Board of Trustees Welcomes Four New Members

The Smith College Board of Trustees welcomes four new members who will begin their governance duties July 1.

Katie S. Chong, Class of 2018, majored in anthropology and Spanish at Smith and, as a senior, served as president of the Student Government Association. Active in student government during all of her four years at Smith, Chong also studied abroad in South Korea and Peru, and conducted ethnographic research on topics such as the Neilson Library renovation and Smith housing. Chong will serve a two-year term on the board and will be attending law school.

Other new trustees, who will serve four-year terms on the board, are:

A leader in finance, Christine M. McCarthy has served since 2015 as senior executive vice president and chief financial officer of The Walt Disney Company and chairman of the Supervisory Board of Euro Disney. She joined Disney in 2000 as the company’s executive vice president, corporate real estate, alliances and treasurer, after serving in senior leadership positions with Imperial Bancorp and First Interstate Bancorp. McCarthy has represented Disney on the board of FM Global since 2010; she is a trustee of the Westridge School in Pasadena, Calif., and a director of the Board of Advisors for UCLA Anderson. She also has served as the treasurer and a director of the Alumnae Association of Smith College. McCarthy has received numerous honors, including Treasury Today’s 2015 Adam Smith “Woman of the Year” award. In 2016 she was named one of the Entertainment Diversity Council’s “Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Entertainment.” McCarthy majored in biology and graduated from Smith in 1977, and she holds an M.B.A. degree  from the Anderson School at UCLA.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is a two-time Academy Award- and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. In the past 16 years, she has made a dozen award-winning films—including A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, Saving Face andPakistan’s Taliban Generation—in more than 10 countries. In 2012, Time magazine included Obaid-Chinoy in the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. That same year, the government of Pakistan awarded her one of its highest civilian honors, Hilal-e-Imtiaz. In 2013, the Canadian government awarded her a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work in the field of documentary films, and the World Economic Forum honored her with a Crystal Award at its annual summit in Davos. Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Obaid-Chinoy graduated from Smith in 2002, then earned two master’s degrees from Stanford University. She received an honorary degree from Smith in May.

Margaret Wurtele has centered her career on supporting the arts. A resident of Minneapolis, she has served as director of membership and public relations for Walker Art Center, development director of the St. Paul United Arts Fund, and managing director of Dayton Hudson Foundation. She is also a co-founder of Hungry Mind Press. In a volunteer capacity, she has chaired the boards of Blake School, Graywolf Press, The Episcopal House of Prayer and the Guthrie Theater, where she is now a lifetime board member. A past board member of the Loft Literary Center and Public Radio International, she currently chairs the board of Minnesota Opera. Wurtele is the author of two memoirs—Taking Rootand Touching the Edge—as well as a novel, The Golden Hour. Wurtele graduated from Smith College in 1967, then spent two years in the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa. She received a master’s degree in liberal studies from Hamline University in 1993.