2009 distinguished daughters of pennsylvania

The Pennsylvania Commission for Women Recognizes the
2009 Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania

In 1949 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania began the tradition of inviting the Governor to designate several women each year as Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania.  Women recognized as Distinguished Daughters are those whose achievements on a national and statewide scale have been so outstanding that they have brought honor and respect to the commonwealth. 

This year’s Distinguished Daughters are;

• Judith Joy Ross, of Hazelton, PA is an internationally exhibited photographer known for her penetrating portraits of persons from all walks of life.  Her most famous work to date is a collection of portraits, called “Portraits of the Hazleton Public Schools. The volume focuses on one of Ross’s most personal series--67 portraits of students at public schools from her hometown of Hazleton. Between 1992 and 1994, Ross returned to the schools of her youth as a way of revisiting the experience of growing up. Shot with an 8 x 10-inch view camera, the photographs in Portraits are unpretentious and revealing in their psychological insight. They reveal the universally wonderful and terrifying rite of passage of going to school.

• Judith Shapiro of Rosemont, PA and New York City is a distinguished scholar and academician.  Shapiro is a cultural anthropologist who served as President of Barnard College from 1994 to 2008.  Prior to that, she was on the faculty of the University of Chicago and Bryn Mawr, where she became the college’s chief academic officer.  She has been President of the American Ethnological Society and the Philadelphia Anthropological Society, and is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

• Juliet Goodfriend of Bryn Mawr, PA is the retired founder and President of Strategic Marketing Corporation, a global custom marketing research and consulting firm to the pharmaceutical industry.  She created, and is president of Bryn Mawr Film Institute, the restored historic movie theater and film education center which serves 6000 members and provides a year-round program of movies and film courses for students of all ages. Her experience inspired her to help create NELI, the nonprofit executive leadership program at Bryn Mawr College.  Goodfriend continues to address national audiences and undergraduates around the country as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow.

• Veronica (Ronne) Froman, born in Uniontown, PA, currently resides in San Diego, CA.  A graduate of Seton Hill University, she served in the United States Navy for 31 years and was in charge of naval bases and stations around the world.  Froman retired from the Navy in 2001 with the rank of Rear Admiral.  After retirement, Froman was instrumental in restoring confidence in the floundering local chapter of the American Red Cross after the 2003 southern California wildfires.  She served as chief of business operations for the San Diego Unified School District and in 2005 became the first chief operating officer for the city of San Diego. In 2007 she accepted another leadership position as senior vice president for the energy group of General Atomics. 

• Eva Tansky Blum of Pittsburgh, is the Senior Vice President, Director of Community affairs, and chair and President of the PNC foundation, where she makes a significant impact improving the lives of children, their families, and ultimately, their communities.  Blum directs the company’s philanthropic programs, including PNC Grow Up Great, a ten-year, $100 million program to support quality early childhood education.  Blum supports her alma mater, University of Pittsburgh, by serving on the Executive and Institutional Advancement Committees of the Board of Trustees, co-chairs, the University’s $2 billion capital campaign and was named Distinguished Alumna in 2007 and Distinguished Law Alumna in 2008.

• Toi Derricotte of Pittsburgh, is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh, and has published four books of poems, including Tender, winner of the prestigious Paterson Poetry Prize and a memoir, The Black Notebooks, which received The Anisfield-Wolf Award and was a New York Times notable book of the year.  She has won major awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, Pushcart Prizes, the Poetry Society of America and the University of Pittsburgh.  Toi is co-founder and director of Cave Canem, committed to the discovery and cultivation of new voices in African American poetry. 

• Jacqueline Collins Morby, of Pittsburgh is an innovator in the worlds of business and philanthropy. In 1988 Morby moved to Pittsburgh to open an office for TA Associates, a Boston-based private equity firm.  In 2004 Morby co-founded the Cure Alzheimer's Fund which garnered Time Magazine and CNN’s designation in 2008 as one of the "Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs" in the world for its Alzheimer’s Genome Project.  A world traveler, Jacqui chairs the board of Population Action International.  

• C. Vivian Stringer, of Princeton, NJ learned a valuable lesson from her parents growing up in northwestern Pennsylvania: “Work hard, don’t look for excuses - you can achieve anything.” Stringer is the first coach to take three schools to the NCAA Final Four, the historically black college Cheyney State in 1982, University of Iowa in 1993 and the Rutgers University’s Scarlet Knights twice, totaling more than 800 victories.   Stringer and the 2007 Rutgers squad captured the nation’s respect when faced with the disparaging comments of a radio “shock jock”. Stringer was inducted into the coveted Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on September 11, 2009.