is an attorney, activist, and philanthropist. She currently serves as president and CEO of the California Community Foundation. Hernández was counsel for the plaintiffs in Madrigal v. Quilligan (1975), a class-action lawsuit filed by ten women of Mexican descent who were involuntarily sterilized at the Los Angeles County Hospital. She is also the first Latina woman to serve as staff counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1979 to 1980. In addition, Hernández served on the campaign team for Senator Ted Kennedy in his 1980 presidential campaign. She served as president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) from 1985 to 2004.
Glendora McIlwain Putnam was a civil rights activist and the first African American female to serve as the Assistant Attorney General of Massachusetts.
Amy Morris Homans was an American physical educator. She was the director of the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, from its founding in 1889, through its reorganization as the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education at Wellesley College, until she retired in 1918. She founded the Association of Directors of Physical Education for Women.