Montpelier Board of Directors
Chairman
J. Haywood Blakemore
J. Haywood Blakemore was a lawyer for 45 years, focusing on international business transactions, and is now retired and living in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was a partner of the international law firm White & Case LLP, practicing in its offices in New York, Washington, Singapore, Tokyo and Paris. After 30 years with White & Case he retired in 2008 and accepted an offer from the government of Qatar to help them establish and build a sovereign wealth fund for the country.
He relocated from Paris to Doha and joined what became the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) one of the largest investment institutions in the world, serving as Deputy General Counsel and General Counsel, Investments. From 2009 to 2023, he led the investment legal team as QIA acquired global assets with a total value of around $550 billion. Along the way, he oversaw the legal elements of hundreds of broadly diversified investment transactions spanning every region of the world.
Over his decades abroad, he served as President of the American Club of Singapore, Chairman of the Board of the Singapore American School and Vice Chairman of the Board of the American School of Paris. Born and raised in Virginia, he was graduated from Randolph-Macon College and earned a Master’s degree from the College of William & Mary and his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. He retired to Charlottesville in 2023 after nearly 40 years living in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Haywood currently serves as a trustee of Randolph-Macon College and as a board member of the Charlottesville Symphony and the Community Investment Collaborative.
Vice Chair
Dr. Joshua D. Rothman
Dr. Joshua D. Rothman is an American historian. He is a Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Alabama, where he was also formerly the Director of the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South. He co-directs a research project with colleagues at Cornell University, the University of New Orleans, and other universities titled Freedom on the Move: A Database of Fugitives from North American Slavery. Dr. Rothman has published three books: a history of interracial sex in Virginia before the Civil War titled Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787- 1861 (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson (University of Georgia Press, 2012), and The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (Basic Books, 2021).
Dr. Rothman has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards for his research. His scholarship has been funded by grants from the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Southern Foodways Alliance. He has received fellowships from the American Council for Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society, the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, the Huntington Library, the Virginia Historical Society, and Virginia Humanities. He has also won awards for his books, including (for Notorious in the Neighborhood) the 2004 Outstanding Book Award from the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender, and (for Flush Times and Fever Dreams) the Gulf South Historical Association’s Michael V.R. Thomason Book Award for the best book on the history of the Gulf South and Southern Historical Association’s Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Award for the best book in southern history.
He has also served as a consultant for numerous museums and historic sites, including the Freedom House Museum in Alexandria, Virginia, and the Forks of the Road site in Natchez, Mississippi.
Dr. Rothman received his BA from Cornell University in 1994 and his PhD in History from the University of Virginia in 2000. He is currently editing and introducing a new critical edition of Life of Elisha Tyson, the Philanthropist, a biography of an early antislavery activist, and working on a history of the Ku Klux Klan hearings of 1871.
Treasurer
Nicole Thorne Jenkins, Ph.D.
Nicole Thorne Jenkins, Ph.D. is a Professor of Commerce at UVA. She is the former John A. Griffin Dean of the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. Before that, she served as the Von Allmen Endowed Chair of Accountancy and vice dean in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. Jenkins spent the previous 10 years as a member of the faculties at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis and the Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt University.
Jenkins’ research interests include the investigation of financial reporting failures, share repurchases, and the effect of social networks on performance outcomes. As an award-winning teacher, her instructional experience has focused on financial reporting topics in executive education, graduate, and undergraduate programs. As a result of her ability to make both accounting and finance topics accessible, Jenkins is frequently called upon to instruct corporate professionals on related complex topics.
Jenkins received her doctorate in accounting from the University of Iowa and holds a certificate in leadership from Stanford University. She completed her undergraduate work in accounting and finance at Drexel University. Before becoming an academic, she was an auditor and consultant at PriceWaterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. Additionally, she consults and serves as an expert witness in matters related to financial reporting, valuation, and estimation of damages.
Jenkins is a certified public accountant and currently serves as a trustee/board member for (TIAA) CREF, Strada Education Foundation (Chair of Audit and Finance Committee) The Montpelier Foundation (Treasurer) and the Tippie College of Business Advisory Board—University of Iowa.
Secretary
Jan C. Smith
Jan C. Smith is a freelance video journalist residing in Keswick, VA. She reported and produced a series of videos interviewing the four female U.S. Supreme Court Justices for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery website, and did a series of reports on U.S. Presidents for National Geographic Television. She won a National Headliner’s Award for a military pay report for CNN and covered national and local news for WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C. for 12 years. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, she began her reporting career at WDAF-TV in Kansas City. Ms. Smith is involved in the diplomatic community in Washington, D.C. as Program Chair for International Neighbors Club One. In 2002, she was named “Washingtonian of the Year.” She is a member of the Eleanor Roosevelt Dialogue with the Center for Strategic International Studies. She co-chaired Partners in Health at Georgetown University Medical Center and moderated medical panels for five years. She previously served on the Board of the Washington National Cathedral, and is currently on the Board of the Presidential Precinct, a new member of the Contemporary Club, Membership Chair of the Charlottesville Committee on Foreign Relations and Co-Chair of the Grace Church Historic FarmTour.
Dr. Leslie M. Alexander
Dr. Leslie M. Alexander, is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. A specialist in early African American and African Diaspora history, she is the author of African or American?: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861 (University of Illinois Press, 2011) and the co-editor of three additional volumes. Her forthcoming book, Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming Fall 2022), examines how the Haitian Revolution and the emergence of Haiti as a sovereign Black nation inspired the birth of Black internationalist consciousness in the United States.
Her newest project, “How We Got Here: Slavery and the Making of the Modern Police State,”examines how surveillance of free and enslaved Black communities in the colonial and antebellum eras laid the foundation for modern- day policing. A portion of that research appears in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. A recipient of several prestigious fellowships, including the Ford Foundation Senior Fellowship, Alexander is the Immediate Past President of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), and is an Executive Council member of the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS). She also serves on the Advisory Councils for the Journal of African American History and The Black Scholar. During her career, she has won several significant awards, including the coveted University Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching at The Ohio State University.
Ms. Mary Alexander
Ms. Mary Alexander is a real estate entrepreneur. She earned her BA in Political Science and Economics from the Trinity College for Women in Washington, DC. From 1984 to 2009, she was Managing Partner of three closely held real estate investment partnerships. Since then, she has been General Partner of three partnerships. She was a founding member of HYMK Real Estate Development in 2007. She has negotiated several multi-million dollar transactions and designed and overseen several real estate construction and renovation projects. She currently employs a staff of five and works with several contractors and vendors, managing and operating real estate investments in Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and South Carolina.
She is a past member of the boards of the Charlottesville Opera Society and Scottsville Arts and Nature Center, and has been involved in the Scottsville Chamber of Commerce, Scottsville Youth Basketball League, and Southern Albemarle Intergenerational Center.
Ms. Alexander has been responsible for archiving multiple family historical documents, images, and family heirlooms. She acted as caretaker to her parents for 13 years and two additional relatives after their death. She is the mother of one and grandmother of seven. She has authored several children’s book manuscripts and four manuscripts for novels based loosely upon her experiences and her family’s long history in and about Washington, DC.
Mr. Benjamin (Ben) Brewster
Mr. Benjamin (Ben) Brewster, is a highly-regarded wealth and investment professional with over 25 years of experience in the industry. Before joining Chilton Trust, he was a Managing Director at Silvercrest Asset Management Group, providing investment advisory and family office services to its clients. Prior to Silvercrest, Brewster led Heritage Financial Management, a Charlottesville-based investment advisory firm. Mr. Brewster has previously served on boards of Union Settlement House, New York, NY and South Kent School in South Kent, CT. He is a longtime board member and former Chairman of the Trudeau Institute, a biomedical research organization in upstate New York with a scientific mission to make breakthrough discoveries leading to improved human health. Mr. Brewster, a lover of history and conservation, is a graduate of the South Kent School and the University of the South. He and his wife Antoinette live in Charlottesville.
DeAnna Dodds Cummings
DeAnna Dodds Cummings joined the McKnight Foundation in June 2020 as Arts program director. Founded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists thrive, McKnight invests in the arts and other sectors to support the state’s working artists and culture bearers and advocate for the value of their work as leaders in the state.
Before coming to McKnight, Cummings was the co-founding CEO of Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA), a social enterprise business in north Minneapolis that trains and employs historically underestimated youth as a springboard to higher education and careers in art and design. Established in 1995 as an after-school program in the North Side’s Sumner-Glenwood neighborhood, JXTA has become one of the most important cultural institutions in the Twin Cities.
Cummings has served on the Bush Foundation’s board of trustees since 2013. She is a 2016 Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal Women in Business awardee and a Minnesota Public Radio 2013 Arts Hero. From 2016 to 2018, she was a DeVos Institute Fellow in the selective fellowship program in arts management at the University of Maryland, College Park. She holds a master’s in public administration from Harvard University and studied sociology and psychology at the University of Minnesota.
F. Michael Higginbotham
F. Michael Higginbotham is a law professor, author, and international political consultant. As an expert on civil rights, human rights, and constitutional law, Higginbotham has taught and written extensively on racial equality issues for over thirty years. He is the author of the books Race Law: Cases, Commentary, and Questions and Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post-Racial America (NYU Press, 2013). In its fifth edition, Race Law is widely used in colleges and law schools throughout the United States and several foreign countries.
Higginbotham worked for the Public Justice Center, one of Maryland’s largest public interest firms beginning in the 1990s, the group fought cases on behalf of homeless students, detainees at the Baltimore City Detention Center on their right to medical care, and on behalf of Eastern Shore poultry workers denied extra pay for working overtime. Higginbotham has also worked to diversify the region’s law professionals. In 2011, Higginbotham co-founded the Fannie Angelos Scholarship program, a program that identifies students at Maryland’s historically black colleges and universities in their sophomore and junior years as future attorneys. The program helps them apply to law school and throughout their legal studies and was recognized by the American Bar Association in 2017.
Higginbotham has published numerous articles and editorials in journals and newspapers throughout the United States. Appearing regularly on CNN Tonight hosted by Don Lemon, Higginbotham has frequently provided commentary to media worldwide. Additionally, he currently serves as a legal advisor to Senator Ben Cardin. Before joining the University of Baltimore law faculty in 1988, Higginbotham was a Law Clerk to United States Court of Appeals Judge Cecil Poole, an Associate with Davis Polk, and a Lecturer in Law at the University of Pennsylvania. Higginbotham also served as former Chairman of the Board of the Public Justice Center.
Higginbotham is the chairman of the Board of the Public Justice Center, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the former chairperson of the Association of American Law Schools Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Minority Faculty. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar. Higginbotham graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1975, received a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Brown University in 1979, a Juris Doctor degree from Yale University in 1982, and a Master of Laws degree with honors from Cambridge University in 1985 where he was a Rotary Scholar.
Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries
Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries is Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University, where he teaches courses on the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement.
In addition to his academic work, Dr. Jeffries has participated in several major public history projects. From 2010 to 2014, he was the lead historian and primary scriptwriter for the $27 million renovation of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, the site where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. He hosts the podcast “Teaching Hard History,” a production of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s educational division, Teaching Tolerance. He also regularly shares his knowledge of African American history and contemporary Black politics with the public through lectures, workshops, op-eds, and radio and television interviews. He has also contributed to several documentary film projects as a featured on-camera scholar, including the Emmy nominated, four-hour, PBS documentary Black America Since MLK.
Jeffries consults regularly with school districts on developing anti-racism programming. This work includes conducting professional development workshops for teachers, speaking to student assemblies, and developing inclusive curricular centered on social studies. In the classroom, Jeffries takes great pride in opening students’ minds to new ways of understanding the past and the present. This has led him to push the very boundaries of what we think of as a classroom, including taking small groups of undergraduates to Montpelier. For his pedagogical creativity and effectiveness, he has received Ohio State’s Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, the university’s highest award to teaching, and the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award.
Jeffries is the author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt (New York University Press, 2009), which tells the remarkable story of the African American freedom movement in Lowndes County, Alabama, the birthplace of Black Power. He is also the editor of Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021), a collection of essays by leading civil rights scholars and teachers that explores how to teach the Civil Rights Movement accurately and effectively. Jeffries’ current book project, In the Shadow of Civil Rights, examines the Black experience in New York City from 1977 to 1993.
Jeffries graduated summa cum laude from Morehouse College with a B.A. in History (1994) and earned a Ph.D. in American History, with a specialization in African American History, from Duke University (2002). He taught for a year at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, before joining the faculty at The Ohio State University in 2003.
Dr. Bettye Kearse
During the thirty years it took her to write the book, Dr. Kearse traveled around the United States and to Ghana, West Africa, and Lagos, Portugal. In March 2020, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published her memoir The Other Madisons: The Lost History of A President’s Black Family. It reveals the obstacles, external and internal, she confronted while becoming a griotte determined to tell the whole story. The Other Madisons has garnered strong reader and editorial reviews, including recognition from the International Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, National Association of Black Journalists, Smithsonian Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Parade, and “Good Morning America.” The 2021 documentary film based on The Other Madisons can be seen in webinars and film festivals throughout the country.
Dr. Kearse’s essays and commentaries have appeared in the Boston Herald, River Teeth, Zora, ImageMakers & Influencers Magazine, OpEdNews, Literary Hub, Mental Floss, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, and the anthology Black Lives Have Always Mattered. Her personal narrative “Destination Jim Crow” was listed as notable among The Best American Essays 2014 and nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize.
John Kluge, Jr.
John Kluge, Jr., a resident of Charlottesville, VA, is a social entrepreneur and impact investor dedicated to building more sustainable, just, and inclusive economies. He is the Founder and Senior Advisor at the Refugee Investment Network (RIN), the first impact investing and blended finance collaborative dedicated to long-term solutions to forced migration, where he has co-led the development of strategy, programs, and partnerships that are building the field of ‘refugee and migration lens’ investing, as well as leading RIN’s fieldwork in Mexico and Jordan. He is currently working on a book on inclusive economies and refugee lens investing. In 2022, Mr. Kluge launched a refugee-lens social enterprise, Thistlerock Mead Company, which combines ancient honey wine fermentation practices with modern regenerative agriculture to protect pollinators and conserve native ecosystems while supporting the livelihoods of women, minority, and refugee beekeepers in the U.S. and in emerging markets around the world. As a trustee of Babson College, Mr. Kluge helped lead the investment committee’s first exploration of ESG and DEI efforts and currently serves as a Director for the Norwegian Refugee Council USA, a Director for the US-Mexico Foundation, and as an Advisor to the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. He is the co-author of Charity & Philanthropy for Dummies (Wylie, 2013), the author of John Kluge: Stories (Columbia University Press, 2008), and has written about the intersection of business and social impact for Forbes and Conscious Company Magazine. Mr. Kluge holds a B.A. from Columbia University.
Mr. Tom Mayes
Mr. Tom Mayes is Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has specialized in both corporate and preservation law since he joined the National Trust in 1986. He is the principal lawyer for legal matters relating to the National Trust’s 27 historic sites and for historic property real estate transactions. Mr. Mayes has expertise in architectural and technical preservation issues, collections management, preservation easements, the Americans with Disabilities Act and historic shipwrecks. He is the author of many articles relating to, and has lectured widely on, the importance of old places, preservation easements, shipwreck protection, historic house museums, the Americans with Disabilities Act and preservation public policy. For many years, he taught historic preservation law at the University of Maryland Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. In 2013, Tom received the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize in Historic Preservation. He is the author of Why Old Places Matter: How Historic Places Affect Our Identity and Well-Being. Mr. Mayes received his BA with honors in History in 1981 and his J.D. in 1985 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mayes received an MA in writing from Johns Hopkins University.
Mr. Peter Stoudt
Stoudt has been involved in conservation and historic preservation efforts throughout the region. Thanks to his leadership, 945 acres were placed in conservation easement last year in Albemarle County; 200 acres were saved in Mountain Grove; 272 acres of town and battlefield in James City, Madison County (which has long historical ties with James Madison and Montpelier) were purchased and saved from development; and 12 acres were saved in the heart of Free Union, including the creation of a restaurant, Black Smith’s Shop Café, in what has been designated as a “Classic Country Store” site.
Reverend Lawrence “Larry” E. Walker
Reverend Lawrence “Larry” E. Walker is a founding member of the Montpelier Descendants Committee (MDC), and serves as president. He is a proud descendant of Benjamin McDaniel of Montpelier (1790-1875). The MDC represents descendants of formerly enslaved people at James Madison’s Montpelier, as well as sites of enslavement throughout the Central Virginia region.
Rev. Walker was appointed by Governor Wes Moore, to serve as Assistant Secretary, Office of External Affairs for the Maryland Department of General Services. Prior to this role he served as the Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Community Initiatives. In this role he guided the staff that oversees the administration of the state’s ethnic commissions, the Office of Immigrant Affairs, Faith Outreach, and both the Maryland Commissions on LGBTQIA+, and Indian Affairs. Before joining state government, he served eighteen years as deputy pastor and chief-of-staff for Celebration Church in Columbia, Maryland. His primary responsibility was congregational care, community engagement, ministry and building operations for the congregation of more than 2,000.
Rev. Walker’s career has focused on addressing racial inequalities in education, health, diversity, equity and inclusion, economic opportunities, and policing. He is known for building and improving cultural and ethnic relationships through understanding and mutual respect. His many leadership roles have included president of the African American Community Roundtable of Howard County, where he established the organization as a leading voice in the community. Rev. Walker has received several awards for his public service and civic involvement, but is most proud of the statewide Parent Involvement Matters Award (2008) awarded by the Maryland State Department of Education. He is a Life Member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., and holds a B.S. in Business, from Southern University and Agricultural and Mechanical College at Baton Rouge (1981).
Howard M. Zaritsky
Howard M. Zaritsky is a retired attorney and a nationally recognized expert on estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes, fiduciary income taxes, estate planning, and estate administration. He has published over a dozen books, including Tax Planning for Family Wealth Transfers At Death, Tax Planning for Family Wealth Transfers During Life, and Tax Planning With Life Insurance (all published by Thomson-Reuters/WG&L), three Tax Management Portfolios (Revocable Inter Vivos Trusts; Grantor Trusts; and Foreign Trusts, Estates, and Beneficiaries), and more than 150 articles in various law reviews and professional journals. He has lectured at all of the major tax and estate planning institutes, including the University of Miami Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, where he is a member of the advisory board, and the Douglas W. Conner Advanced Estate Planning and Administration Seminar. Mr. Zaritsky was a partner in Zaritsky & Zaritsky in Fairfax, VA, for nearly 20 years where his practice was limited to estate planning and related tax matters. For over 10 years, he also had a practice limited to consulting with other estate planning professionals on matters relating to estate planning and taxes. He received his law degree from Stetson University College of Law as well as an LLM from Georgetown University. He currently resides in Rapidan, VA.