Board of Directors

Chase Untermeyer has been an international business consultant since returning in 2007 from Qatar, where he served three years as United States ambassador on appointment of President George W. Bush. He has held both elected and appointed office at all four levels of government—local, state, national, and international—in addition to work in journalism, academia, and business. He is a graduate of Harvard College and served as an officer in the US Navy during the Vietnam War. The many government posts he has held include Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs under President Reagan and Director of Presidential Personnel under the first President Bush. He also served as director of Voice for America, the overseas broadcasting arm of the US government, from 1991–1993. He has also served as director of public affairs for Compaq Computer Corporation and vice president for government affairs and professor of public policy at The University of Texas Health Science Center. He is a member of the Texas Ethics Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a member of the boards of the St. Luke's Episcopal Health Charities and of Harris County Precinct 1 Street Olympics. In previous part-time public service, he has been member and chairman of the Board of Visitors of the US Naval Academy, a commissioner of the Port of Houston, president of the Houston READ Commission, a member of the board of National Public Radio, member of the Defense Health Board, and chairman of the State Board of Education, appointed by then-Governor George W. Bush.

Catherine L. Robb is of counsel in the Business Litigation Practice Group in the Austin office of Haynes and Boone, LLP. In 1998, she earned her JD with honors from The University of Texas at Austin School of Law. She received her BA in 1992 from the University of Virginia. She serves as a board member of KLRU, The Austin Film Society, the American Heart Association (Capital Area Division), the Austin Music Foundation, and the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. In addition to serving on the advisory board of the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, she is an active member of Leadership Austin and the Seton Forum. She chairs the LBJ Library’s Future Forum, which she founded, and is a director of the Austin Council of Foreign Affairs. She also volunteers for several nonprofit community organizations, including Shoes for Austin, Reading is Fundamental of Austin, and Volunteer Legal Services.

Sharon Allison received her degree in history and government from The University of Texas at Austin in 1963. She has volunteered internationally in the arenas of family planning and public health, and is the former president of the board of International Planned Parenthood Federation/West Hemisphere Region. She is a member of the Philosophical Society of Texas and currently sits on the boards of Guttmacher Institute, Americans for UNFPA, Pathfinder International, and the board of visitors for Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. At The University of Texas at Austin she has served on the Longhorn Foundation Advisory Council and serves on the College of Liberal Arts Advisory Council. Her lifelong commitment to improving her community is evidenced by her participation on a number of boards including Chairman of the Waco Foundation; Outreach Commission; League of Women Voters; United Way of McLennan County, Texas; President of the Junior League of Waco; and the Protective Services Commission. Sharon was a delegate to the 1994 UN International conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. She lives in Waco.

A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and Rice University, Leslie Dyess Blanton serves on the advisory councils of the Children’s Museum of Houston, Career and Recovery Resources, Inc., and the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin as well as the boards of The Park People, Inc., Young Audiences of Houston, the Center for Reform of School Systems, the Harris County Hospital District Foundation and the regional board of Teach For America. She is scholarship vice president of Phi Beta Kappa Alumni Association of Greater Houston, a Texas Cultural Trust member, and an active participant on committees at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Dr. Maceo C. Dailey Jr. is associate professor of history and director of African American Studies at The University of Texas at El Paso. In addition to serving two terms as chair of the Humanities Texas board of directors, he served on the advisory committee for the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum and the boards of the Texas Emancipation Juneteenth Cultural and Historical Commission and the Twelve Travelers Memorial of the Southwest. He currently chairs the board of directors of both the McCall Neighborhood Center and the Child Crisis Center of El Paso and serves on the boards of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra and the Burnham Wood Charter School in El Paso, as well as the Advancement Board of Texas A&M University Press. He recently submitted for review a manuscript on Emmett Jay Scott and is currently working on the “Booker T. Washington Encyclopedia.” He co-edited a revised edition of Bernice Love Wiggins’s Tuneful Tales with Ruthe Winegarten; with Kristine Navarro, he co-edited Wheresoever My People Chance to Dwell: Oral Interviews with African American Women of El Paso.

Elinor Donnell is a civic leader in Corpus Christi, where she has presided over the Junior League of Corpus Christi and the Texas State Aquarium Association and has also served as a member of the Corpus Christi Municipal Arts Commission and as a board member of the Texas Maritime Museum. In addition to her involvement in the Corpus Christi area, she is an active alumna of The University of Texas at Austin, where she received her BBA degree with a minor in education and was a member of the Orange Jackets. A life member of the Texas Ex-Students Association, she has served on The University of Texas development board since 1992 and has been a life member since 2001. In addition, she is a member of The University of Texas Chancellor's Council, the Longhorn Foundation, the President's Associates, and the Littlefield Society.

Joseph O. Jewell is associate professor of sociology and interim director of the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Race, Social Reform and the Making of a Middle Class: The American Missionary Association and Black Atlanta, 1870-1900 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), and co-author of “The Mis-Education of Black America: Black Education Since An American Dilemma” with Walter R. Allen in An American Dilemma Revisited: Race Relations in A Changing World (Russell Sage, 1996). His articles have appeared in The Journal of Negro Education, Urban Studies, Daedalus, and Research in Higher Education. His historical research on race and educational access has been cited in court cases dealing with affirmative action programs at public universities, including Rios v. U.C. Regents, Gratz v. Bollinger, and Grutter v. Bollinger. He received his BA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991 and his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998.

John Kerr, a native of Houston, has lived in San Antonio since 1981. An active businessman and civic leader, he also has been writing for the past fifteen years. His first novel, Cardigan Bay, was published in 2008 and his second novel, A Rose in No Man’s Land, was published in 2011. Two more novels, Fell the Angels and Hurricane Hole, will be published in 2012. Kerr also coauthored with his late father Only A Khaki Shirt, a nonfiction memoir of World War II in the Pacific, which was published in 2006. Kerr’s business interests are currently focused on two biotechnology ventures that he founded: Azaya Therapeutics, which is developing novel anti-cancer drugs, and Evestra, Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on women’s healthcare. Kerr also co-manages Acacia Capital, a private equity fund, with Steve Hassman. Kerr serves on the board of trustees of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, which he chaired from 1998 to 2007, and on the boards of the McNay Art Museum, the Admiral Nimitz Foundation, the Menninger Clinic Foundation, the Texas Research and Technology Foundation, and the San Antonio Medical Foundation. He is a member of the distribution committee of the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation and of the advisory council of the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. He also chairs the Texas Advisory Board of the Environmental Defense Fund. Kerr received a BA from Stanford University in history in 1970 and a JD from The University of Texas Law School in 1972. 

Virginia Lebermann is co-founder and board president of the Marfa-based contemporary arts foundation Ballroom Marfa. She is a principal of T-C Oil Company and O'Connor Investments and also oversees Wexford Cattle Company and Wexford Publishing, all based in Victoria. She is also the managing partner of the Thunderbird Hotel in Marfa. Her extensive involvement with not-for-profit organizations includes board or council positions with the Chinati Foundation (Marfa), Harry Ransom Center (Austin), National Public Radio Foundation (Washington, DC), Aspen Institute (Aspen, Colorado), ArtLies (Houston, Texas), Texas Nature Conservancy, River Pierce Foundation (San Ygnacio, Texas), University of Texas Press (Austin), The University of Texas McDonald Observatory (Fort Davis, Texas), and the Charles Moore Foundation (Austin). She received her BA from Middlebury College in Vermont and attended the New York University MFA program in creative writing. She received the inaugural ArtTable New Leadership Award in April of 2005 in recognition of her leadership in the contemporary arts. She lives with her husband and son in Marfa.

Becky McKinley of Amarillo is a cookbook author, caterer, and food journalist for Accent West Magazine. She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, International Caterers Association, and James Beard Foundation, and a board member of the Samaritan Counseling Center, Laura W. Bush Institute for Women's Health Advisory Board, the Women’s Philanthropy Fund, and the Governor's Commission for Women. She is also a past board member of the Baptist Saint Anthony Hospital Foundation, Polk Street United Methodist Church, KACV Public Television, Junior League of Amarillo, Amarillo Symphony Guild, Harrington Cancer Center, and City of Amarillo Traffic Commission. McKinley received a bachelor’s degree from Texas Tech University.

Virginia “Ginni” Mithoff received her BS in elementary education from The University of Texas at Austin and attended the University of Houston for graduate school. After retiring from her teaching career, she began volunteering and serving on boards for various organizations, including the Houston Ballet Guild, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Harris County Hospital District Foundation, and many others. She currently serves on the School of Education Foundation Advisory Council of The University of Texas Development Board, The University of Texas School of Public Health Advisory Council of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Development Board, and the Bayou Bend Committee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Ginni and her husband Richard have lived in Houston for thirty-five years. They have two children—Michael and Caroline—and four grandchildren.

Monica Perales is associate professor of history at the University of Houston and is a member of the Board of Directors of Humanities Texas. She received her PhD in history from Stanford University in 2004, and holds a BA in journalism and an MA in history from The University of Texas at El Paso. She is author of Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), which received the Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book in North American Urban History from the Urban History Association. She is also coeditor of Recovering the Hispanic History of Texas (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2010). Perales’s general research and teaching interests include Chicana/o labor and social history, memory and history, immigration, race and ethnicity in the American West, Borderlands, and oral history.

Carol Foxhall Peterson of Alpine is general manager of the Gage Hotel in Marathon. She is former owner of Foxhall and Co., and past divisional vice president of Neiman Marcus. She is also a member of the Governor's Commission for Women. Peterson received a bachelor’s degree from Texas Tech University and a culinary arts degree from the French Culinary Institute in New York.

Hector de J. Ruiz is chairman and founder of ANS, Inc. in Austin. He is former chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). During his tenure at AMD, he launched the company’s 50x15 initiative, which aims to enable affordable Internet access for half the world’s population by 2015.  Previously, he spent twenty-three years at Motorola, where he became president of the semiconductor sector in 1997. He currently serves on The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Engineering Foundation Advisory Council. In 2006, he was selected as a Distinguished Engineering Graduate of UT, and in 2012, he received a Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Texas Exes' highest honor. He serves as a trustee emeritus of Rice University and is on the board of trustees of the RAND Corporation and the board of directors of Breakthrough Austin. He is also a board advisor to EDCO Ventures, a community development corporation focused on high-growth entrepreneurship activity in emerging domestic regions, and is a general partner in Innovación Investments, a new community development venture capital fund focused on distressed regions, underrepresented groups, and the promotion of shared prosperity. He previously served as a member of President George W. Bush's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. His book, Slingshot: AMD's Fight to Free an Industry from the Ruthless Grip of Intel, was published in April 2013. He earned a BA and MA in electrical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and a PhD from Rice University.