History

“Maryland is blessed to have highly qualified women leaders, but none more so than Nancy Grasmick,” says Marlene Young, vice president of Great Southern Enterprises. “Nancy has brought about accountability programs that have resulted in our public school systems being ranked number one in the nation for the past two years.”

After receiving a master’s degree in deaf education from D.C.’s Gallaudet University (and, later, a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University), Grasmick began teaching in Baltimore. In 2005, she was appointed to the National Academy of Sciences committee, which produced “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” the landmark report on U.S. economic competitiveness.

Grasmick’s many awards and citations include the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education and the National PTA Life Achievement Award. Maryland’s education headquarters was renamed in her honor. And, in 2007, Loyola College awarded her its President’s Medal.

“There is no issue today more important than the quality of our public schools,” says Grasmick. “Maryland students and parents deserve to have a great school in every neighborhood; taxpayers must know that their investment in education is paying off.”

She adds, “Maryland public schools have been rated the best in the nation for two years running, but I’m not focused on past accolades. I’m focusing on the future and moving our schools and students forward. I appreciate this honor and accept it on behalf of Maryland public schools’ students, teachers, and administrators.”

Jill Moss Greenberg

Since her teens, Jill Moss Greenberg has been instrumental in resolving social injustices and educational inequities.

The new executive director of the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center (see sidebar), the 40-year Maryland resident still works to improve communities and enable children and women of the future while honoring their history and present.

Previously, Greenberg represented Prince George's County on the Maryland State Commission for Women and helped create that county’s Commission for Women. She served on the original finance committee of the National Women’s Political Caucus, cofounded Maryland and Prince George’s County’s Women’s Political caucuses, initiated the first task forces to address childcare and aging, and participated in the establishment of the Task Force on Women with Disabilities.

She also served on the Maryland Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and helped pass the Maryland Equal Rights Amendment, Americans with Disabilities Act, and Title IX, a federal law requiring schools that receive federal funds to prohibit gender discrimination.

Greenberg served as the Maryland State Department of Education’s Race Equity Specialist, where she instituted the Black History at Your Doorstep Project. And, as director of multicultural education at the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, she developed programs focused on race and gender equity.

To this day, Greenberg’s passion remains focused on “decreasing discrimination and conflict and bringing people together to develop solutions through understanding and mutual respect.”

Her unflagging determination to help women of diverse races, ages, and creeds led her to help found the Women’s Center and Referral Service and the Women's Action Coalition of Prince George's County, along with numerous other programs.

“The tenacity with which Jill has moved projects to reality is heartwarming,” says fellow honoree Carmen Delgado Votaw. “She is significant to our state’s landscape because of the ways that her ideas have come to fruition and, in the case of the Heritage Center, will become a model for other states.”

Rebecca Alban Hoffberger

The visionary behind the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) is a former psychiatric nurse who raised $7 million in six years to open her “un-museum” in Federal Hill.

Designated by Congress as America's national museum for self-taught artists, the AVAM holds a permanent collection of 4,000 pieces. Guest curators, not paid staff, work with Hoffberger to create themed exhibitions with titles personal to the creators, like “All Faiths Beautiful.”