Hudson River Museum Elects Three New Members to its Board of Trustees
YONKERS, NY, June 26, 2020 — The Hudson River Museum is pleased to announce the election of three new board members. Dr. Joseph Jacobs, Yolanda F. Johnson, and Christina O’Neill were all unanimously voted to the Museum’s Board of Trustees at the Annual Meeting on June 18, 2020 and each will serve a three-year term. The new trustees bring with them a wealth of experience in the fields of health care, fundraising, and financial management, and a strong commitment to community:
Joseph Jacobs, M.D., M.B.A., served as Director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. He has authored and/or contributed to eight books including Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology, Medical Futility, and The Evaluation of Life Sustaining Interventions and Community-Oriented Primary Care: From Principles to Practice.
Dr. Jacobs is a member of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe and a board member of the Global Academy Genome Institute. His past board appointments include terms as President of The Association of American Indian Physicians, as well as a Board member of the National Medical Fellowships, Inc., and the First Nations Development Institute. He is the author of Mohawks on the Nile: Journey of the Warrior Spirit (Friesen Press, 2013). Dr. Jacobs received his medical degree from Yale University and obtained his MBA at the Wharton School of Business.
Yolanda F. Johnson is the President of YFJ Consulting, LLC, with more than two decades of experience in the non-profit sector and twelve of those years in leadership positions. She has also had an extensive career as a performing artist, composer, producer, and educator. Johnson has performed nationally and internationally in several musical venues including opera, concert, oratorio and sacred music. She is an active recitalist/lecturer on several musical subjects, specifically spirituals as related to the Underground Railroad and the works of women composers. Yolanda Johnson has recorded an album of Spirituals, Feel the Spirit! and co-created Music She Wrote, a celebration of women composers, with colleagues Dr. Brooke Bryant and Michael Eisenberg. She also actively composes new musical works. She made her New York City debut as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and has performed in many venues and with various presenters across the country.
Johnson has used her background as a performer to become a sought-after fundraising expert, having provided fundraising strategy that raised more than $75 million for non-profit organizations. Johnson has launched several new fundraising and marketing initiatives; created streams of earned income and special events, including creative strategies for partnerships and sponsorships; and has secured foundation, corporation and government funding and cultivated a diverse major gifts portfolio. She completed her B.A. in voice performance at the University of Tulsa and an M.A. in Arts Management at the University of Akron.
Christina O’Neill is a Wealth Advisor at Wells Fargo Private Bank in New York City. O’Neill started her career in the insurance industry, where she held various roles from Account Executive to Sales Producer. As a licensed agent with the Travelers Insurance Company, she focused on implanting their Property and Casualty Auto-Deduct program as an employee benefit to companies in the Northeast region.
In 2001 O’Neill joined Citigroup, where she managed multiple retail branch offices, achieving awards in sales growth and acquisition. Specializing in high net worth clients, O’Neill also worked as a Relationship Manager with Citi Personal Wealth Management, where she continued to successfully provide a platform to meet clients’ financial needs through partnership collaboration and client discovery.
O’Neill is a graduate of the Wharton School for Business Professionals program and she received a B.A. from Pace University. She enjoys and is passionate about serving her community by volunteering for various organizations including Habitat for Humanity and The Briarcliff SPCA.
“I am delighted to welcome Dr. Joseph Jacobs, Yolanda F. Johnson, and Christina O’Neill to the Board of the Hudson River Museum,” stated Tom D’Auria, Chair of the HRM Board of Trustees. “Their impressive professional credentials, varied expertise, and unique perspectives will contribute greatly to the vitality of the Hudson River Museum. I look forward to working with them, along with my fellow trustees, in the years to come.”
Press contact:
Jen McCaffery
jmccaffery@hrm.org
(914) 963-4550 x240
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About the Hudson River Museum
The Hudson River Museum is a preeminent cultural institution in Westchester County and the New York metropolitan area. Situated on the banks of the Hudson River in Yonkers, New York, the HRM is a place where diverse communities come together and experience the power of art, science, and history.
The Museum offers engaging experiences for every age and interest, with an ever-growing collection of American art; dynamic exhibitions that range from notable nineteenth-century paintings to contemporary art installations; Glenview, an 1877 house on the National Register of Historic Places; a state-of-the-art Planetarium; an environmental teaching gallery, Hudson Riverama; and an outdoor Amphitheater. Accredited by the American Association of Museums (AAM), the Museum is dedicated to collecting, preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting these multidisciplinary offerings, which are complemented by an array of public programs that encourage creative expression, collaboration, and artistic and scientific discovery.
The Hudson River Museum’s general operations are supported in part by Westchester County, the City of Yonkers, the Yonkers Board of Education, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Westchester Delegation of the New York State Assembly and Senate.
