Deborah G. Ullman
Ms. Ullman is President of the Board and also serves on the Audit and Investment Committees.
Ms. Ullman spent most of her career in the insurance and financial services industry. She started as an actuary before moving into senior management roles in finance, customer service. and corporate strategy.
Her “encore career” was as CEO of YWCA Hartford Region, which she joined in 2004. While CEO, she was involved in several Hartford area organizations that advocated for eliminating homelessness, early childhood education, eliminating racism and financial empowerment for women.
Ms. Ullman retired in 2017. She stays active in retirement as a fiber artist, both knitting and quilting. She also serves in several volunteer leadership roles including arts and culture, and human services.
Jan C. Stewart, Esq.
Ms. Stewart is Vice President of the Board, chair of the Operations & Benefits Committee, and also serves on the Governance Committee.
Ms. Stewart retired as Vice President of Human Resources at GEICO in August 2021. Prior to her human resources career, she was Corporate Secretary and Assistant General Counsel at GEICO from 2002 to 2006. Before joining GEICO, Jan specialized in employee benefits law working in Washington, D.C., as an associate at Kilpatrick Townsend and a partner at McDermott, Will & Emery.
Stewart serves as a mentor to a "teen scholar" through Generation Hope, which provides teen parents in college with mentoring, tuition assistance, mental health services, a peer community, and other critical services and support to help them earn their degrees.
Margaret S. Neilly
Ms. Neilly is the Board Treasurer and also serves on the Investment and Governance Committees.
Ms. Neilly was one of the first women to graduate from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. From 1962, she worked in the investment business both as an employee and the owner of her own firm. She has been a YWCARF Trustee since the late 1980s.
Jacqueline W. Bostic
Ms. Bostic is the Board Secretary and chair of the Audit Committee. She also serves on the Operations & Benefits Committee.
Among the many firsts of Ms. Bostic’s 32-year career with the United Postal Service were: becoming the first female education specialist in the Houston Postal District (1964-1967), the first female and African American to serve as investigator in the Southern Region (1974-1986), and the first female and African American Legislative Director for Texas. She also served on the Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and the Texas AFL-CIO Board of Directors.
Ms. Bostic has served on the Board of Directors of YWCA Houston and the YWCA’s National Board. She has been active in Delta Sigma Theta since joining at Fisk University in 1956, where she also grew a school tutoring program and was active in launching political forums.
Currently, Ms. Bostic serves as Chairman of the Fourth Ward Redevelopment Authority and TIRZ #14 for the City of Houston. She has been listed in the Who’s Who Of American Women since 1983.
Barbara Glass
Ms. Glass is chair of the Investment Committee and serves on the Operations & Benefits Committee.
Prior to her retirement, Ms. Glass spent more than 30 years working with employee benefit plans, and was certified to practice before the Internal Revenue Service. She spent several years on the Board of Directors for YWCA Tulsa, including two years as President.
Ms. Glass chaired the Asset Management and Development Committee of the YWCA’s National Coordinating Board for seven years, and joined the Board of Trustees of the YWCA Retirement Fund in 2009. She has a Bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma State University and a Master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma.
Currently, Ms. Glass is a trustee of a local Tulsa foundation that supports the performing arts and she enjoys painting, classical music, and traveling in her free time.
Kathleen A. Granchelli
Ms. Granchelli is chair of the Governance Committee and also serves on the Audit Committee. She is CEO of YWCA of the Niagara Frontier in Lockport, NY.
Since beginning her tenure in 1994, Ms. Granchelli has established a formerly local agency as a county-wide provider of services for women and girls. Among the initiatives she has led are an after-school violence prevention for middle school-age students, Universal Pre-School, a nationally recognized economic self-sufficiency program for women, a rape crisis program, and a campaign to Stand Against Racism. She also established county-wide homeless housing units for women and children.
Ms. Granchelli serves on the Board of Directors of The Homeless Alliance of New York, is a founding Executive Committee member of The Niagara County Community Commission on the Status of Women, and is a member of The Niagara County Workforce Investment Board. She is a graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy State School and Local Government Program, and also holds BA and Master’s degrees from SUNY and an advanced degree from the American Institute of Banking.
Margaret Mitchell
Ms. Mitchell is CEO of YWCA USA and previously served as the President & CEO of YWCA Greater Cleveland. Among her achievements, in 2019 she led the call to Declare Racism a Public Health Crisis in Cleveland and across the state, led the acquisition of the Norma Herr Women’s Center, and launched the transformation of the YWCA Greater Cleveland Early Learning Center into the only trauma-informed preschool serving children and families experience homelessness.
Previously, Ms. Mitchell was the President & CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters Greater Cleveland, served as the VP of Business Development and Director of Partnerships at Big Brothers Big Sisters of North Texas (now BBBS Lone Star), and held senior leadership roles at Menttium, a for-profit industry leader in one-to-one corporate mentoring.
Ms. Mitchell began her career in publishing and received a BA with honors in Mass Communications from Hampton Institute. In 2020, The Cleveland Orchestra, in partnership with the City of Cleveland, honored her with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – Outstanding Service Award.
Sondra Vitols
Ms. Vitols serves on the Investment Committee and is a Director of Investments for New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where she is responsible for alternative and impact investments.
Prior to her current role, Ms. Vitols worked at Duke University’s endowment and for North Carolina’s pension plan, where she led and managed multi-billion portfolios in private credit, hedge funds, and select real asset and private equity investments. She was also appointed to spearhead development of the pension’s ESG policy and sustainable investment approach.
Ms. Vitols began her finance career at McKinsey & Company and has held senior roles at Credit Suisse First Boston and D.E. Shaw & Company, in New York and Hong Kong. At Clark University, she served both as investment staff for the endowment and as an associate professor at the business school. She has also held academic positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University.
Ms. Vitols received BA degrees in Chemistry and Philosophy (with honors) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a PhD in Chemical Physics from Princeton.
Diana Gibson
Ms. Gibson serves on the Investment Committee and is Managing Director of Public Investments at Walton Enterprises.
She has over 20 years of experience in investment management for foundations, endowments, family offices, and pensions.
Ms. Gibson earned a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard College (Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude), and a Master’s and Doctorate from the University of Oxford, England.
Marilee Pierotti Lau
Ms. Lau provides consulting and educational services for firms that specialize in employee benefit plans and is the Consulting CPA on Staff for the Colorado Society of CPAs overseeing the AICPA Peer Review process.
Prior to her retirement in 2009, Ms. Lau was the National Partner in Charge of KPMG’s Employee Benefit Plan Audit Practice. She is a founding member and a former Chair of the AICPA Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center’s Executive Committee, and was the 2011-2013 AICPA’s representative to the Department of Labor’s ERISA Advisory Council. She has served on the AICPA’s Employee Benefits Plan Experts Panel, numerous task forces, and was the chair of the EBP Audit Guide Overhaul Task Force.
Ms. Lau assisted the AICPA in writing the new ESOP and Multiemployer chapters for the EBP Guide as well as the pension chapters for the State and Local Government Guide.
Besides her professional work. Ms. Lau serves on the Board of Fellows for Santa Clara University, the Board of Directors for Marin Villages, and the Retired Partner Council for KPMG.