Our Team

Cheryl Brown-Greene first became interested in the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail as a participant in one of BWHT Summer Institutes which focused on the the creation of Boston Women’s Memorial. A teacher for more than 28 years, 25 at the Mary Lyon School, Cheryl joined the board in 2015. She has been active member of Roxbury Collaborative which has supported Patriots’ Day reenactment and scholarship activities at the First Church in Roxbury for more than 18 years. Cheryl has received a Boston Educator of the Year Award which recognizes exemplary educators who positively impact the lives of students in Boston. She has been a lead teacher, teacher mentor and technology support teacher. She has an MBA from Suffolk University and a Masters in Education from Wheelock College.

Maria D’Itria served as President of the Board from 2012-2017. Maria and her students enthusiastically embraced learning more about “Herstory” when Barbara Locurto gathered a group of BPS teachers in 1989. Maria was a fifth grade teacher at the Harvard-Kent School, a BPS Lead/Mentor Teacher, a Math Standards Facilitator, a Cooperating Teacher Trainer, a Member of the Instructional Leadership Team and a Golden Apple Recipient. She has participated in the Boston Children’s Museum TAP Multicultural Institution, focusing on Japan and Southeast Asia. She was the Museum’s representative to the CTAPS Summer Study, “A Global Perspective: Integrating Asia-Pacific in the Curriculum” at the University of Hawaii East West Center. She participated in the Japan Travel Study Program sponsored by the Museum and traveled throughout Southeast Asia and Indonesia with CTAPS. On the local level, Maria has collaborated with the National Parks Service, People and Places Program and the Bostonian Society to enrich students’ knowledge of Boston’s history. Together with Mary Rudder, she and her students created “Walk Her Way” a trail that honors the contribution of women in Charlestown and a new trail, “Remembering the Women of East Boston.”

Karyn Greene is a lifelong lover of women’s history. She studied Classics and Women’s Studies at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, during which time she published a paper on Euripides’ Medea. She continued her studies at the University of Vermont and The University of Massachusetts-Boston, from which she received a Masters in Ancient Greek and Latin and Secondary English Education, respectively in 2015. She joined the board in 2016. Karyn has taught English Language Arts at the John D. O’Bryant School for Mathematics and Science since the fall of 2015, where she also offers an elective Latin course after school. In 2015, Karyn created the first Junior Classical League chapter at her school. She is excited to share her love of history with her students via the study of literature.

Jennifer Gregg joined the board in the fall of 2018 and served as board president from 2021-2023. In addition to her activities on the communications committee, she routinely leads trail tours and zoom presentations for BWHT. Jennifer moved to Boston in 2015 to become Chair of the Communication Department at UMass Boston; she currently serves as an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts for the university. Prior to moving to Boston, she was on the faculty at the University of Louisville for 13 years, where she was actively involved in community social justice activities, largely in conjunction with the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research. Jennifer earned her PhD in telecommunications from Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the effects of media, particularly the role of technology in delivering health care to disadvantaged populations.

Michelle joined the BWHT Board in 2002. In 2001 Michelle received a special award from the Library and the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston for outstanding contributions to the Library. Michelle considers her employment at MIT, from 1965 to 1985, as the beginning of her interest in the advancement of women when she became a founding member of the MIT Women’s Forum where women faculty, staff and students met to discuss women’s issues. In 2018, Michelle retired from GMA Foundations in Boston where she served as an administrator for twenty-one years working with local, national and international foundations. Michelle served as President of BWHT from 2018 to 2021.

Linda Stern has a background using historical resources from preschool to community college as a librarian and teacher. Helaine Davis, a BWHT advisory board member and researcher, and Linda Stern participated in a project over several years: Jewish Women in Boston History. Many of the women researched settled first in the West End of Boston, and now appear in several neighborhood tours of the BWHT. Linda has worked with other board members to develop processes for establishing and maintaining records of BWHT archives at Schlesinger Library for the History of Women in America at Radcliffe College. She has also worked on the archives of the Boston Workers’ Circle, a secular Jewish organization.

Jane Becker manages the internship and community partnership initiatives for the public history graduate track at UMass Boston, where she teaches public history. She received her PhD in American Studies from Boston University, and is the author of Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930-1940 (1998); and co-editor of Folk Roots, New Roots: Folklore in American Life (1988). Jane has worked in exhibition and program planning and as a historian for a wide range of museums and public humanities endeavors in New England. Her research interests include 20th century US social and cultural history, notions of “folk” and “tradition” in American culture, and the intersections between craft and labor, particularly among women. A believer in, and witness to, the potential of history in transforming communities and empowering citizens, Jane is an enthusiastic supporter of the public humanities.

Barbara F. Berenson has a longstanding interest in both women’s history and Boston’s history. She is the author of Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers (2018), Boston in the Civil War: Hub of the Second Revolution (2014), and Walking Tours of Civil War Boston: Hub of Abolitionism (2011, 2d ed. 2014). She is the co-editor of Breaking Barriers: The Unfinished Story of Women Lawyers and Judges in Massachusetts (2012). Her community activities include serving on boards of Boston By Foot and the Royall House & Slave Quarters. Barbara earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard College and her law degree from Harvard Law School. She worked as a Senior Attorney at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court until June 2019. Barbara has taught women’s history in the past but is currently teaching courses related to constitutional law.

Barbara Brown has centered her professional life in public history and popular education. While teaching at the University of Botswana, she carried out and published the first significant study that focused on ordinary Botswana women. After returning to Boston, she was invited to lead the public education program on Africa at Boston University. She has worked in public education ever since. At BU, she received five grants from Fulbright and National Endowment for the Humanities to strengthen K-12 teaching about Africa. She has published curricula and consulted for PBS, Pearson Education and others. Later, she turned to local history and founded Hidden Brookline: bringing to light the hidden history of slavery and freedom. With a focus on popular education, Hidden Brookline leads walking tours, gives talks, organizes concerts, hosts a website, consults on curricula and has helped rename a school after Florida Ruffin Ridley.

Terry Byrne has been covering the Boston arts scene for nearly three decades, first at the Boston Herald, then for WGBH TV’s “Greater Boston” and currently at the Boston Globe. Her theater criticism has been featured in a segment on ABC-TV’s 20/20. She earned her MFA in Playwriting from Boston University in 2010, where she received a Robert Pinsky Global Travel Fellowship. Her play, “Rivals in the Clay,” explores the relationship between Emma Stebbins, M. Edmonia Lewis and Harriet Hosmer, three American sculptors and their patron, Charlotte Cushman and was selected as a semi-finalist for the O’Neill Theater Conference in 2016. She has also written “Tea with Alice” about Alice Roosevelt, and “A Night at the Opera House” about Gloria Swanson and her connection to Boston. She has been an Affiliated Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and a former board member of the Woburn Public Library Foundation and is now on the board of Equity Roadmap Inc., an organization that provides mentorship to at-risk students in Cambridge.

Julie Crockford is the Executive Director of ESC of New England, an organization which provides consulting and capacity building for non profits. Julie is the former president of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, a public-private partnership created to protect, restore, maintain and promote the landscape, waterways and parkways of the Emerald Necklace park system created by Frederick Law Olmstead. She also held the position of Director of Development and Communications for Boston’s Museum of Afro-American History, whose collections of nineteenth century artifacts include the African Meeting House, a National Historic Landmark, and Abiel Smith School on Beacon Hill, and the African Meeting House on Nantucket Island. Her career includes working at National Public Radio and the National Endowment for Humanities, serving as Deputy Director of the Boston History Collaborative, a non-profit historical tourism organization, and a long tenure as Executive Director of the Boston Institute for Arts Therapy. Julie is the founder of the Big Draw Camp, a summer arts camp for girls launched in 1996. A feminist and human rights advocate, she supports educational reforms to include all those missed in traditional history telling. A mother of two young people who inspire her, Julie is a long-time advocate for children’s rights through UNICEF and Project Concern International.

Liane Curtis writes and researches about historic women composers and has a Ph.D. in Musicology. Liane began working with the BWHT as part of her quest to have Amy Beach’s name added to the 87 names of male composers that adorn the Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade. Beach was added to the Shell in July 2000, and the Boston Pops performed some of Beach’s music at the unveiling. Liane joined the BWHT Board in the fall of 2000. She is affiliated with the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and also taught at Brandeis in the spring of 2007. She is the founder of The Rebecca Clarke Society, Inc. and edited A Rebecca Clarke Reader, the first book on that composer.

Anita Danker, Ed.D., first became interested in the BWHT while conducting research on Boston’s multicultural heritage trails. A former history teacher, social studies curriculum coordinator, and associate professor of education, she is now retired from Assumption College, where she taught a variety of education courses and supervised students preparing to become history teachers. She has written articles about both educational and local history topics including the role of women in the Harvard Shaker community, the Hopedale Strike of 1913, African American heritage trails in Massachusetts, and Framingham suffragists Josephine Collins and Louse Mayo, as well as the text, Multicultural Social Studies: Using Local History in the Classroom. In 1991 she was the Massachusetts Council for the Social Studies teacher of the year.Anita is now a member of the Framingham Cultural Council.

Helaine Davis is the third generation of her family to live in Greater Boston for almost her entire life. After working as an interior design consultant while raising two children, she became a librarian and worked in reference, preservation, conservation and the classification of fine and decorative arts, historic maps, rare books, photographs and other special collections at Mount Ida College in Newton, the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, and the Woburn Public Library. She is currently working on a project to identify and present to the public the stories of some remarkable and yet (somewhat) forgotten Jewish women from Boston with BWHT board member, Linda Stern. She also acts as a consultant librarian, assisting individuals with their personal research in genealogy.

Gretchen Dietz joined the BWHT board in 1996 and was treasurer from 1998 to 2011. She is the publications specialist for the Boston Public Schools, responsible for researching, writing, and designing publications for BPS families, staff, and the public. Her particular BWHT interest is working with BPS teachers and students to develop neighborhood women’s history trails. Gretchen lives in West Roxbury, where she is active in community organizations including West Roxbury Saves Energy, West Roxbury Friends of Rosie’s Place, New Brook Farm and Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church. She graduated from Yale University.

Sue Goganian is the director of Historic Beverly and past president of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. She spent 15 years researching and interpreting Boston history, particularly the stories of Boston’s neighborhoods. During 10 years at the Bostonian Society, she was Site Director of the Old State House, and the Director of Education and Public Programs, responsible for the Boston Historic Markers Program, school programming, teacher training, public lectures, and special events. Sue is a member of the Boston Landmarks Commission, and on the boards of Essex Heritage, the New England Museum Association and Beverly Main Streets. She has a M.A. in public history from Northeastern University and a B.S. in business administration from the University of Maine.

Erica Hirshler is Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings, Art of the Americas, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she has worked since 1983. She organized the highly praised exhibition A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940 and wrote the book of the same title. She helped develop the BWHT tour Women Artists in the Back Bay. Erica has a special interest in American paintings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in art and patronage in Boston, and in women artists. She has written and lectured extensively on these topics, and among her publications are essays on Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Edmund Tarbell, Dennis Bunker, and Sarah Sears. She has nurtured her interest in the historical achievements of women since her days at Wellesley College, and she was very pleased to join the BWHT Board in 2002 after working with them to co-produce a walking tour and brochure of sites relating to Boston’s women artists.She recently contributed information about artist Sarah Wyman Whitman for a new book: The Unforgettables – Expanding the History of American Art.

Although retiring after 40 years in the Boston Public Schools, Barbara Locurto continues to serve BWHT. Between 1984 and 2007 she developed and directed the Boston IMPACT II model designed to identify, recognize, reward, and disseminate successful classroom-based, teacher-developed programs. As BWHT board member since 1993, she coordinated Women’s History Showcases/Materials Grants, and featured Boston Women’s Memorial projects on Boston TeachNet. Recognized nationally and locally for her commitment to promoting good citizenship, she served as Massachusetts State Coordinator of Center for Civic Education’s We the People… Program. Awards include: Virginia M. White Service & Support to Girls & Women’s Sports; Boston Municipal Research Bureau’s Henry L. Shattuck Public Service; City Year Moccasin/Community Service; and Freedoms Foundation George Washington Honor Medal, Constitutional Studies. Other board membership includes: BPS Student Engagement Advisory Council; BPS Access Technology Center; Massachusetts Board of Education Service Learning Advisory Council (past); and Extras for Creative Learning/Recycle Center (past).

Mary’s interest in Boston Women began in 1989, when she participated in the project to establish the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. As she worked on the project, she became more aware of how little of American history actually reflected the impact of women. She teamed with Maria D’Itria on many projects regarding the role of women in history. Mary and Maria worked together with their students to create the Charlestown Women’s History Trail, “Walk Her Way,” and more recently on the East Boston Trail. Mary has served on the Teacher Advisory Board for the Boston Women’s Memorial Curriculum and the BWHT Summer Institute. Mary had been a Boston Public School teacher for forty six years. She served as a Lead Teacher, Mentor Teacher, Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science Standards Facilitator. She served as “in-house ” Math coach. An enthusiastic traveler, Mary has been fortunate to have participated in the Children’s Museum Study Tour of Japan and Primary Source Study Tour of China. She also has been a recipient of the Golden Apple Award.

Mary Smoyer, a founding member of the BWHT, has been actively involved since 1989, when she was inspired by her mentors, Polly Welts Kaufman and Barbara Clark Elam, to start working with the trail. She especially loves giving guided tours, developing the mini neighborhood trails and helping with programs in the Boston Public Schools. Mary is co-author of the BWHT guidebook and editor and co-author of the BWHT publication Twenty-One Notable Women. She created Let Me Tell You Her Story, a Jamaica Plain women’s history trail. Mary worked as a librarian and classroom teacher in public and private schools for over thirty years. Since retirement in 2008 she has been an active volunteer in the Boston Public Schools, especially at the William Monroe Trotter School and with Friends of the Boston Schoolyards. In November of 2008, Mary was honored with a Special History & Innovation Lifetime Achievement Award by the Boston History and Innovation Collaborative.

Alexandra Valdez is the Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement. Her long history with the City of Boston includes being Director of Engagement for the Economic Mobility Lab and Latina Liaison and Coordinator for Jamaica Plain. Prior to joining the City of Boston, Alexandra has worked as a field organizer for Boston City Councilor Matt O’Malley’s re-election campaign in 2014, and later as his Latino Liaison. Alexandra also served as a Public Information Officer for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department where she provided outreach and information to the Latino community and assisted in the coordination of civic engagement events and programs for the Department. Born in La Vega, Dominican Republic, Alexandra immigrated to the United States at the age of ten and her drive to improve the lives of youth and the communities around them has shown she is a committed community activist and experienced advocate for civic participation. Alexandra recently graduated from Suffolk University with a Master’s in Public Administration.

Wilson is a professional photographer, author, multimedia artist, and public historian who first encountered the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail when writing history features for the Boston Globe. A BWHT board member — and later advisory board member — since the mid-1990s, Susan has shared her skills as photographer, editor, art critic, trailblazer, website consultant, video artist, and lecturer for the trail. She helped develop the BWHT walking tour to accompany the “A Studio of Her Own” exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was project manager and photographer for the walking map, “30 Highlights of Boston Herstory,” was photographer and editor for the walking map “Road to the Vote: The Boston Women’s Suffrage Trail,” and produced the video on the creation of the Boston Women’s Memorial.

After earning a B.A. and M.A. in history from Tufts, and teaching history at both the secondary school and college levels, Susan moved into journalism, photojournalism, studio photography, feminist activism, historic consulting to area trails and sites, and authoring accessible, multicultural books on Boston history, which include Boston Sites and Insights, Garden of Memories, The Literary Trail of Greater Boston, and Heaven, By Hotel Standards: The History of The Omni Parker House. Her forthcoming book, Women and Children First: The Remarkable Journey of Dr. Susan Dimock, will be published by McFarland & Co. Publishers in 2023. An Elected Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, she is the official House Historian of the Omni Parker House and an Affiliate Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women Studies Research Center. 

Susan Wilson Website | Susan Wilson’s YouTube Channel 

Stephanie Wong Fan is on the board of the Chinese Historical Society of New England and a member of a project it sponsors with the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe, the Chinese American Women’s Oral History Project. The Chinese Historical Society documents and promotes the legacy of Chinese immigration. The Oral History Project is a volunteer group that interviews Chinese American women who lived and/or worked in the New England area prior to 1965. She was a board member during the first years of BWHT. Stephanie is a former teacher and administrator in the Boston Public Schools’ Bilingual Department.