Slate for 2015-2016

Candidates for Co-President

Lill Van Order

Lill has been active in AAUW since moving to Wilmington, NC in July of 1996. She was the secretary of the Wilmington branch, served as president and co-president 1999-2003 in two consecutive terms. Shortly after that she became involved at the state level as the LAF liaison. At that time she also served on state nominating committees. While she was working for AAUW NC the state went through a structure change and she served as co administrator with Karla Atkinson in the pilot year of the new structure. Her most recent work at the state level was the revision of the state bylaws to reflect the new structure. During this time Lill became a dual member of the Tar Heel branch. In 2013-14 she was elected to the THB Board of Directors and worked with membership.

Lill retired from a career as school librarian in June 2012. She has a passion for education of our youth especially girls and for the environment. Volunteering for AAUW and local environmental organizations seems to be a good match. Lill likes the online branch model and its mission and would like to continue serving on the board.

After Michelle Evan’s resignation, she and Christi Whitworth joined forces as co- interim administrators of the Tar Heel Branch until June 30, 2015. She would like to continue in this position with the Tar Heel Branch. She has worked with the “co” model in AAUW NC and at the branch level and believes it would work for this branch as well.

Candidate for Treasurer: Nancy Shoemaker

Nancy, who co-founded the branch and served on its board until June 30, 2014, wishes to rejoin the board as treasurer. She believes that the branch model is a good one to connect members who live far from community-based branches or for whom community-based branches are not a good “fit”. She hopes that during this term she can advocate to the national organization to simplify and streamline dues processing as well as find someone willing to train as the next treasurer with that simplified model.

She also serves as AAUW NC web manager as well as helping in other capacities at the state level and supporting a few online, nationwide AAUW communities. She is a member of the Raleigh/Wake County branch as well as five other state-wide virtual branches. Her academic background is in mathematics, and her professional life has been spent in a variety of computer support/consulting roles. She lives in Wake County with her husband.

Candidates for Directors at Large

Virginia Adamson

Virginia Adamson joined AAUW in 2013. She is a native of Alabama and has called North Carolina home for more than half her life. Virginia received her Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1979. She works for the Volvo Group as a Senior Business Consultant focused on Operational Planning and Manufacturing. Her tenure with Volvo spans more than 30 years with experience ranging from product development to business and strategy development. Although based in Greensboro, NC, she has also worked and lived in Göteborg and Umeå in Sweden.

Virginia is a Past President of North Carolina Business and Professional Women (BPW/NC) and has served as Treasurer and President of BPW of the Triad. She currently serves as the Parliamentarian of BPW/NC and Co-Treasurer of BPW of the Triad. She is also a member of the Women’s Forum of NC. The ERA and Equal Pay are her passions. She completed $tart $mart facilitator training in November 2014. When not advocating for women and their families, she loves living on the farm with her husband Michael where gardening, weaving and reading are her favorite pastimes.

Karla Atkinson 

Karla Atkinson has been a member of AAUW NC since moving to Brevard, NC in 1994. She received a BA from Kalamazoo College and a MA  from Western Michigan University. She also holds a Paralegal Degree from Davenport College.

Karla has served as secretary, public relations chair, booksale coordinator and president in her Brevard branch. She has served at the state level as Secretary (under then President Nancy Shoemaker) and Co-President of AAUW NC (with Lill VanOrder). At the state level, she now has major responsibility for communication and publishing the Tar Heel News. Karla has been a part of two restructuring processes at the state level. She was instrumental in developing the Public Policy Project (PPP) three years ago. She now serves on the AAUW NC Public Policy leadership team, and chairs the Voter Education/Public Policy Committee in the Brevard branch.

Karla is currently a member of the Tar Heel Branch Board of Directors and is seeking another term in that position. She believes that the Tar Heel branch, as a model for “virtual” AAUW membership, is an ideal recruiting tool for attracting a broad, younger base of new members, particularly at the post secondary level.  Her goal for the Tar Heel Branch is to involve more members in public policy advocacy, using every avenue of electronic communication available to each member, to influence legislation and state/federal election outcomes.

Jacquelin Heath

Jacquelin (Jackie) Heath is on the faculty of Vance-Granville Community College as Program Head/Instructor for School-Age Education, a program that prepares individuals to work with children in elementary through middle grades in diverse learning environments. In that capacity she has ongoing contact with students and is responsible for developing programs that further their growth. She joined AAUW and the Tar Heel Branch after being awarded an AAUW Campus Action Grant to fund a series on the VGCC campus, “An Educated Woman, An Educated Future.” She gave a presentation on that series at the 2014 AAUW NC annual meeting.

She serves as the advisor for the Student NC Association of Educators at VGCC, and  served three terms on the Henderson and Vance County Human Relations Commission. She has bachelors and masters degrees from NC Agricultural & Technical State University, with additional course work from NC Central Univ.

Diane Schneider

Diane Schneider, a native of New York, attended college in Virginia, earning her B.S. in Elementary Education at James Madison University (1973) and both her Masters degree in Special Education/Learning Disabilities (1977) and her Doctor of Education degree/Education Leadership & Policy Studies (1992) at the University of Virginia. She has taught grades K-12 in both the regular classroom and programs for special needs students, over the course of her careeer, in both private and public schools. Currently, Diane is working as an educational consultant and private tutor in the greater Charlotte area.

Diane joined the Charlottesville, VA branch of AAUW in the late 1970’s. After relocating to NC in 1983, working, parenting and studying kept her away from an organization she truly believed in. She was happy to re-connect with AAUW in Charlotte about nine years ago. She served as branch vice president/program chair from 2007-2009, at which point she was elected branch president. She served in that office for two consecutive terms-2009-2013. She was active in planning and organizing the AAUW-NC Convention in April of 2010. It was then that she joined the newly-formed THB. Since there was no VP during her 4-years as president, she continued acting as program chair through 2013.

Diane and another branch member have had experience auditing the THB financial records, with assistance from treasurer Lyndee Champion Ivey.  Diane hopes to be reelected as a member of the Tar Heel Branch Board of Directors where she will have the opportunity to support the branch’s mission and help maintain its special impact on members throughout the year ahead.

Christi Whitworth

Christi Whitworth is Education Director at Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, located in Rosman, North Carolina. She plans to strengthen the AAUW commitment to STEM Education Programming in North Carolina. She worked with gifted students and science education in Tennessee public schools before moving into informal education in 2005 while living in Texas. She has worked as a science educator and then Education Director at PARI since 2006. She has been a member of AAUW since 2010.

As Education Director at PARI, she maintains, manages and creates programming for PARI’s StarLab portable planetarium, science education, and outreach programs including homeschool programs, distance learning and citizen science programming. She also serves as the collaborative lead for the North Carolina Girls STEM Collaborative in affiliation with the National Girls Collaborative Project. The collaboratives work to connect programs and resources across the state of North Carolina in the effort to encourage, mentor and promote organizations that serve girls in STEM fields and builds strong connections between the girls and future careers.