* = WVFC board member

Patricia Yarberry Allen

*Patricia Yarberry Allen writes about family and culture and is the author of the popular health column Ask Dr. Pat. She is a gynecologist affiliated with New York-Presbyterian Hospital and a contributing editor to More magazine.

Read her full bio here.

Elizabeth Hemmerdinger

Hemmerdinger is a founding board member of Dancing Dreams, a program specially designed for children with physical challenges that focuses on establishing an environment where children, aided by a teenage volunteer, participate in the art of dance, giving them the chance to experience the pure joy of movement.
She is affectionately known as “Grambo” to her five delicious grandchildren.

A novelist and an adjunct faculty member of Central Georgia Tech’s English Department, Billie Brown is also a working journalist, publicist and marketing executive with four decades of experience for both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, including stints as marketing manager for The Coca-Cola Company  and director of public relations for the Goizueta Business School of Emory University.  She was recently appointed  Senior Research Fellow for Ellis Strategy Group, which counsels companies around the globe on strategy, operations management and finance.

Alice Ray Cathrall

Alice Ray Cathrall is an artist working and studying in Philadelphia.She also occasionally writes about the arts and its place in our lives. She received a Masters; degree in literature from New York University and is currently enrolled in the four year painting certificate program at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Faith Childs

Read her full bio here.

Leya Evelyn

Leya Evelyn lives in Nova Scotia, where she moved in the early 1980’s after having lived and worked for some time in New York City. Curator Gil McElroy writes of Evelyn’s work: “Given our human tendency toward seeking out recognizable things, we look for what might be representational and identifiable in Evelyn’s paintings. And indeed we can find it here, in the form of fragments of images the artist has appropriated from popular magazines and collaged into her work….Her art actively resists the constriction of tidy categorizations like “representational,” or “abstract,” while simultaneously exploiting them. It is a delicate balancing act that has made for some powerful art.” You can learn more about Evelyn at Use My Sky.

Keri Gans is a Registered Dietitian in private practice in Manhattan. She is a Spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association Spokesperson (ADA), an ADA Delegate for NY State and a Past President of the New York State Dietetic Association. Keri holds a Master’s Degree in Clinical Nutrition from New York University and Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Ohio University. Before working solely in private practice Keri was a clinical staff dietitian at St. Lukes Roosevelt Hospital and North General Hospital in Manhattan. Besides individual and group nutrition counseling, Keri spends time public speaking, consulting for nutrition websites and providing on-line nutrition counseling and writing. She has also worked as a media spokesperson, including clients such as, Bayer Nutritional Science, Wisdom Naturals (Stevia Brand) and The American Dairy Association and Dairy Council. Keri is frequently quoted in local and national publications, and has made several television appearances including, ABC News, FOX News, FOX Morning Show with Mike and Juliet and Good Morning America; and numerous radio interviews, including Dr. Radio on Sirius Satellite Radio. She was also the host of a weekly nutrition/lifestyle show called “Diet Diva” on Manhattan Public Access TV for five years. Keri is the proud winner of the New York State Dietetic Association’s 2006 Emerging Dietetic Leader Award.

Robin Gerber

Robin Gerber is the author of several books, including Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way: Timeless Strategies from the First Lady of Courage and Katharine Graham: The Leadership Journey of an American Icon. Her novel “Eleanor vs. Ike” imagines Eleanor Roosevelt as a candidate for president. She is also a lawyer and senior faculty for the Gallup Organization, and a senior fellow in Executive Education at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park.

Antoinette Geyelin, known as Toni, is a native New Yorker. A graduate of the Brearley School and Barnard College (AB Latin American Area Studies), her banking career began at the Chase Manhattan Bank in its prestigious Credit Training Program. Among the first women to be accepted into this program, upon completion she became the first female credit officer sent by Chase into the Latin American market. Fluent in Spanish and subsequently Portuguese, Toni has spent a significant portion of her career working with Latin America as a commercial banker, an institutional banker, a sovereign debt specialist, and most recently as a private wealth management executive. Adept at managing change and steering turnarounds in the financial service sector, she has held executive positions with Bankers Trust, CIBC Oppenheimer, Deutsche Bank and as Treasurer for Sotheby’s. Additionally, Toni managed the startup of a registered investment advisory firm for a group of Brazilian investors and most recently assisted her husband in the launch of his new business.

Married with two “almost” grown children, Toni currently serves as a Trustee with the Walter C. Klein Foundation. She is a former trustee of the Brundage, Story and Rose Investment Trusts and the Diocesan Investment Trust for the Episcopal Diocese of New York. She served as a director of TIP Neighborhood House in the South Bronx and the Executive Council on Diplomacy (formerly the Executive Council on Foreign Diplomats in America).

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard is a resident scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center Scholars Program. She is the author of more than a dozen books in the fields of politics, women’s studies and poetry, most recently “Healing: A Life with Chronic Illness.” Her book in progress Mothers in All But Name focuses on grandmothers, aunts, sisters, friends and strangers who have acted as mothers.

A new member of WVFC’s Advisory Board, Dr. Elizabeth Jelks is a Manhattan-based opthamologist who works in close association with Dr. Glenn W. Jelks, MD. Their work includes evaluation of surgical patients, in the operating theatre and aesthetic supplementary procedures. Her first career in medicine was as an emergency physician’ now, she focuses on reconstructive eyelid and facial surgery and all aspects of cosmetic surgery. An expert in oculoplastic surgery, Dr. Jelks c has co-authored medical journal articles and chapters related to oculoplastic surgery and conducts courses in the subject as well.

Melanie Katzman, Ph.D.

Melanie’s pioneering work defining, treating and advocating for women’s mental health concerns has resulted in five books, countless articles and close collaborations with media and local governments in the U.S. and abroad. Melanie is on the faculty at the Weill-Cornell Medical School in New York City and the University of London, England and sits on the task force to achieve parity for female faculty as part of her work with the University of Pennsylvania’s Trustee’s Council. She received a doctorate in Psychology and is certified in the U.S. and chartered in the U.K. Melanie lives in New York City with her husband and two teenage children.

Julia L. Kay is a painter, printmaker, photographer, muralist and digital artist who was born and raised in New York City. The summer before second grade, her family visited San Francisco, and she knew immediately that she wanted to live in the Bay Area. Before she was free to move West, however, she needed to see to her education, so she finger-painted her way up through the grades, attended the High School of Music and Art in NYC, received her BA in Photography from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and did graduate work at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. Finally, she came out to California and settled in sunny West Oakland, where she lived for 12 years before moving to San Francisco. Julia’s images of people, plants and animals distorted through the funhouse mirror of her imagination have been shown in New York, Connecticut, Maryland, San Francisco, around the East Bay, and on the internet. Her work has won local competitions and a mural commission.

Phyllis Fanzo Lombardi well known in the Ardsley School District, Westchester County and the nation for her tireless advocacy on behalf of the families touched by autism. She has trained EMS workers, designers of schools and hospitals,  and educators about the needs of low-verbal children with disabilities. When her son is admitted to the bar, she may just run for President.

Chris Lombardi, Editor-in-Chief

Since discovering that she was really a journalist just shy of her 40th birthday, Chris Lombardi has written for The Nation, Ms. Magazine, Poets & Writers, and American Bar Association Journal. Her work for New York newspaper group Community Media won a 2008 New York Newspaper Association award for In-Depth Reporting. Her upcoming book I Ain’t Marching Anymore, first developed during her year at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, will be published next year by University of California Press.

Jackie Lyden

Jacki Lyden is a regular substitute host on NPR’s Weekend Edition and Weekend All Things Considered. Part of the award-winning NPR team that covered the Persian Gulf War, Lyden lives in Washington, D.C. Her 1997 memoir Daughter of the Queen of Sheba is scheduled to become the basis for a feature film starring Amy Adams.

Judy Orlando

Judy Orlando, former director of Astella Development Corp (a nonprofit aiding the revitalization of Coney Island), calls herself “a veteran of serial lives –writer, singer, dinner-theater-owner, time-sharing salesman, real estate broker, legal secretary.” Her proudest accomplishments, she writes, are her children, her solvency and her recently acquired Medicare card.

Dr. Elizabeth Poynor

Dr. Poynor graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1984. She then graduated from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1988 and completed her residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. Dr. Poynor completed her fellowship in gynecologic oncology in 1995 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and remained on the surgical attending staff until July of 2006. While developing and maintaining a busy surgical practice as an Assistant Attending Surgeon at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cornell Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences, she also obtained a PhD in cell biology and genetics from Cornell. Dr. Poynor is Board Certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Gynecologic Oncology

Rachel Rawlings, Contributing Editor

A former Isaacs Scholar at the City College of New York–where she studied poetry with Marilyn Hacker, Barry Wallenstein, and Elaine Equi–Rachel grew up in Philadelphia, where she has returned after years in California and New York, calling herself “a missionary among the Mets-loving heathens.” Her journalism has appeared in Woman Poker Player and Online Access; her poetry can be seen in Poetry and Performance, Global City Review and the Ghazal Page. Her occasional blog, “All in Deshou,” mixes poetry, politics, and poker.

Mary Kelly Selover has been a writer and editor for national consumer publications for more than 20 years. While in her late twenties, she started a magazine aimed at the 50-plus demographic which grew within three years to more than 1 million subscribers. Mary Kelly has also served as a spokesperson throughout the U.S. for a Fortune 100 company and has consulted on numerous marketing and public relations efforts.

Shelley Singer

Shelley Singer lives in Bethesda, Maryland and Manhattan. She graduated from NYU in 1970 and earned an M.A. in French Literature from The George Washington University. After several years in book publishing, she launched an event management company that became her work for over twenty-five years, first in New York and then in the DC metro area. She has been writing, quietly, for a long time. Now things are starting to get louder.

Alexsandra Stewart

A broker with RE/Max Equity Group, Alexsandra Stewart describes herself as “an artist, traveler, dreamer, real estate broker, reader, and gardener in no priority order.” She returned to her hometown of Portland in 2004 after a career as a diversity and organizational-development consultant, helping businesses and nonprofit organizations weather the process of change. Learn more about Stewart at her site on the real estate blog Activerain.com.

Diane Vacca

Trained as a medievalist, Diane Vacca taught medieval literature, Spanish and Italian at several universities before becoming a journalist with specialties in politics, the arts and New York City. Her work can also be found at Talking Points Memo.com, Obit-mag.com, and New York City weekly Chelsea Now, where she covers everything from education and public housing to landmark designation and the arts. She lives in midtown with her husband, Salvatore Vacca; they have two children and three grandchildren.

Elizabeth Willse, Contributing Editor

An alum of Vassar College, Elizabeth Willse is a poet, book reviewer, journalist and a personal trainer. Her journalism can also be seen at the Newark Star Ledger and Chelsea Now, and her poems in many literary magazines including The Subway Chronicles, the Rose and Thorn and the Ghazal Page. She lives in New York City.

Ainslie Jones Uhl

Ainslie Jones Uhl is a freelance writer/editor and photographer. A native North Carolinian and former New Yorker, she holds a B.A. in English from Sweet Briar College and a Master of International Business from the University of South Carolina. She recently relocated to San Diego, Calif., with her husband of 26 years and their four children. Her monthly column, The Compass Rose, reflects on her family, her writing, and what her new life in Southern California means for her heart.Karin Zeitvogel is a correspondent for Agence France-Presse, based in Washington DC. An American citizen, she has also worked for AFP in Poland and France, and on short-term missions in the Baltic states, Cyprus and Greece.