180 Years

180 Years

Continuing a tradition of trustees centering women in leadership

Sarah Porter painted by Robert Bolling Brandegee, 1896.

What does it really mean to be an institution that empowers girls and women? How can Miss Porter’s School best live out its mission of educating young women to become informed, bold, resourceful and ethical global citizens who will shape a changing world?

These are the overarching questions that guide the 21 women and two men who serve as trustees and are responsible for everything from stewarding the $146.6 million endowment to making sure that the school lives up to its commitment to become an anti-racist institution. At the same time, the committee itself develops and nurtures female leaders.

“I didn’t graduate from Porter’s thinking I was going to be the next leader of anything,” said Nancy Klingenstein Simpkins ’73, who got married shortly after graduating from college and then volunteered and served on boards while raising her children. She was a Porter’s trustee from 2003 to 2009 and in June stepped down after another 10 years of service, having chaired the body during the onset of the challenging COVID-19 years.

“It helped me be a leader to see Kate [Windsor] and her leadership team and how they operated,” she said.

“I feel like the last 10 years have given me the confidence to take on things that I might not have before. It’s very rewarding to be part of a community that is so mission-driven, one where everybody knows the mission.”

Left: 1940’s graduation. Right: 2023 graduation.

Board Chair Sarah Klish Liu ’90, a Chicago-based pharmaceutical company executive, was “looking for something bigger than myself” when she was approached about joining the board in 2018. She’d been student head of school in her senior year at Porter’s, but she’d had only peripheral contact with Farmington in the years since.

The school has been very intentional about creating a board with a “richness you wouldn’t necessarily have on a corporate board,” Ms. Liu said. “It’s a large melting pot of people who have a diversity of professional and personal perspectives that come together in the interest of one thing: providing the best educational and empowerment experiences for girls and women.” One of the trustees’ most important duties is stewarding the school’s endowment, which generates 25 cents of every dollar in the $27 million annual operating budget.

In 2017, the school was searching for a new firm to manage the endowment when Investment Committee Chair Sarah Clark ’80 and Vice Chair Martha Kimball Pomerantz ’77 visited different candidate firms. “We noticed who addressed us and who only addressed the men in the room. So that was a factor in whom we chose,” said Ms. Pomerantz, a partner and portfolio manager at Evercore Wealth Management who now chairs the board’s Investment Committee.

Ancients learn about auxiliary programming during a visit to campus.

Sarah Klish Liu ’90

Nancy Klingenstein Simpkins ’73

One of the reasons the school ultimately selected Offit Capital Advisors, she said, was because “they looked directly at us and addressed us as substantial, serious people.”

Since retaining Offit in 2018, Porter’s has encouraged the firm to elevate women and to find and invest in funds run by women and people of color. As of 2020, firms owned by white men were in charge of 98.7 percent of the $69 trillion managed by U.S. asset managers, Fortune magazine reported.

98.7

As of 2020, firms owned by white men were in charge of 98.7 percent of the $69 trillion managed by U.S. asset managers, Fortune magazine reported.

“As an iconic American institution, we are saying that it matters to us to do two things: one, to increase the number of funds we invest in that have diverse ownership and diverse leadership, and two, to increase the number of diverse individuals particularly women and people of color who are in the investment field,” said Michael Bergin P’19, Porter’s chief financial and operating officer.

Who’s on the board of trustees?

CHAIR

Sarah Klish Liu ’90

VICE CHAIR

Elizabeth “Liza” Denny Oneglia ’95

TREASURER

Claire Theobald ’84

SECRETARY

Amani Reed

EX OFFICIO

Katherine G. Windsor

Maura Cline ’11

Christina “Chrissy” Cox ’93

Mishone Donelson P’23, 25

Clover Drinkwater ’64

Althea Beaton Ducard ’88

Sharifah Holder ’06

Maureen “Mo” Hunter ’74

Maura Reilly Kennedy ’97

Mimi Colgate Kirk ’57, GP’26

Lisa Kunstadter ’70

Cameron “Cam” Lanphier ’74

May H. Lee ’84

Ana “Annie” G. Méndez ’07

Pat Mueller ’74

Martha Pomerantz ’77

Dominique Casimir Stevens ’95

Janet Macomber Williamson ’81

“It’s a large melting pot of people who have a diversity of professional and personal perspectives that come together in the interest of one thing: providing the best educational and empowerment experiences for girls and women.”

— Sarah Klish Liu ’90, board chair

1950s students perfor

Beginning in 2021, the school began sending a diversity, equity and inclusion survey to the managers of funds in which the endowment is invested. The business office aggregates the data, and Mr. Bergin and Dr. Windsor have been sharing the results with school leaders at conferences across the country. They want to encourage other independent schools to adopt pro-woman and anti-racist goals as they manage their endowments, estimated to collectively total $50 billion.

“Diversity makes for a more robust decision-making process,” said Jessica Lin, the Offit Capital partner who helps manage the Porter’s endowment. She cited a study by Bain & Company showing that investments led by women outperformed those led by men by 12 percentage points. “Our perspectives are different, and different perspectives really matter, quantifiably so,” she said. “It makes for better outcomes.”

According to a study by Bain & Company, investments led by women outperformed those led by men by 12 percentage points.

While on campus for the April board meeting, she and Laura Tao, another partner at Offit, spoke to the students and had lunch with those who were interested in finance careers.

“To counteract implicit messaging in society, you have to be very proactive in engaging with these women and telling them you can be in finance, you can be a mother, you don’t have to act like a man to be in finance, and you can be very successful,” said Ms. Lin. “Miss Porter’s is proactive in making things happen for the benefit of the girls.”

Board member and philanthropist Lisa Kunstadter ’70 recalled a somewhat different vibe during the years she was at Farmington. “Many people in my class didn’t want to have anything to do with the school once they graduated,” she said. “It was, of course, a different time and there was less understanding of what adolescent girls need. Many of us felt that we were raising ourselves in the relative scarcity of strong, understanding female role models.”

“Our perspectives are different, and different perspectives really matter, quantifiably so. It makes for better outcomes.”

— Jessica Lin, Offit Capital partner

But after hearing Dr. Windsor speak at an event about what the school was doing to encourage students to become global citizens, she decided to become more active, accepting an invitation to join the board and helping to organize her class’s 50th reunion.

As someone who is passionate about education, particularly in helping to provide access and opportunity to underserved populations, “I didn’t want the board to forget how privileged Porter’s students are,” she said. “I want us to be thinking about how we share what we’re doing with those who don’t have access to a Porter’s education.”

Board members say the diversity of voices and experiences, plus Dr. Windsor’s willingness to address tough challenges and have difficult conversations, makes the committee extremely effective.

No matter what issue is at hand or how difficult it is, said Ms. Liu, “the ethos of the board is ‘Don’t say we can’t; say how will we?’ To me, the greatest strength of the school is being able to reframe the question and chart a different course.”

“The ethos of the board is ‘Don’t say we can’t; say how will we?’ To me, the greatest strength of the school is being able to reframe the question and chart a different course.”

Sarah Klish Liu ’90, board chair

Lisa Kunstadter ’70

Members of the Legacy Club in the 1920s.