Dear Wellesley College Alumnae:

I am honored to be writing you as the new president of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association. As the daughter of Katherine Barrett Murphy ’53 and the mother of Katie Johnson ’03, Wellesley has been a critical part of my life.

I am embarking on this role just as Missy Siner Shea ’89 is getting settled as WCAA’s new executive director. This is challenging given that we are new to our positions, but also exciting because it allows us to look at WCAA’s functions with fresh eyes. We are blessed by the fact that our previous executive director, Susan Challenger ’76, and my predecessor, Karen Williamson ’69, have already built a tremendously strong organization.

As Missy and I identify our strategic initiatives, we will keep WCAA’s mission at the forefront: The mission of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association is to support the institutional priorities of Wellesley College by connecting alumnae to the College and to each other.

We have many opportunities. Wellesley’s alumnae network can be enormously valuable to the students. We have been longstanding partners with Admissions, interviewing applicants and going to college fairs, but both offices are eager to explore new ways to make this partnership more robust. And, while we are thrilled to have implemented our new alumnae online community, we are only in the early phases of discovering how we can fully leverage this new technology to better connect alumnae to each other and to the College. This, coupled with the tremendously successful launch of the online version of Wellesley magazine last fall, will enable WCAA to offer alumnae connections in ways that are difficult for many of us to imagine.

In other words, there are many exciting possibilities before us. I look forward to working with the WCAA board and staff and you to capture them and make the Wellesley alumnae community even stronger than it already is.

All my best,

Georgia Murphy Johnson ’75, president