Phillips Academy Names Five New Trustees

New members begin July 1.

June 30, 2009 — Oscar L. Tang ’56, president of the Phillips Academy Board of Trustees, announced that five alumni have been named to the board that oversees the 231-year-old institution. Chien Lee ’71, Tammy Snyder Murphy ’83, and Gary Lee ’74 were named charter trustees, each taking on two eight-year terms. Susan Urie Donahue ’73 and Mary-Ann Somers ’82 were elected alumni trustees for four-year terms. Donahue is succeeding Peter Hetzler MD ’72 as president of Alumni Council.  Mary-Ann Somers is succeeding Alfred A. Blum Jr. ’62 as chair of the Annual Giving Board. The five new trustees will begin their terms on July 1.

Chien Lee received a BS degree, an MS degree, and an MBA degree from Stanford University. A private investor based in Hong Kong, Lee works with not-for-profit organizations and serves as a non-executive director of various companies, including the publicly listed Swire Pacific Limited, Television Broadcasts Limited, and Hysan Development Company Limited. He has been a long-time supporter of St. Paul’s Co-educational College in Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong and currently serves on their respective councils, executive committees and finance committees. At Stanford, he has served on the board of trustees, the advisory council of the Graduate School of Business, and the board of the Stanford Alumni Association, and is currently on the Advisory Council of the Stanford University School of Education, and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Lee also has been active with Outward Bound. He is a former chair of Outward Bound Hong Kong and is currently vice chair of Outward Bound International and chair of the Outward Bound Center for Peacebuilding. He is also a trustee of The Asia Foundation.

Tammy Snyder Murphy, a native of Virginia, received a BA degree from the University of Virginia. Murphy worked in finance for many years, principally with Goldman Sachs in the United States and Investcorp in Europe. She spent 10 years living overseas in London, Frankfurt, and Hong Kong, and has traveled extensively throughout the world. She currently serves as chair for the advisory council of 2NDFLOOR (a youth hotline she cofounded in New Jersey), secretary of the Climate Protection Action Fund (an organization founded by Al Gore), and cochair of Andover’s Financial Aid Task Force. She is also a trustee of the following organizations: Monmouth Medical Center, Monmouth Medical Center Foundation, Rumson Country Day School, and The College Foundation of University of Virginia. Previously, she served as trustee for Monmouth Conservation Foundation and Count Basie Theatre. Murphy lives in New Jersey and Italy with her husband Phillip and their four children.

A native of Tulsa, Okla., Gary Lee earned a BA degree from Amherst College. He has served as a staff writer for Time magazine, a news reporter for the Washington Post, and more recently as the Post travel writer for nearly a decade. He received the Lowell Thomas Award for his coverage of September 11. In 2007 he left the newspaper to open a Peruvian restaurant in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, D.C. He also is co-owner of a bed and breakfast in Arequipa, Peru. Lee continues to write as a freelancer and is a member of the Ted Scripps Fellowships Advisory Board at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado. At Andover, Lee currently is class co-agent and previously was the president of the regional association, an Alumni Council member, and an alumni trustee. He received Andover’s Distinguished Service Award from Andover in 1998. Lee resides in Washington, D.C.

In 1977, Susan Urie Donahue earned a BS degree from the Whittemore School of Business at the University of New Hampshire. Susan is a nonprofit consultant for Cahners and Donahue Associates, a company she cofounded that provides strategic advice and counsel in the areas of board governance, strategy, operations, and development. Prior to her work at Cahners and Donahue, Susan worked in the hospitality industry as a director of sales and marketing and as an assistant general manager for several hotel chains. She was also an event-planning consultant for BankBoston and FleetBoston Financial. Donahue is committed to supporting numerous community organizations. She currently serves as board chair of The Food Project and governance committee chair and vice-president of Andover’s Alumni Council. She has served as president of both the Abbot Academy Association and the Belmont Day School board of trustees. She has held a variety of leadership roles at the Patriots’ Trail Girl Scout Council, Belmont Day School, Buckingham Browne & Nichols School.  At Andover, she has held a variety of positions including chair of the committee on trustees, development chair, capital campaign chair, and leadership gifts committee.

Mary-Ann Somers earned a BA degree from Connecticut College and an MBA degree from the Tuck School, Dartmouth College. She has spent more than 27 years as a marketing, strategy and general management executive in the consumer products and healthcare industries. Currently, she is vice president with the Coca-Cola Company in the Venturing and Emerging Brands, focusing on building new mega brands through innovation, incubation, importation and investment. Prior to joining Coca-Cola, she led global category and domestic marketing in New York City and Istanbul, Turkey, for Colgate-Palmolive. In addition, she has held various leadership positions at Unilever, Merck, and General Mills, as well as being a founding member of an Internet health wellness start-up. She has lived in New York City most of her adult life  and has recently relocated to Atlanta to join the Coca-Cola Company. She is one of four siblings and two cousins who have graduated from PA; her niece just completed her junior year. Somers is head agent of the Class of 1982 and cochair of the Annual Giving Board