Board & Staff

Elisa Wouk Almino is a writer, editor, and literary translator from Portuguese. She is currently the deputy editor of Image, a magazine for style and culture at the Los Angeles Times, and was previously a senior editor at Hyperallergic. Across her work, Elisa has spotlighted lesser-known artists and focused on stories of home, belonging, and displacement. She occasionally edits books, having had the pleasure of editing the first monograph on Alice Trumbull Mason, published by Rizzoli in 2020. She has also enthusiastically mentored several beginner writers, translators, and artists over the years: she teaches art writing and translation classes at UCLA Extension and Catapult, and serves as an adviser for Uncool Artist, an online art program. The recipient of residencies at Tin House, Art Omi, and the Jan Michalski Foundation, Elisa has published her writing in Hyperallergic, the Los Angeles Times, the Paris Review Daily, Literary Hub, NYR Daily, LA Review of Books, and other places. She received a BA in English from Barnard College and an MA in Cultural Reporting & Criticism from New York University.

Cecily Kahn is the eldest daughter of Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason. She grew up living in their studios and had a view of the art world from infancy. She is an abstract artist in her own right, and member of the American Abstract Artists since 1996, participating in various panels and exhibitions. She also is a founding member of The Painting Center, an artist- run exhibition space in Chelsea, NYC, since 2001. She currently lives in Maine, is married and has two grown children, and two grandchildren.

Melany Kahn is the younger daughter of Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn. Melany holds an MSW from Boston College and an MFA from NYU Tisch School. She has worked as a family mediator in VT for many years. She was a founding Board member of the NH Progress Alliance, served as a trustee on the Hilltop Montessori School Board for 6 years and ran the capital campaign to relocate the school in 2007. She resides across the river from Brattleboro with her family of four children and husband Bo Foard and has recently published a children’s book about mushroom foraging, Mason Goes Mushrooming, dedicated to both her parents, Emily and Wolf.

Millie Kapp is an artist based in Queens, New York. She works primarily in performance and her work incorporates writing, dance and sculpture. Kapp studied studio art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work was largely influenced by her experience living and working in Chicago. In 2012, she relocated to New York City, where she was born and raised, and completed an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. Kapp works for the Abrons Arts Center located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan as the Associate Director of Education, programming arts classes for people of all ages. Other professional experiences include performance-based classes, workshops as well as visiting artist lectures at colleges and universities around the United States.

Janis Stemmermann is a visual artist, designer and creative director at Russell Janis, a project space in Brooklyn, New York. Stemmermann’s studio practice takes a craft-based approach, incorporating ceramics, printmaking and textiles while drawing inspiration from themes of the domestic and landscape. In addition to serving as board chair of the Emily Mason and Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation, Janis is a recipient of fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation artist grant and a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in Ireland. Stemmermann has been based in Brooklyn, New York since 1988 and currently divides her time between Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Sharon, Connecticut.

Nari Ward is a contemporary artist known for his sculptural installations composed of discarded material found and collected in his neighborhood. Ward re-contextualizes these found objects in thought provoking juxtapositions that create complex, metaphorical meanings to confront social and political issues surrounding race, poverty, and consumer culture. Ward holds a BA from City University of New York, Hunter College (1989), and an MFA from City University of New York, Brooklyn College (1992). Ward’s work is in numerous international public and private collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His recent honors and distinctions include the Fellowship Award, The United States Artists, Chicago (2020) and the Vilcek Prize in Fine Arts, Vilcek Foundation, New York (2017). Nari Ward lives and works in New York City.

Marela Zacarías is an artist known for creating painted sculptures of undulating forms with the quality of fabric. The sculptures’ surfaces are populated by socially committed geometric abstractions––shapes and patterns born from the artist’s study of the history and specificity of the site of work. Zacarías has held numerous solo exhibitions, both in the US and internationally, including the Brooklyn Museum and Sapar Contemporary in New York, and Galería Alterna in Mexico City. She has received many large-scale permanent site-specific commissions, including NYU Langone Ambulatory Care Center, NY, NY.; Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Seattle, WA; Facebook HQ, Menlo Park, CA; and the American Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico. Her murals can be found in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Connecticut, Ohio, Mexico, and Guatemala. Zacarías’ residencies include the Pilchuck Glass School, MadArt, and Vermont Studio Center. Zacarías received her BA from Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, and her MFA from Hunter College, New York. She currently lives between Brooklyn and Mexico City.

Born and raised in New York City, sonia louise davis is a visual artist, writer and performer. She is deeply invested in improvisation as an embodied research practice, and has presented her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art; ACRE; Sadie Halie Projects; Ortega y Gasset, and Artists Space, among other venues. Residencies and fellowships include the Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship at the Queens Museum; Laundromat Project’s Create Change Fellowship; Civitella Ranieri; Vermont Studio Center; New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship at the International Studio & Curatorial Program; Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Artist in Residence Program; Studio Immersion Project Fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop; and Stoneleaf Retreat. She is an honors graduate of Wesleyan University (BA, African American Studies) and alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. She lives and works in Harlem.

Katy Rogers is the Programs Director and Director of the Robert Motherwell Catalogue Raisonné Project at the Dedalus Foundation. She is the author of the catalogue raisonné of Motherwell’s drawings, published by Yale University Press in fall 2022, and a co-author of the catalogue raisonné of Motherwell’s paintings and collages, published by Yale University Press in 2012, and of Motherwell: 100 Years, published by Skira in 2015. Katy has lectured and participated in panels on catalogue raisonné research and artist legacy work at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the College Art Association, the Menil Drawing Institute, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA). From 2013 to 2021, she was the President of the Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association. A graduate of the University of Colorado and Hunter College, Katy is also an alumna of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (ISP) where she was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow. She currently serves on the Boards of the Dedalus Foundation and the College Art Association and is a member of the National Advisory Board of the Laundromat Project.

Barbara Stehle received her PhD from the Sorbonne with highest honors and congratulations of the jury. She studied with Serge Lemoine, then Director of the Musée d’Orsay and Hans Belting, the famous German Art Historian who convinced her to follow his example and be a pluralist. Before moving to the United States, Stehle worked at the Pompidou Center in Paris, France. She has taught at NYU, Columbia University, and RISD. Stehle is also the founder of Art Intelligentsia, through which she offers a range of art historical services.

Stehle has published extensively in museum catalogues (Guggenheim, Pompidou Center, amongst others) and academic journals; she writes mostly about German art, architecture and women’s contribution to the field. In 2014, Stehle gave a TEDx talk, “Architecture as Human Narrative,” and currently has been focusing her research on XVII Century Spanish and Dutch art. Some of her research was presented during a symposium at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, and during series of lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

George Suttles leads Commonfund’s educational, thought partnership, and professional development activities as Executive Director of Commonfund Institute. He serves on multiple advisory boards and steering committees, including Intentional Endowments Network’s (IEN) steering committee which provides strategic guidance to the network and chairs the steering committee for the Impact Finance Center’s Diverse Manager Initiative. He is a member of numerous nonprofit boards including Laundromat Project (Chair) and the New York Foundation, where he serves as Treasurer and chair of the investment committee. George is frequently asked to speak on topics concerning fiduciary duty and stewardship, philanthropy, investment governance, Diversity Equity and Inclusion and values aligned investing, among other topics. Currently, he is on the Adjunct Faculty at the New York University (NYU) School of Professional Studies, teaching classes on private and corporate philanthropy. George received a B.A. from Wesleyan University, an M.A. in Philanthropic Studies from Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy (IUPUI) and an M.P.A. from Baruch CUNY School of Public Affairs.

Rebecca Todd has advised organizations, individuals, and businesses in matters related to environmental, educational, contractual, employment, and non-profit management for over 30 years. Todd received a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from Dartmouth in 1984, and a law degree from Cornell in 1989. She has served as general counsel for Antioch University in Keene, N.H, as associate attorney general in the Office of the Attorney General in Washington in the Education and Ecology divisions, and litigated cases for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, Inc., and the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. related to the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and hazardous waste laws. She has also served as the executive director of Stonewall Farm in Keene, NH, a non-profit working farm and education center.
Todd is the executive director of Connecticut River Conservancy, a non-profit organization dedicated to the Connecticut River watershed in New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut since 1952. Todd currently lives in West Chesterfield, N.H., and teaches environmental law, legal advocacy, and other subjects nationally and internationally.

Steven Rose, Executive Director, conducts the vision of the Foundation with the Board of Directors, overseeing the initiatives, operations, and administration of the organization.

Prior to the Foundation, Rose managed Emily Mason’s studio for nearly a decade and assisted in running the estate of Alice Trumbull Mason. In late-2019, Rose served a key role in the transition from a working artist’s studio and estate to a non-profit foundation representing two artists. As a visual artist, Rose uses their practical experience to help inform their role as educator and story-teller, as well as prioritize the distribution of resources towards the next generations of artists.

Jonathan Mildenberg, Collections and Logistics Manager, oversees the health and care of the Foundation’s collection and archival objects. As manager of the Foundation’s inventory, he coordinates artwork conservation and framing, as well as loans and consignments. He also creates and maintains the photographic documentation of the Foundation’s art and ephemera for the digital archives and publications.

Mildenberg is a visual artist and educator who works between Brooklyn, NY, and the upper Hudson Valley.  He holds a BFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University. He teaches sound and video art at Caldwell University, where he’s been an Adjunct Lecturer since 2019.

Kathleen Granados, Digital Content and Archives Manager, oversees the physical archives, digital databases, and online presence of the Foundation. As the acting point-person for communications, she lends primary support to all exhibitions, publications, grants, and scholarly research.

Granados is an artist and educator based in New York City. She holds an MFA from Hunter College, and a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she has been a part-time instructor since 2021. She also currently serves as a visiting artist for the BFA Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts.