The National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) announced the addition of three new members to its board of directors: Vin Cipolla, Peixin Li Dallara and Beverly Guy-Sheftall.  The board provides leadership for delivering on NWHM’s mission to tell the stories of women who transformed our nation in a physical museum and through a growing state-of-the-art online presence to educate, inspire, empower, shape the future and provide a complete view of American history.

“We are pleased to have these accomplished members join our board at this exciting time in our evolution,” said NWHM Board Chair Susan Whiting.  “These new board members bring their valuable expertise from the worlds of government relations, community engagement, nonprofit strategy and management, academia, and finance and business, as well as a firm commitment to ensuring women’s contributions to American history are included in our national narrative.”

About NWHM’s New Board Members

Vin Cipolla is the former Executive Director of the David Geffen Hall Campaign at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the New York Philharmonic, the former President and CEO of the Municipal Art Society of New York, and the past President and CEO, and Citizen Chairman, of the National Park Foundation. He serves as Chief Philanthropy Officer of Marymount Manhattan College in New York. Among his many leadership roles, he is also currently the Chairman of The Arts Arena Paris, and he is the former Chairman and President of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. With a parallel career in business, he has been a financial technology, digital media and marketing services entrepreneur having launched a series of successful companies, and he served as a President and CEO with Fidelity Capital, a private equity business of Fidelity Investments, where he also served on the board of Fidelity Charitable Services. He is the founder of Five Mile River Co., a strategic consultancy, and he is the board Chairman of the investment management company Etho Capital. A recognized leader in nonprofit fundraising, he has directed fundraising efforts and campaigns over his career spanning the arts, culture, education and conservation.

Peixin Li Dallara is CEO and founder of Polaris Investments LLC, an independent private equity advisory business, providing advice and expertise to fund managers and institutional investors in private equity fund related business and investment strategies worldwide. Before founding Polaris in 2004, she worked at Frank Russell Company, one of the world’s premier pension fund consulting firms, as senior client executive, senior portfolio manager and senior member of the investment Committee of the firm’s private equity business. She started her career in the M&A business at Frank Russell Company and became a key player in establishing one of the two world’s largest Asian infrastructure funds.  Prior to her career in the US, she was a career diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Treaty and Law Department in Beijing, China, where she worked on the initial preparation of the return of Hong Kong, and on the negotiations of the World Bank loans for China’s agriculture and infrastructure developments. She is a board member of the Harry Dallara Memorial Foundation, a founding member of NWHM’s 1920 Society, and a founding member of the Washington State Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall is the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies and founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College. She is a former adjunct professor at Emory University’s Institute for Women’s Studies where she taught graduate courses in their doctoral program, and was a past president of the National Women’s Studies Association. She has published a number of texts within African American and Women’s Studies. In 1983, she became the founding co-editor of Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, which was devoted exclusively to the experiences of women of African descent and published from 1983 – 1996. Guy-Sheftall is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including a National Kellogg Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for dissertations in Women’s Studies, and Spelman’s Presidential Faculty Award for outstanding scholarship. She has been involved with the national women’s studies movement since its inception and provided leadership to establish the first women’s studies major at a historically Black college. She participates in a number of advocacy organizations including the National Black Women’s Health Project, the National Council for Research on Women, and the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, on whose boards she has served.

About the National Women’s History Museum

Founded in 1996, the National Women’s History Museum has researched, collected, and exhibited women’s contributions to the social, cultural, economic, and political life of our nation’s history engaging people with our interactive website, online and physical exhibits, education programs, live presentations, and social media to ensure we tell those stories. Through these efforts and its future physical presence, the Museum serves as a guiding light to inspire people regardless of gender, class, race or culture to move into the future with respect, equal confidence, greater partnership and opportunity. A place where visitors can expand their understanding of women’s roles and leave with a compete view of American history. For additional information visit womenshistory.org or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.