FOLGER - Key Persons
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Building Services Technician
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- Part Time Visitor Experience Expert
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- Director of Finance
- Finance Director of Finance
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- Corporate Financial Executive
Aida Sukys is an experienced accomplished corporate financial executive. She is currently the Chief Financial Officer at The Hilb Group, an insurance brokerage specializing in property & casualty, employee benefits, and retirement services to business and individuals.
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- Security Shift Supervisor
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Development Associate for Planned and Major Gifts
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- Building Services Technician
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- Administrative Coordinator, Education
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- Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University
Ayanna Thompson is a Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, and the Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (ACMRS). In 2021, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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- Social Media and Communications Manager
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- Associate Director of Programming and Director of Producing, Folger Theatre
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- Part Time Security Officer
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- Box Office Lead Associate
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- Collections Care Coordinator
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- Associate Librarian for Collection Care and Development and Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Early Modern Books and Prints
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- Company Manager, Folger Theatre
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- Recruitment and Internships Manager
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- Security Shift Supervisor
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- Production Manager
- Technical Director
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- CEO of Omnicom Public Relations Group
Chris Foster is the CEO of Omnicom Public Relations Group, overseeing 15 communications, consulting and public affairs firms within Omnicom. In his role, he is focused on talent, innovation and cross-agency collaboration to drive growth.
Chris previously was the President of North America at BCW Group, responsible for managing growth, talent and client relationships in the region. Prior to the BCW merger, he was the Global Executive Vice President and Chief Business Development Officer for Burson-Marsteller, leading both organic growth and new business development across the global operation. Chris took a break from public relations agencies in 2010 and spent 5 years at the global management consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, where he was Senior Vice President and Partner leading teams and growth across the government and civil business.
He has led national and global public awareness and communications campaigns for organizations such as the U.S Department of Defense, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Social Security Administration, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Amgen and Intel. He specializes in working with the federal government and private companies on understanding reputation risk and leveraging communications analytics to drive enterprise-wide strategy.
Chris serves on the Board of Directors for the Folger Shakespeare Library, The LAGRANT Foundation, The Institute for Public Relations, and the University of Virginia's School of Continuing and Professional Studies. He is also a founding member of the Black Executive CMO Alliance (BECA).
In 2022, he was named one of Savoy Magazine's Most Influential Black Executives in Corporate America and was included in PRWeek's "U.S. Power List" for the second year in a row. Chris been a guest lecturer at Columbia University School of Continuing Studies, the University of Maryland and Western Kentucky University and published his first book, "Reputation Strategy and Analytics in a Hyper-Connected World," a cross-disciplinary resource for communication and digital professionals alike.
Chris earned an M.S. in Applied Behavioral Counseling from The Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Philosophy from The University of Virginia.
Board of Governors Member since 2022 Since June 2021, Chris Foster has been CEO of Omnicom Public Relations Group in New York. He was previously DC-based North American President of advertising and public relations agency Burson Cohn & Wolfe, formed by the merger of Cohn & Wolfe and Burson-Marsteller (of which he was global executive vice president).
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Part Time Security Officer
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- Part Time Visitor Experience Expert
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- Chairman
- Partner at Davis Polk
D. Jarrett Arp is a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell. Mr. Arp heads the firm's Washington DC office and focuses on antitrust and competition law counseling, investigations, and litigation before trial and appellate courts.
Debbie Driesman has lived in the Washington DC area for the past four decades, having grown up in Ontario, Canada.
She worked as a computer engineer in NASA's communication division at Goddard Space Flight Center until she retired in 1999 to oversee the construction of a home. She and her husband Frank Islam have since built another new home in Potomac, MD. Ms. Driesman is the Vice President of the Frank Islam and Debbie Driesman Foundation.
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- Part Time Security Officer
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- Part Time Seasonal Retail Associate
Board of Governors Member since 2018 Derek Kaufman is actively engaged in philanthropy, public policy advocacy, and investing. From 2008 until 2015, he was Head of Global Fixed Income at the hedge fund Citadel and a member of the firm's Portfolio Committee. Prior to joining Citadel, Mr. Kaufman was a Managing Director and Global Head of Fixed Income in the Proprietary Positioning Business at JPMorgan Chase. He started at J.P. Morgan in 1996.
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- Associate Director, Fellowships
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- Director Emerita and Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly
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- Associate Librarian and Curator of Manuscripts
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- Managing Editor, Shakespeare Quarterly
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- Director
- Ex Officio Member
Dr. Witmore was appointed the seventh director of the Folger on July 1, 2011. Upon his arrival, he worked with the Board of Governors to draft a Strategic Plan for the institution, adopted in June 2013. He was formerly professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and before that he served as associate professor of English and assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.
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- Associate Director, Scholarly Programs
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- Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University - Newark
- Director of the Folger Institute
Dr. Patricia Akhimie (she/her/hers) is currently an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark, where she has been on the faculty since 2011. She is the editor of the Arden Othello (fourth series), a landmark edition and play within Shakespeare studies, and is actively involved with RaceB4Race as a board member, presenter, and conference organizer. She is also program director of the RaceB4Race Mentorship Network. She is the author of Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Race: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World (Routledge 2018) and co-editor, with Bernadette Andrea, of Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World (University of Nebraska Press 2019). Dr. Akhimie's public facing work includes working with Reconstruction.us, the St Louis Shakespeare Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Public Theatre, and the PBS series Great Performances. Her research areas include Early Modern Critical Race Studies, Early Modern Literature, Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare, Textual Editing, Early Modern Travel Writing, Conduct Literature, Comics and Graphic Novels, Gender, and Colonialism. Dr. Akhimie holds a Ph.D., a M. Phil., and a M.A. in English from Columbia University, as well as an M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in English from Princeton University.
Dr. O'Brien was named the Folger's director of education in May 2013. A former Folger educator, she established the Library's education philosophy and the bulk of its programs in the 1980s and led the department until 1994, when she left to become director of education programs for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Concurrent with that appointment and in collaboration with Cambridge University Press and Georgetown University, she launched and published Shakespeare Magazine, a print and online magazine for teachers of Shakespeare.
In 2000, she became Chief Operating Officer of KIKO: Knowledge In, Knowledge Out, Inc., an internet educational company and, a year later, was named Executive Director of the National Cable and Telecommunications Education Foundation. In 2004, she returned to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as senior vice president of education programming and services.
Most recently, she was the chief of family and public engagement for D.C. public schools and a member of the Chancellor's leadership team. Dr. O'Brien earned an A.B. from Trinity College, an M.A. from Catholic University of America, and a Ph.D. from The American University. She serves on a variety of boards and advisory committees and is frequently called upon to delivery keynote addresses and papers. Among her publications are the Shakespeare Set Free series published by Simon and Schuster. Her long and distinguished career has brought her numerous awards and honors, including Doctor of Laws honoris causa from Trinity University, Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa from Georgetown University, the Public Humanities Award from the D.C. Community Humanities Council, and the Folger Shakespeare Library's 2008 Shakespeare Steward Award. Prior to her first appointment at the Folger, she spent a number of years teaching high school English in the DC Public Schools, and since then has taught undergraduate courses at Georgetown University.
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- Senior Photography Associate
Inspired by a speech of Ralph Waldo Emerson's that he heard while a student at Amherst College, Henry Folger made it his life's mission to collect Shakespeare's plays and poems, the works upon which Shakespeare drew or that alluded to him, and materials that conveyed the essence of his age. Success in business gave Henry Folger the means for amassing such a monumental collection.
His wife, Emily, proved an indispensable partner in this lifelong endeavor. She kept up-to-date records of the contents of the collection, reviewed auction-house catalogs for possible acquisitions, and advised him on some purchases. The Folgers' shared devotion to Shakespeare made them a formidable team in the competitive realm of book collecting.
Together they planned the Folger Shakespeare Library to house their collection, situating the building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, as a gift to the American people. After Henry Folger's death in 1930, Emily Folger completed the project on her own. She later wrote, "we had been together so long and had been so much at one in our thought that I knew what he desired and was prepared to take up the task in his name."
Today, the ashes of both Folgers are buried in the Reading Room, near where their portraits by the British painter Frank Salisbury hang beneath a memorial bust of Shakespeare.
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- Metadata and Digital Asset Management Librarian
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- Eric Weinmann Librarian, Director of Collections
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- Library Assistant, Reference
Eugene "Gene" Pinkard, Jr. serves as Director, K-12 Leadership for the Aspen Institute Education & Society Program. A longtime educator and leader, he leads urban district network strategy, supporting superintendents and other education leaders as they deepen their learning and improvement strategies.
Gene was most recently the Chief of School Design and Continuous Improvement at DC Public Schools, where he led school improvement, innovation, and strategic planning. Previously, his work spanned the Pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade continuum in private, charter, and traditional public schools. He has led alternative, dual language, elementary, middle, and secondary programs, emphasizing instructional systems, educational innovation, and equity initiatives. Gene began his career in rural South Africa as a volunteer teacher. His school communities have earned accreditation and top national percentiles in academic growth. Gene is a recent adjunct at the American University Graduate School of Education, on the board of Honored, and an advisor to the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program. He lives in Maryland with his wife and three boys who land at home at various frequencies.
Board of Governors Vice Chair since 2022, Member since 2014 Florence "Flo" Cohen's taught 8 th grade English and social studies in Redmond, Oregon before embarking on a career in public relations and marketing communications. In the not-for-profit sector, she worked for The University of Chicago Press, The University of Chicago Magazine, and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest.
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- Head of External Relations
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- Eric Weinmann Librarian, Director of Collections
Greg Prickman was appointed the Eric Weinmann Librarian and Director of Collections in July 2018. Previously he was head of Special Collections at the University of Iowa Libraries. Prickman came to the University of Iowa Libraries in 2006, working as a special collections librarian and then as the assistant head of Special Collections and University Archives before becoming the head of Special Collections in 2011.
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- Full Time Security Officer
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Full Time Security Officer
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- Its Founders
- President of Standard Oil Company of New York
Henry Clay Folger was born in New York City on June 18, 1857. His father, who was also named Henry Clay Folger, was a wholesale millinery dealer; his mother's maiden name was Eliza Jane Clark.
Young Henry Folger was a 10th-generation descendant of the Nantucket settler Peter Folger, a surveyor and schoolteacher. Peter Folger's daughter, Abiah, was the mother of Benjamin Franklin, and another family member, Maria Mitchell, was the first female astronomer in America.
Henry Folger was the oldest of eight children. To help his mother, he assumed many responsibilities at home; Emily Folger later wrote, "he used to say that when he took up a book he unconsciously reached out for a cradle ‘to rock with the other foot.'"
Henry Folger's interests outside of Shakespeare included music and golf. A boy soprano who became a baritone, he sang in the Amherst glee club and choir and later supported amateur choral societies. This interest, together with the incidental songs in Shakespeare's plays, led him to collect early modern music in both printed and manuscript forms. An avid golfer, Henry Folger often played with Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller and invented his own putting technique, somewhat reminiscent of a croquet stroke.
Henry Folger planned together for a library to house the collection, choosing the present-day site of the Folger as they walked around Washington during a World War I travel delay.
When the funds Henry Folger had left to the project proved inadequate due to the 1929 stock market crash, she donated an initial $3 million in Standard Oil securities, followed by a further donation the next year.
In 1932, Emily Folger received an honorary doctorate from Amherst College for her untiring efforts toward the completion of the Folgers' joint dream. She continued to play a role in the Folger's affairs until her death on February 21, 1936, at her home in Glen Cove, Long Island, at the age of 77.
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- Part Time Security Officer
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- Part Time Security Officer
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Head of Conservation and Preservation
- J. Franklin Mowery Head of Conservation and Preservation
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- General Counsel and Chief Financial Officer for Open
May Liang is General Counsel and Chief Financial Officer for OpenConcept Systems, Inc., a mobile conference app development company. Previously, Ms. Liang served as General Counsel and Chief Financial Officer for Total Music, LLC a digital entertainment service.
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- Associate Director of Architectural Projects
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- Chairman of the Jeff Bleich Centre
Jeff Bleich is Chair of the Jeff Bleich Centre on Democracy and Disruptive Technologies at Flinders University. He previously served as special counsel to President Obama in the White House, and as the 24th U.S. Ambassador to Australia from 2009 to 2013.
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Part Time Editorial Assistant, Shakespeare Quarterly
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- Full Time Security Officer
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- Facilities Manager, Projects and Restoration
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Director of Visitor Services
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- Associate Librarian for Collection Description and Imaging
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- Director of Programming and Artistic Director, Folger Theatre
Before joining the Folger as the Director of Programming/Artistic Director of Folger Theatre in 2021, Karen Ann Daniels was director of the Mobile Unit at The Public Theater in NYC, touring Mobile Unit productions across all five boroughs of NY and launching new programs such as Mobile Unit In Corrections which brings the tools of theater into the lives of incarcerated communities.
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- Assistant Director, Education Operations
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- Part Time Security Officer
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- Director of Talent and Culture
Kimberley Mauldin, was named the Director of Talent and Culture in May 2022. She first joined the Folger in 2013, as the Human Resources Manager, and was quickly promoted to Head of Human Resources and then Director of Human Resources. During her tenure she has worked with leadership from across the institution on numerous large-scale institution-wide strategic initiatives, including reclassification of all positions, evaluation of pay matrix, implementation of the educational benefit, improvements to the benefits plans and revitalized the recruitment process. She continues to lead our DEIA initiatives, and as part of that work, help guide us as we look to cultivate a more, collaborative, inclusive and enriching work environment.
Kimberlyn Leary is a senior vice president, managing research and program development across the Urban Institute. She comes to Urban from Harvard University, where she is an associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, an associate professor in the department of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and was a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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- Full Time Security Officer
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Program Coordinator, Folger Institute
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- Associate Director of Education
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- Associate Librarian for Researcher Services
- Louis B. Thalheimer Associate Librarian for Researcher Services
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- Part Time Visitor Experience Expert
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- Special Assistant to the CFO
Special Assistant to the CFO mdeustachio@folger.edu (202) 675-0390
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- Part Time Security Officer
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- Managing Director of Seabury Accenture
Marty Kuehne is Managing Director of Seabury Accenture, specializing in workforce planning and compensation. In 2017, Accenture, an IT consulting and services company, acquired Seabury Group, a firm focused on aviation. Before it was acquired, Marty had more than eight years of experience at the Seabury Group.
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- Attorney at Holland & Knight
Mary Elizabeth Cisneros is an attorney at Holland & Knight representing charitable organizations primarily in trust and estate matters.
Before returning to private practice, Ms. Cisneros served as the Deputy General Counsel at the Barack Obama Foundation and the American Red Cross. For over twenty years she has advised board members and senior leaders in all areas of nonprofit operations and legal compliance, including labor and employment law, trusts and estates, fundraising, governance, and corporate transactions. Ms. Cisneros has also represented nonprofits in connection with Congressional investigations and inquiries from federal and state agencies, as well as state attorneys general. Prior to working as an in-house counsel, she was a labor and employment lawyer at Epstein Becker & Green in New York.
After graduating from Amherst College with a B.A. in American Studies, Ms. Cisneros received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Amherst College, a former board chair of Girls on the Run of Montgomery County, and a former board co-chair of the Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington D.C.
She and her husband Michael Rosenman live in Maryland and have three children.
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- Development Associate, Institutional Giving
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- Inventory and Procurement Specialist
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- Library Associate, Circulation, Modern Collections
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- Director of Marketing and Communications
Melanie Bender Martin (she/her) most recently served as the Chief Innovation Officer at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), leading the Museum's efforts in marketing, communications, visitor services, information technology, digital media, and creative services. She joined the BMA from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., where she managed digital products and user research. Prior to the Holocaust Museum, Martin was the Director of Digital Products for Washingtonian Magazine. Martin has an MA in Communication, Culture & Technology from Georgetown University and a BA in fine art and communication from Mount St. Mary's University. She teaches Applied Marketing Analytics in Georgetown's School of Continuing Studies and has taught courses in web design, production, and strategy at American University's School of Communications.
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- Image Request Coordinator
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- Part Time Seasonal Retail Associate
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- Data Architect
- Database Applications Associate
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- Human Resources Assistant
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Researcher Experience Librarian
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Professor at Georgetown University Law Center
Paul M. Smith is a Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches Constitutional Law and Election Law. He is also the Senior Vice President for Litigation and Strategy at the Campaign Legal Center. Paul works directly with CLC's talented team of litigators to protect and improve our democracy through innovative litigation and advocacy.
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- Events Publicity and Marketing Manager
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- Associate Director of Development, Institutional Giving
Ramie Targoff is the Jehuda Reinharz Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University, where she is also professor of English and co-chair of Italian Studies. Her scholarly area of interest is the English Renaissance, with a strong secondary interest in the Italian Renaissance.
Rebecca Bushnell is the School of Arts and Sciences Board of Advisors Emerita Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She received a BA from Swarthmore, an MA from Bryn Mawr, and a Ph.D in Comparative Literature from Princeton University.
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- Senior Counsel at Ropes & Gray
Richard Batchelder is a Senior Counsel at Ropes & Gray in Boston, following a 30-year career as a partner in the litigation department. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Cornell Law School.
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- Head of Security and Safety
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- Part Time Security Officer
Rosa Joshi is a director, producer, and professor whose focus ranges from classical Shakespeare to modern classics and contemporary works. She is committed to reclaiming and reimagining the classics and particularly Shakespeare, for a new generation of artists and audience. Rosa is a co-founder of upstart crow collective, a company that produces classical plays with diverse casts of women and non-binary people.
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- Circulation Services Manager
Ruth Taylor Kidd brings more than 30 years of experience in the non-profit sector to her role as Chief Financial Officer of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Appointed in September 2018, Ms. Taylor Kidd has extensive experience with museums, having served as the Vice President of Finance and Administration at the Capital Children's Museum, Director of Budgeting and Planning at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Assistant Director of Development at the American Museum of Natural History.
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- Benefits and Training Programs Administrator
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- Director of Development Operations and Planned Giving
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- Library Associate, Circulation, Program Support
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- Non - Executive Director of Shell PLC
Sir Charles Roxburgh is a non-executive director of Shell PLC and the Chair of Legal and General America. Until June 2022, he was the Second Permanent Secretary at Her Majesty's Treasury. He took up this position in July 2016 and stepped down in June 2022. In this role, he was responsible, at the Treasury, for all issues relating to growth, productivity, infrastructure, financial services and financial stability.
Sir Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English stage and film actor. He began his professional career in the late 1980s with the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing mostly comedic roles. In the early ‘90s he was invited to play Konstantin in a production of Chekhov's The Seagull, helping him broaden his range into dramatic roles as well.
Board of Governors Member since 2020, Previous Member 2008-2019 Writer and civic volunteer Susan Goldman is a native Washingtonian who has been a lover of the Folger Library her whole life. She is a historian, whose book, Friends in Deed: The Story of Quaker Social Reform in America, was published in 2012. She is currently working on a project on the history of the District of Columbia.
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- Development Specialist, Data and Operations
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- Part Time Box Office Assistant
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- Talent Development Manager
Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. Cerf has held positions at MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Stanford University, UCLA and IBM.
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- Accounting Assistant
- Part Time Accounting Assistant
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- Security Shift Supervisor