Board of Directors

Ida E. Jones

Co-President

Ida E. Jones is the Associate Director of Special Collections and University Archivist at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, she graduated with a B.A. in News Editorial Journalism and a Ph.D. in American History from Howard University. Throughout her career she remains committed to service within the profession of history and archives. She provides consultant services for persons & organizations interested in learning about the archival process. She serves as an adjunct instructor for Lancaster Bible College.

Her scholarship is evident in numerous publications, speaking engagements, as well as, radio and television appearances. Her publications include book reviews, a variety of encyclopedia entries and four monographs. Her first book The Heart of the Race Problem: the Life of Kelly Miller was self-published in 2011 and her recent book Baltimore Civil Rights Leader Victorine Q. Adams the Power of the Ballot was published in 2019. All of her publications and larger research interest explore the archival documentation of individuals who lived impactful lives and left a tangible legacy.

A lover of historical fiction and documentaries, she is a consummate scholar who believes deeply in the words of Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune who stated “power must walk hand in hand with humility and the intellect must have a soul.”

Lucienne Beard

Co-President

Lucienne Beard has been active with the Alice Paul Institute since 1994, first as a volunteer and board director and later as a member of the non-profit’s first professional staff. As API’s program director, she established the interpretive story for public visitation at Paulsdale, Alice Paul’s home and a National Historic Landmark in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, and created the Alice Paul Leadership Programs for girls, which use the example of successful women leaders from the past and present to teach and inspire today’s young women to pursue leadership into the future.
Beard retired as API’s Executive Director in 2021, having overseen a major expansion of the organization’s funding and impact and raised awareness of Alice Paul’s work for women’s equality. She has lectured on Alice Paul and her place in women’s history across the country.  Beard earned a B.S. in International Affairs from The George Washington University and an M.A. in American History from Rutgers University. She has served on the board of directors of The New Century Trust, a women’s historic site in Philadelphia, the League of Women Voters of New Jersey, the Girl Scouts of the South Jersey Pines, as a national delegate for Vision 2020, and on the steering committee of the Women’s Vote Centennial Initiative. Her community activism is inspired by Alice Paul, who said, “… the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great work of art.” Beard lives in southern New Jersey with her husband and the world’s friendliest cat.

Judith Wellman

Vice President

Judith Wellman is Principal Investigator, Historical New York Research Associates, and Professor Emerita, State University of New York at Oswego. She has more than 40 years of experience in research, teaching, cultural resource surveys, and grants administration. She specializes in historic sites relating to women’s history, the Underground Railroad, and African American communities, with almost forty National Register nominations and a dozen cultural resource surveys. With a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, Judith Wellman taught history at the State University of New York at Oswego from 1972-2010. Scholarly writings include The Road to Seneca Falls (University of Illinois, 2004) and Brooklyn’s Promised Land: The Free Black Community of Weeksville, N.Y. (New York University, 2014).

Dr. Wellman has worked as a consultant and principal investigator on award-winning projects with the National Park Service, National Endowment for the Humanities and many other organizations. She has extensive experience working local organizations and giving talks and workshops for teachers and public audiences. She is currently working on sites relating to women’s suffrage in New York State, as well as research on the Underground Railroad in Niagara Falls.

Robyn Young

Secretary

Robyn Young is an independent scholar and women’s historian dedicated to sharing women’s history with the general public through Hera’s House, A Traveling Women’s History Show. Through her efforts since 2001, Young has received approval from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission for 21 roadside historical markers throughout Pennsylvania. Nineteen are for women’s history sites; the other two are for the site of the Lynching of Zachariah Walker and for the Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades. Young is known locally as “the Marker Lady.” She is the author of “Women in Penn’s Woods: A History of Women in Pennsylvania.” She has written history articles for the Chester County Day newspaper since 2008.

Young is Secretary of the Media Historical Society and is a member of various historical societies in Chester and Delaware counties. Young is also a member of the Business and Professional Women (PA and Delaware County Chapter) and the League of Women Voters (PA and Chester County Chapter).

She received a paralegal certificate from Pennsylvania State University and has worked for attorneys for over 30 years. She currently works part-time for a Delaware County law firm.

Andrea Malcomb

Treasurer

Andrea Malcomb is Director at Historic Denver’s Molly Brown House Museum. She is focused on elevating the house museum as a nationally recognized women’s history site while also expanding the museum’s education partnerships across Denver. Under her leadership, the museum has elevated its public history impact through programs and interpretation that superimpose feminized narratives of historical events onto contemporary place-based activities, prompting audiences to explore a new, woman-centered dynamic between past and present.

This has led to education curriculum that elevates diverse stories of place-making, establishes higher standards for collections care and accessibility, and generates programming for evolving audience needs. Malcomb has also ensured the historic house will stand for another century with the recent completion of $1million+ in capitol restoration and the addition of accessible programming spaces.

She has served on the NCWHS RIC since 2018 and is in a second term on the Historic House Museums Committee of AASLH. She enjoys reading, cooking, championing for women’s rights, sits on the Board of Irish Network CO, and volunteer’s with the League of Women Voters.

Barbara Lau

Barbara Lau is executive director of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice where she connects her commitment to justice with her belief in the power of community practice. She is also the director of the Pauli Murray Project at the Duke Human Rights Center/Franklin Humanities Institute. The Pauli Murray Family Home was named a National Historic Landmark in December 2016 and will be open to visitors in 2022.

Lau’s 35 years of experience as a folklorist, curator, professor, oral historian, media producer and author includes curating exhibitions, performances and public art projects. She has produced To Buy the Sun, an original play about Pauli Murray; co-directed the Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life community mural project; and curated Pauli Murray: Imp, Crusader, Dude, Priest. She earned a BA in Sociology/Urban Studies from Washington University in St. Louis and an MA in folklore at the University of North Carolina.

Cheryl Harned

Cheryl Harned is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A public historian, she works at the intersections of material culture, personal identities and the public lives of collected objects. Harned collaborates with students and community partners to develop, implement and evaluate exhibitions and programs that promote creativity, connection and self-reflection.

Among her accomplishments, she has served as Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Five Colleges, Inc. Graduate Fellow, assistant curator of the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum at Mount Holyoke College, exhibition activities developer at Historic Northampton, and consultant for a variety of museums and historical societies. In 2017, she served as technology director and program assistant for the NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops for School Teachers: Women Making Change. Harned’s scholarly research explores the roles of trauma, wonder and identity through individuals’ collections and their efforts to make those collections visible in public life.

Erica Ciallela

Joanne L. Goodwin

Joanne L. Goodwin is Professor Emerita of History and Director Emerita of the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada at UNLV. Her first book and several articles focused on the intersection of gender and welfare policy. Since she arrived in Las Vegas in 1991, she has developed numerous resources on the history of women in the region, including the Nevada Women’s Archive (Lied Library at UNLV), the Las Vegas Women Oral History Project, and the historical research conducted while director of the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada (website https://womennvhistory.com). Her most recent scholarship is the book, Changing the Game: Women at Work in Las Vegas 1940-1990, which draws on the oral history project.

Two public history projects expand a new audience for her research as illustrated by a 2014 project. She co-produced “MAKERS: Women in Nevada History,” a collaboration with Vegas PBS, which aired Oct 2014. The original interviews have been edited and provide additional content to the website above.  From 2017-2020, she collaborated to add Nevada suffrage sites to the National Votes for Women Trail (ncwhs.org).

Joanie DiMartino

Joanie DiMartino is the Museum Curator and Site Superintendent of the Prudence Crandall Museum, a National Historic Landmark in Canterbury, Connecticut.  She earned an MA in Public History from Rutgers University, where her scholarly focus was the Progressive-Era militant suffrage movement.  She has been in the museum field for over 25 years, working at many different sites, from large institutions such as the Kentucky Historical Society and Mystic Seaport Museum, to small historic houses.  DiMartino serves on the Executive Committee of the Connecticut League of History Organizations (CLHO) Board, the Connecticut History Day Advisory Council, and is the Connecticut representative for the Votes for Women Trail through the National Collaborative of Women’s History Sites, which she represented on the Connecticut Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission.  She lives in Mystic, Connecticut with her family, and serves her community as a Justice of the Peace.

L. Heidenreich

Dr. L. Heidenreich grew up down-valley in Napa California, earning their AA from Napa College, BA from San Francisco State University, and PhD from the University of California, San Diego.  Today a Professor of History at Washington State University, they are author of “This Land Was Mexican Once”: Histories of Resistance from Northern California, and lead editor of Three Decades of Engendering History Selected Works of Antonia Castañeda. L. Heidenreich’s articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Chicana/Latina Studies, Aztlán, the Journal of Latinos in Education and the Journal of American Ethnic History, while their poetry, sometimes under the name of onegangrygirlfag has been published in Lean Seed, Sanctified, and Sinister Wisdom. Their second monograph Nepantla2: Excavating Transgender Mestiz@ Histories in Times of Global Shift (Nebraska, 2020), was a finalist for a 2021 Lambda Literary Award. From 2014-2017 they were co-coordinator for the Cuicacalli, community learning weekend at Washington State University.  They continue to edit the proceedings for the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies.

Lesley Barker

Lesley Barker, PhD, is the director of the Kentucky Faith & Public History Education Project which is based at River of Life Ministries of Paris, Kentucky. She is the author of several books including: St. Louis Gateway Rail – The 1970’s; New Boots: Elisha Green’s Story; Not Fair: Mary Britton’s Story; Picked Last: The Story of Effie Waller Smith; Pastor’s Ex-Wife; and Safe in the Arms of Jesus. She is a seasoned public speaker who has presented for faith-based and academic audiences in the United States, Haiti, France, and England. Professionally, Lesley has been an educator and a leader. She taught in the home school context for 17 years, taught elementary school for the St. Louis Public Schools, spent ten years as an optometric vision therapist in a pediatric optometry practice, and served as a consultant for smaller, newer, and often faith-based non-profit organizations with grant-writing and strategic planning. These roles led her to become the executive director of the Bolduc House Museum (now the Centre for French Colonial America) in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, from 2009-2016. She holds a Bachelor’s in Sociology from Washington University in St. Louis, a Master’s in Teaching from Webster University and a PhD in Museum Studies from the British University of Leicester. Lesley is the mother of seven and the grandmother of six. She currently lives and works in Paris, Kentucky.

Lillian Serece Williams

Lillian Serece Williams, associate professor in the Department of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, is an expert on U.S. social and urban history. Her research is in the areas of institutions, ethnicity, biography and women’s history, and much of her scholarship has led to the preservation of the records of women and African Americans.

Professor Williams is the author of Strangers in the Land of Paradise: The Creation of an African American Community, Buffalo, New York, 1900-1940. Williams also published A Bridge to the Future: The History of Diversity in Girl Scouting. She is editor of the Records of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and an associate editor of the 16 volume series Black Women in United States History. Williams has consulted on historical projects for
museums, corporations and nonprofit organizations, including the New York State Museum permanent exhibit “Black Capital: Harlem in the 1920s.” She also serves on several national and local commissions to celebrate the centennial of the ratification of the Suffrage amendment. Government agencies also have sought her advice regarding urban planning and public policy issues.

Williams is an expert on the history of African Americans in Western New York. Currently she is writing a biography on Mary Burnett Talbert, an early 20th century suffragist and human rights advocate who spent much of her life in Buffalo.

Photo Credit: Douglas Levere / University at Buffalo

Liz Almlie

Liz Almlie has worked for the South Dakota State Historical Society (State of South Dakota) as a Historic Preservation Specialist since March 2011, working with the programs of the National Register of Historic Places, Certified Local Government, survey, grants, markers, technical guidance, and education/outreach for a region of the state.  She received her B.A. in History at Augustana College (now University), Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 2008, and her M.A. in Public History at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, in 2010.

Almlie has written several articles on historic places and preservation for the South Dakota chapter of the American Institute of Architects, DOCOMOMO-US, and the quarterly journal South Dakota History, including “From the Capitol to Main Street: The Landscape of the Woman Suffrage Movement in South Dakota” (2019).  She also writes a blog independently called “History in South Dakota” with pages on the history of the suffrage movement, on South Dakota architects and builders, and a variety of posts on other state history topics she finds interesting.

Nancy Brown

Nancy Baird Brown grew up in Johnstown, New York, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born, married and inspired.  She is an original incorporator and founder of The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Hometown Association, and serves as its current co-chair.  She is the author of the “Walk in her Footsteps” cell phone tour, highlighting sites of importance in Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s life in Johnstown. In addition to serving on the board of The National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites, Nancy is the Chair of The National Votes for Women Trail.

After a 20-year career as an advertising copywriter, Nancy became a fifth-grade teacher. Her passion for women’s history is a product of her undergraduate education at Simmons College – an all women’s college in Boston – and being the mother of three daughters and one granddaughter.

Paula F. Casey

Paula F. Casey of Memphis has dedicated more than 30 years educating the public about Tennessee’s pivotal role in the 19th Amendment’s ratification with a video, book, e-book, audiobook, and public art. She is also an engaging speaker on the 19th Amendment and voting rights.

She produced the video, “Generations: American Women Win the Vote,” in 1989 and the book, The Perfect 36: Tennessee Delivers Woman Suffrage, in 1998, and the e-book and audiobook in 2013. She helped place these suffrage monuments: bas relief plaque inside the State Capitol (1998); Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument (Nashville’s Centennial Park 2016); Sue Shelton White statue (Jackson City Hall 2017). The Memphis Suffrage Monument “Equality Trailblazers” was installed at the University of Memphis law school after 5 years of work. The dedication ceremony was held on March 27, 2022, and is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/YTNND5F1aBw

She co-founded the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Heritage Trail (www.tnwomansuffrageheritagetrail.com) that highlights the monuments, markers, gravesites and suffrage-related sites. She is the new chair of the National Votes for Women Trail and is also the state coordinator for Tennessee.

Sehila Mota Casper

Sehila Mota Casper the inaugural Executive Director for Latinos in Heritage Conservation, where she works to ensure that the preservation field is inclusive, equitable, and rooted in community. She previously worked as a senior field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the City of Austin, where she championed a just preservation movement.

Over the past decade, she has organized national Latinx preservation conferences, led efforts to save National Treasure campaigns, such as the LULAC Council 60 Clubhouse and Rio Vista Farm, the first U.S. Bracero Reception and Processing Center. She serves on the board of the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites, Preservation Texas, Texas Dance Hall Preservation, the Texas State Board of Review, and the Friends of the Texas Historical Commission. Sehila is the recipient of the 2014 National Trust for Historic Preservation Mildred Colodny Diversity scholarship and a 2013 Texas Historical Commission Preservation Scholar. She is a graduate of Texas Woman’s University Department of Visual Arts and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Historic Preservation from Savannah College of Art and Design.