Board of Directors

Catherine L. Robb is an attorney with the firm of Sedgwick LLP, representing clients in the broadcast industry. 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.

Shirlene Bridgewater is a high school teacher with twenty years of experience. She currently teaches AP English 3 and humanities at Marble Falls High School, where she also sponsors the school’s Sticks & Stones literary magazine. Her many awards include the Humanities Texas Outstanding Teaching of the Humanities Award (2008), Highland Lakes Legacy Foundation Teacher of the Year (2010, 2008, and 2007), and Region 13 Secondary Teacher of the Year (2008). She has presented at several conferences and seminars, including the Marble Falls ISD Gifted and Talented Summer Academy, The University of Texas at Austin Harry Ransom Research Center Summer Teacher Institute, and the University of Houston/National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar. Her professional experience also includes public affairs, editing, and radio hosting.

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.

Joy Ann Havran is a certified public accountant in private practice. She is a member of the Texas Society of CPAs and Leadership Fort Worth and a board member of Cook Children’s Medical Center and Jewel Charity Ball. She is a past board member of Mayfest Inc., Junior League of Fort Worth, Fort Worth Dallas Ballet, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra Association, Fort Worth Country Day School, Harris Methodist Health Foundation, and March of Dimes of North Texas. She is also a founding trustee and past member of the Harris Hospital Doris Kupferle Breast Center and past fundraising gala chair for March of Dimes, Jewel Charity, Big Brothers Big Sisters of North Texas, Historic Fort Worth, Van Cliburn Piano Competition, and the Arts Council of Tarrant County. She received a bachelor’s degree and MBA from Texas Christian University.

Ray M. Keck III is president of Texas A&M International University in Laredo. Prior to assuming this post in 2001, he was a faculty member of the university and served as department chair and provost. He holds an AB and a PhD in Romance languages and literatures from Princeton University and also studied at Harvard Divinity School, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Estudios Hispánicos en Madrid (Bryn Mawr College), and the Deutsche Somerschule am Atlantik. He serves on various higher education boards in Texas and is a member of the Philosophical Society of Texas. He was born in San Antonio and graduated from the Texas Military Institute in 1965. He began his teaching career at The Hotchkiss School in 1970. Over his forty-year scholarly career he has taught, studied, and written about Spanish literature with an emphasis on the Golden Age. Since his undergraduate days, he has also studied and played the organ, especially the music of J. S. Bach. He has often performed with orchestras and ensembles and has served as director of church music for parishes in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Texas. In Laredo, he has served as president of the regional P-16 council. He aggressively champions comprehensive, dual-language programs for all children in Texas schools. His wife, Patricia Cigarroa Keck, is a nurse and director of health services for the Laredo Independent School District.

Nancy Cain Marcus currently serves on the boards of directors of Westwood Trust (NYSE), the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Foundation, The Trinity Trust, and the Dallas Committee on Foreign Relations. She has served as a trustee of both the University of Dallas (executive committee) and The Hockaday School, as well as a trustee on the executive board of Southern Methodist University Libraries. She is both a life trustee and a fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. In 1999, she received a gubernatorial appointment to serve on the State of Texas Commission on 21st Century Colleges and Universities. She also served on the boards of visitors at both Duke University and Columbia University. She is a member of Charter 100 and is a longtime member of the advisory boards of the Dallas Women’s Foundation and the World Affairs Council. In 2001, she received a presidential appointment to serve as a United States Public Delegate to the 56th Session of the United Nations General Assembly for a one-year post that began on September 10, the eve of the national tragedy. She holds a PhD in literature from the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas, and currently serves as an adjunct professor of literature at Southern Methodist 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.

Ricardo Romo became the fifth president of The University of Texas at San Antonio in May 1999. He graduated from Fox Technical High School and is a native of San Antonio’s West Side. He attended The University of Texas at Austin on a track scholarship and holds a master’s degree in history from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1980, he returned to The University of Texas at Austin to teach history before becoming vice provost for undergraduate education. From 1987 to 1993, he directed the Texas office of the Tomás Rivera Center, housed at Trinity University, where he evaluated the impact of governmental policies on Latinos. In 2002, President Bush appointed him to the President’s Board of Advisers on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He has also been appointed to the Federal Reserve Bank Board of Directors and to the Board of Commissioners to UNESCO. A nationally respected urban historian, he is the author of East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio, which is now in its ninth printing. His photographs have been the subject of several regional art exhibitions, including “Havana,” a collection of images taken in Cuba. He is married to Dr. Harriett Romo, an associate professor in social and policy sciences at The University of Texas at San Antonio. They have one son, Carlos, and a daughter, Anadelia.

Venus F. Strawn is an Austin civic leader and retired nurse. Raised in New York, she has lived in Austin for twenty-five years. She currently serves on the board of St. David’s Neal Kocurek Scholarship Fund and has been a co-chair for St David’s Foundation’s “Toast of the Town.” Strawn also serves on the steering committees for the Rise School, the Women’s Fund “Power of the Purse,” Notable Women of the Long Center, and the Women’s Trust for the Dell Children’s Hospital. She was the founder and a co-chair of “Dancing with the Stars Austin,” benefitting the Center for Child Protection. In 2009, Strawn was recognized as a “Women on Their Toes” honoree. She attended Fordham University in New York and received a nursing degree from the Roosevelt Hospital School of Nursing.