Who We Are

ELIZABETH DUCLOS-ORSELLO is a publicly-engaged scholar and educator with two decades of experience in the higher education, museum, social service, k-12 and cultural sectors in both the US and Europe. She is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, the Coordinator of American Studies and an affiliated Faculty with the Center for Economic Development and Sustainability at Salem State University where she was the founding University Fellow for Service-Learning and has led university initiatives related to civic engagement, strategic planning, general education and global studies. Her scholarly work – much of it public-facing – relates to the intersections of gender, ethnicity, immigration, religion, place-making and the cultural construction of a community. Her professional career has focused on social justice and social change since her days as a Jesuit Volunteer in Kansas City, MO. Passionate about the public policy impacts of the humanities, she works with and consults for museums, schools, historic sites, local governments and social service non-profits, helping them build bridges and new approaches in their work to effect change. She has served on numerous boards including the House of the Seven Gables, The Northshore Community Development Coalition and the Boston-Strasbourg Sister City Association. A two-time Fulbright Scholar (Luxembourg and Greece) and Whiting Fellow (Cote D’Ivoire), she holds a B.A in History and Sociology-based Human Relations from Connecticut College and a Ph.D. in American and New England Studies from Boston University. She lives in Somerville with her husband and son where she can be found running, hiking or generally enjoying the outdoors whenever possible. She was elected to the board in 2014.

PEGGY KEMP has served in the Boston Public Schools for more than 30 years as a teacher, department head and headmaster. As Headmaster of Fenway High School from 2003-2016, Peggy helped to transition the pilot school into one of Boston’s leading secondary schools. In 2010, Fenway High was rated one of America’s Best High Schools by U.S. News and World Report. Peggy formerly served as the founding Director of the Office of School Partnerships at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has led school reform initiatives such as Harvard’s Project Zero and Jobs for the Future and served as the Associate Director of a National Science Foundation-funded math and science regional center. She is a graduate of Berea College and Harvard Law School. She was elected to the board in 2017.

BRUCE GRINNELL recently concluded a fifty year career as a practicing attorney working primarily in Berkshire County. A graduate of Deerfield Academy, Williams College and Boston University School of Law, he moved to Williamstown in 1968 after clerking in the Federal District Court in Boston. Beginning as a single practitioner, the practice grew to seven attorneys with offices in Pittsfield and Williamstown. For the past fifteen years, Bruce restricted his practice to mediation. Grinnell was a Fellow in the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, served as a trustee at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, was trustee and Board Chair of the former North Adams Regional Hospital, chaired the successful Capital Campaign there, raising over eleven million dollars. He was also a founder and president of the local ABC program in Williamstown. He was elected to the board in 2017.

WILLIAM M. FOWLER, Jr. is the former director of the Massachusetts Historical Society and is Distinguished Professor of History at Northeastern University, Emeritus. Professor Fowler received his undergraduate degree from Northeastern University and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. He is the former editor of The New England Quarterly and the author of a number of books relating to American history including: William Ellery A Rhode Island Politico and Lord of Admiralty; Rebels Under Sail: The Navy in the Revolution; The Baron of Beacon Hill: A Biography of John Hancock; Jack Tars and Commodores: The American Navy 1783-1815; Silas Talbot: Captain of Old Ironsides; Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War; Samuel Adams: Puritan Radical and Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle For North America, 1754-1763. He wrote the “Introduction” and “Epilogue” to Boston Looks Seaward and he is co-author of America and The Sea: A Maritime History of America. His most recent book is Steam Titans: Cunard, Collins and the Epic Battle for Commerce on the North Atlantic (2017). He is a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, the American Antiquarian Society, and an Honorary Member of the Boston Marine Society and the Society of the Cincinnati. He is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Pilgrim Society. He received an honorary degree from Northeastern University in 2000. William lives in Reading and was appointed to the Mass Humanities board by Governor Baker in 2015.

LENNIE ALICKMAN is a Massachusetts native, graduating from Andover High School in 1979. She studied painting and received a BFA from Syracuse University in 1983. Beginning in Boston and moving to Los Angeles, Lennie worked for The Boston Company until 1999. Most recently, she was a Senior Managing Director for First Republic Bank in Los Angeles. In 2012, her passion for art was calling so Lennie retired from private banking to pursue a professional career in the arts. She moved to Provincetown from Los Angeles full-time in 2012. Lennie is the Treasurer and on the Board of Trustees at The Provincetown Art Association and Museum. She was elected to the board in 2019.

WHITNEY BATTLE-BAPTISTE is a scholar and activist who views the classroom and the university as a space to engage contemporary issues with a sensibility of the past. Her academic training is in history and historical archaeology and her research is primarily focused on how the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality look through an archaeological lens. Her work has included interpreting captive African domestic spaces at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage Plantation, school segregation in 19th century Boston at the Abiel Smith School on Beacon Hill, the Burghardt family homestead, also known as the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite in Great Barrington, and her most recent work on the complexities of navigating a community-based archaeological project at the Millars Plantation site on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. Her book, Black Feminist Archaeology (Left Coast Press, 2011), outlines the basic tenets of Black feminist thought and research for archaeologists and shows how it can be used to improve contemporary historical archaeology as a whole. She also serves as the Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst and was appointed to the board by Governor Baker in 2018.

RAMON BORGES-MENDEZ was born in Puerto Rico. He holds a BA (cum laude) in Social Thought and Political Economy from UMASS-Amherst, and an MCP and PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT. Currently, Prof. Borges-Méndez is an associate professor and coordinator of the graduate program in Community Development and Planning at Clark University. He has publications on workforce development, environmental justice, labor markets, regional planning, and immigration, which have appeared in Local Environment, The Upjohn Institute Press, CENTRO Journal, and the Economic Development Quarterly. He has served as a consultant for The World Bank, The Ford Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and SEIU-1199 Health Care Workers (NYC), and other nonprofits and governments. Ramón co-leads Worcester’s Working Cities Challenge Project (FED-Living Cities) on workforce development and the food-driven economy, and belongs to the board of directors of Worcester Common Ground CDC and the Latino Education Institute at Worcester State University. He was elected to the board in 2017.

LYELL FRANKE is a graduate of Wheaton College and longtime resident of Duxbury. She is an Overseer and former board member of the South Shore Conservatory. She served on the boards of the Duxbury Creative Arts Council and Duxbury Cultural Council. Lyell current serves on the executive committee of the Duxbury Music Festival, and is a Senior Associate at the MFA. She was appointed to the board by Governor Baker in 2019.

CANDACE LEE HEALD has served as the Director of AHA! New Bedford’s 2nd Thursday FREE Art and Culture Night since 2007. Previously, she was Vice-President of Program, Education and Exhibitions at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, where she oversaw educational and public programs, exhibitions and library functions as well as visitor services and volunteers. Lee’s undergraduate degree in American History is from Brown, her Master’s Degree in American History and Museum Studies is from the University of Delaware and her Ph.D. is from Lesley University. She served on the Governor’s Creative Economic Development Council as well as other non-profit boards. Lee joined the Mass Humanities board in 2018.

LAWRENCE R. HOTT has been producing documentary films since 1978, when he left the practice of law to join Florentine Films.  His awards include an Emmy, two Academy Award nominations, a George Foster Peabody Award, the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, the Erik Barnouw Award, five American Film Festival Blue Ribbons, fourteen CINE Golden Eagles, screenings at Telluride, and first-place awards from the San Francisco, Chicago, National Educational, and New England Film Festivals.  Hott was the Fulbright Fellow in Film and Television in the United Kingdom in 1994 and Fulbright Specialist in Vietnam in 2015.  He received the Humanities Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities in 1995; a Massachusetts Cultural Council/Boston Film and Video Foundation Fellowship in 2001; and the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism in 2001.

STEPHEN IMMERMAN retired as President of Montserrat College of Art in the summer of 2018. Prior to Montserrat, Steve served for thirty years in a variety of administrative capacities at MIT. He graduated from SUNY Potsdam, SUNY Albany, and the University of Pennsylvania with specializations in psychology, higher education, and organizational and leadership development.  Steve has served on over thirty non-profit boards and currently serves as Chair of the boards of MASSCreative and The Cabot Performing Arts Center. He lives in Salem, MA with his wife Darcy, Senior Vice President for Resiliency at AECOM, and currently Chair of the Northeast ARC board of directors.

JACKIE JENKINS-SCOTT is a nationally recognized leader with more than three decades of experience in senior and executive leadership positions in higher education and public health. She was the 13th President and the first African-American President of Wheelock College, serving from 2004 – 2016. She was appointed to the board by Governor Baker in 2017.

DENISE KAIGLER is the founder and principal of MDK Brand Management, LLC, a firm that helps clients elevate their brand, broaden their visibility, and strengthen their value. Denise is also the author of Forty Dollars and a Brand: How to Overcome Challenges, Defy the Odds and Live Your Awesomeness, a book designed to help individuals define a personal brand that helps them reach their professional goals. Denise has decades of corporate experience in communications, branding, and marketing at global brands Reebok, adidas Group, Nintendo and Boston Scientific. Since founding MDK Brand Management in 2015, she has been helping organizations and individuals discover, demonstrate, and deliver their awesomeness through the power of storytelling. Organizations that have tapped MDK Brand Management include Allen & Gerritsen, Boston Scientific, Children’s Services of Roxbury, Marsh & McLennan Companies, Merrill Lynch, and the National Basketball Wives Association. MDK Brand Management also supports numerous Massachusetts correctional facilities where Denise helps current and former inmates remake their brands to rebuild their lives. Denise, who has a daughter and a son, is active in the non-profit community and sits on several boards, including the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Mass Humanities, and the University of Massachusetts Boston Advisory Board for Sport Leadership and Management. She is also an adjunct professor at Lasell College in Auburndale, MA. She was appointed to the board by Governor Baker in 2018.

AMY MACDONALD is Director of Community Engagement at WBUR. In that role, she is responsible for programming WBUR’s state-of-the-art events venue, CitySpace.  In addition, she is the liaison for WBUR hosts and reporters to serve as moderators, emcees and panelists for other organizations’ forums. Years ago, Amy worked at WBUR as a producer for “The Connection” under the helm of host Christopher Lydon. In between her stints at WBUR, she was the Forum Producer at the JFK Library, organizing the Library’s lecture series.  A graduate of Smith College, she has a Masters in Communication from Stanford University and Masters in English from Boston University. She was elected to the board in 2017.

GAGE MCWEENY is Director of the Oakley Center for Humanities & Social Sciences and Professor of English at Williams College.  He received his B.A. from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in English from Princeton University.  As Director of the Oakley Center, he convenes groups of scholars across a range of disciplines to foster the exchange of new research, as well as to nurture intellectual collaborations and communities.  His research and teaching interests most often center on the interrelation of literature and thinking about our social world, especially in nineteenth-century Britain.  He also frequently teaches or writes about the history and theory of the realist novel, sexuality and gender, virtual worlds, and contemporary experimental writing. He is the author of a study of Victorian literature and the thin but powerful social bonds of modern urban life, The Comfort of Strangers: Social Life and Literary Form (Oxford UP, 2016), and co-edited the Longman Cultural Edition of Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times. His writing has appeared in Novel: a Forum on Fiction, Victorian Poetry, and in the art journal Cabinet, and he has been a contributor of numerous reviews and essays on literature and culture for BBC Radio 3 and 4. He has also taught at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English. He is currently at work on a study of the aesthetics of distraction and attention in the nineteenth century and beyond.  He lives in Williamstown with his wife and four children.  He joined the board in 2020.

MICHAEL MELTSNER is the George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law. Professor Meltsner was first assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1960s. During his career, Professor Meltsner has served as dean of Northeastern Law School, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and has served as a consultant to the US Department of Justice, the Ford Foundation and the Legal Action Center. In 2000, he was named a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin and conducted research on German constitutional law. He returned to Northeastern in 2005 after serving as the director of the First-Year Lawyering Program at Harvard Law School. Professor Meltsner has received the Hugo Bedau Award for excellence in death penalty scholarship, was awarded an honorary doctorate by John Jay College (CUNY) and has been described as the “principal architect of the death penalty abolition movement” in the United States.

HILDA RAMIREZ has been Assistant Director of the Latino Education Institute at Worcester State University since 2012. Her prior positions include Executive Director of the Worcester Youth Center (2008-2012), owner/operator of Ritmos Academy, a social enterprise dedicated to the development of Latino culture through the arts, and Manager of the John Hancock Observatory (1985-2002). Hilda has her BS in Business Management from Lesley University and her Masters from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has been an adjunct lecturer at Clark University, Wheelock College, and Cambridge College. Hilda has served on the Worcester School Committee and the Worcester Arts Commission and was appointed to the foundation board by Governor Baker in 2016.

GAIL REIMER is the founder and former executive director of the Jewish Women’s Archive. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Reimer began her professional career as a faculty member at Wellesley College shortly after receiving her PhD in English and American Literature from Rutgers University. In the early 1990’s, while serving as Associate Director of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, Reimer conceived and co-edited two ground breaking anthologies of Jewish women’s writings – Reading Ruth: Women Reclaim a Sacred Story and Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days. Honored by the American Jewish Historical Society with its Lee Max Friedman award for distinguished service in the field of American Jewish History in 2014, Reimer continues to write and lecture on Jewish women’s history here and abroad. Gail lives in Brookline with her husband Joe. She was elected to the board in 2016.

MARITA RIVERO life’s work has been to capture the stories that help us find one another across our differences.  She brings experience as a senior public broadcasting executive, museum president and board member in the areas of arts, education and preservation.  A Tufts graduate. She currently works on a consulting basis. In 2018 she joined the Bunker Hill Community College Foundation Board following her tenure as BHCC Board Chair.  Her interest in telling the full American story was at the heart of the Museum of African American History’s refreshed marketing and outreach effort.  As former Chair of the National Trust for Historic Presentation she saw the 2017 launch of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.  Her work as WGBH VP, General Manager Radio and Television included expanding radio to WGBH News, WCRB Classical, WCAI-FM, relaunch of WORLD digital television channel, and creation of online lecture service, The Forum Network.

YVES SALOMON-FERNÁNDEZ is the President of Greenfield Community College. She previously served as President of Cumberland County College in New Jersey and Interim President of MassBay Community College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She is a strong advocate for the humanities, especially in the context of increasing technological disruption across industries. She was elected to the board in 2019.

RAJINI SRIKANTH is Professor of English and Dean of the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is also affiliated faculty of the Asian American Studies Program and the Human Rights minor. Professor Srikanth is the author of two monographs, Constructing the Enemy: Empathy/ Antipathy in US Literature and Law (2012) and The World Next Door: South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America (2004), and the co-editor of multiple collections, including The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature (2016), a special issue on Islamic feminisms of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2008), White Women in Racialized Spaces: Imaginative Transformation and Ethical Action in Literature (2002), and A Part, Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian American (1998). In addition, she has numerous essays in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in collections. Her publications and teaching span Asian American literature, human rights, pedagogy, and comparative race and ethnic studies. Rajini is co-recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation ($100,000 in 2007 to organize and host an international conference on Islamic feminisms) and the National Endowment for the Humanities ($100,000 in 2018, to develop and implement a three-course cluster in environmental humanities). She was elected to the board in 2018.

PHITSAMAY S. UY is Associate Professor in the College of Education’s Leadership in Schooling Program and co-director of the Center for Asian American Studies at University of Massachusetts-Lowell. She has 20+ years of teaching experience. Her research focuses on Southeast Asian immigrant and refugee populations. She lives in Lowell, MA. She was elected to the board in 2019.

ERIN I. WILLIAMS is the Cultural Development Officer for the City of Worcester, MA and the Executive Director of the Worcester Cultural Coalition (WCC), a public private partnership consisting of 78 cultural organizations in partnership with the City of Worcester. With Erin’s leadership, the Worcester Cultural Coalition was presented the Commonwealth of Massachusetts highest award, as the Creative Economy Catalyst. In 2017 she received the Champion of Artists award at the Massachusetts statehouse. Ms. Williams has served on the Governor’s Creative Economy Network and Public Art Commission, is a founding board member of MASSCreative; board member of Discover Central Massachusetts, and has been a member of Americans for the Arts Local Arts Agency Executive Leadership Forum; Western MA Arts Alliance founding member, in addition to many local community organizations. Erin founded the 1974 Meetinghouse Inc. and served as the executive director for the state MA #1 community based cultural center and served as the co-director of the Wilma Project and Big Small Theaters in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Smith College, Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Cum Laude Smith Scholar and University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a frequent speaker on the role of creative city making. Erin is a firm believer that creativity sparks the economy and most importantly, builds community for all. #MakeArtEverywhere!