Board of Directors
OUR BOARD, IS A GROUP OF LIKE MINDED, PASSIONATE WOMEN WHO WANT
TO GIVE BACK . EACH OF US HAS CHANGED AND IMPROVED OUR OWN LIVES
BECAUSE WE SOUGHT OUT THE TOOLS WE NEEDED TO MOVE AHEAD.
WE ALL WANT TO PAY IT FORWARD.
WE WORK WITH SMALL ORGANIZATIONS, SCHOOLS AND CLINICS.
EACH OF THEM, AS PART OF THEIR VISION, GIVES A HAND UP TO THOSE WHO
WILL COME BEHIND. THEY ARE A VERY DIVERSE GROUP OF WOMEN AND
CHILDREN SPREAD OUT ACROSS THE WORLD.
In Memoriam
Angela McManus
Lacewing Foundation Board Member.
November 23,1950- November 11,2023
Angela served with us from inception of The Lacewing Foundation in 2004. She was appreciated for her diligence, humor and conscientious support of our work. She will be remembered for her passion and dedication to the most vulnerable, particularly to the girls of the SEGA (Secondary Education for Girls Advancement) school in Morogoro, Tanzania. She visited Tanzania numerous times, building relationships with girls in the school. She also served on the fundraising board for the school, Nurturing Minds.
We sincerely mourn her passing.
We will miss her.
Our deepest sympathies to her family and many friends.
Mary Williams, Wanda Herndon, Lynn Behar, Deidra Wager
Lacewing Foundation Board.
Mary Williams
Founder and Chairman of the Board
Mary retired from Starbucks in 2005. After 35 years of pioneering a place for women in coffee at the trading table and at the cupping table.
During her extensive traveling through the coffee producing/developing countries around the world, Mary saw that a need for greater education efforts existed at all levels and a significant amount more healthcare was desperately needed everywhere she traveled. Women and children were particularly overlooked by the governments. After witnessing pilot programs for farm schools and farm clinics working successfully in the places where people actually lived and work Mary was inspired. Mary was prompted to start the Lacewing Foundation. So Beginning in 2004, with a vision of helping women and children have access to healthcare and education, Lacewing began making grants.
Today Mary is Chairwoman of the board of Lacewing Foundation and President of MJW Consulting, a coffee quality and operations consulting company. Mary is an owner of a working coffee farm called Las Nubes in Guatamela.
Mary also serves on the board of the Committee on Sustainability Assessment.
She received her bachelor’s degree from the New School for Social Research and her Master’s from Beacon College.
Deidra Wager
Director
President of DJW LLC, founded the company in 2006, which provides senior-level advice on retail replication and strategy. Prior to this venture, Deidra was a senior operations executive at Starbucks Coffee Company from 1992 – 2006. She has also held senior-level positions at Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. She is majority owner of Sakura Ridge, organic farm and bed and breakfast in Hood River, Oregon.
Deidra is a major contributor and member of the Board of Directors of The Lacewing Foundation. She is also on the boards of CARE USA, the Pacific Northwest Ballet and the Women’s Leadership Board of the Harvard Kennedy School. She currently is a member of the Governing Council of IFMR Trust, based in Chennai, India.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Minnesota and attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
Wanda Herndon
Director
Wanda J. Herndon is a recognized expert in the field of public relations and corporate communications. She was the first senior vice president of global communications for Starbucks Coffee Company from 1995 to 2006. Her vision resulted in the creation of Starbucks world class, internationally recognized corporate communications department. During her 10-year tenure, she helped the company grow from 550 stores to over 15,000 stores spanning five continents.
After retiring from Starbucks, Wanda founded W Communications in 2006. As president and CEO, she leads the consulting firm that provides strategic communications counsel and execution. W Communications clients include Starbucks, Lululemon Athletica, Schultz Family Foundation, Michigan State University, Villanova University and Washington State University.
In 2008, Wanda returned to Starbucks executive team helping, once again, to transform the company alongside Howard Schultz. Wanda is a published poet, who writes poetry and essays inspired by cultural events. She is co-author of Writing While Masked: Reflections on 2020 and Beyond (Basalt Books, 2021 by the Board of Regents of Washington State University).
She was one of the original members of the Starbucks Foundation Board and is past chairperson of The 5th Avenue Theatre board in Seattle, Washington.
Wanda is also active with Alpha Kappa Alpha, Sorority, Inc., The Greater Seattle Chapter of The Links, Inc., Cancer Lifeline Advisory Committee, and several other community organizations.
Wanda earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Journalism as well as an honorary doctor of Humanities from Michigan State University.
Lynn Behar
PhD, MSW
Lynn Behar, PhD, MSW, is a oncology social worker with 33 years of clinical experience, has been faculty at University of Washington School of Social Work, and is now semi-retired. In 2005, she developed a program for master’s level students focused on oncology and palliative care work. There are now 95 graduates of this program, named after Lynn’s mother. She also endowed a professorship and created a research arm of the program which has now become the new UW SSW Center for Integrative Oncology and Palliative Care Social Work, a first in the country. She is also the co-chair of the UW SSW Campaign Leadership Committee. In 2015, she and two other Oncology Social Workers published the first Handbook of Oncology Social Work through Oxford Press. Passion for people who fall through the cracks financially while having cancer treatment, Lynn started Patient Assistance Fund at Cancer Lifeline, a Seattle, WA, psychosocial program for people living with cancer. She is the Chair of the Advisory Board of Cancer Lifeline. Lynn and her husband, Howard, became concerned about undocumented students being able to get further education beyond high school, so they created Semillas de Esperanza and now have 12 students in colleges and universities in Washington and Oregon. Her personal goals are to provide support in health and women’s issues around the world, so Lacewing Foundation was the perfect match.
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