Virginia Anne SharberKay Kendall was named the 2017 Distinguished Alumna of Girls Preparatory School during Alumnae Weekend festivities held at the school recently. Virginia Anne Summitt Sharber received the Margaret Rawlings Lupton Award of Excellence during the luncheon.
Kendall, class of 1962, has been an arts advocate for four decades in Washington, D.C. She currently chairs the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and serves on the boards of CityDance and The Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus, a home away from home for underserved children and adults.
As a board member, she has produced five fundraising galas in the past six years that have raised more than $5 million. The founder of Kendall+Associates, she is a consultant on fundraising and nonprofit board governance, helping community groups build leadership and organizational structure.
Sharber, class of '77, is executive director of the Hunter Museum of American Art, the first woman to serve in that capacity. She was a longtime commercial real estate attorney with Miller & Martin before that.
She has been actively involved with Chattanooga arts organizations, including chairing the ArtsBuild (then Allied Arts) board, the Holmberg Arts Leadership Institute and the Chattanooga Public Art Committee during the development of the 21st Century Waterfront.
A member of the Chattanooga Rotary Club, she has chaired the boards of the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, Memorial Health Care Foundation, Chattanooga Women's Leadership Institute and the Women's Fund of Greater Chattanooga.
Honored as Notable Alumnae were Dr. Martha McCravey, pediatric intensive care specialist; Patricia Ochs, former international journalist and current conflict resolution psychotherapist and counselor; Ann Dickerson Zack, entrepreneur and co-owner of Tennessee Moonshine Cakes; Molly Bishop Shadel, author, University of Virginia Law School faculty member and a senior fellow for the Center for National Security Law.
Also, Brooke Good Bowles, founder and executive director of Triumph Services Inc.; Caroline Puri Mitchell, co-founder of Fitsi Health; and Maithilee Kunda, assistant professor of computer science and computer engineering at Vanderbilt University, where she directs the laboratory for artificial intelligence and visual analogical systems.
Two were recognized as Rising Stars. Katherine Cherry is manager of international government relations and public affairs at Coca-Cola Co. and leader of the company's partnership with the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Community.
Raewyn Duvall is a Pathways student engineer with NASA SwampWorks, who is pursuing dual master's degrees, one in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and another in robotics at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.
Also during Alumnae Weekend, Anne Exum and Linda Moss Mines were inducted into the GPS faculty emeriti program.
Mines, who chairs the History and Social Sciences Department, will retire this summer after a teaching career of more than 40 years, 27 of them at GPS.
Exum, who has taught writing and grammar and edited GPS' publications for 30 years, is also retiring at the end of this academic year but will continue to serve as an editor through her freelance practice, Proof Positive.