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,…