SMATCH US Board of Directors

 Mary Ann Allin, Member at Large, is President of Swashbuckler Enterprises, Inc., an arts consultancy based in Washington, DC with an office and charitable foundation in St. Petersburg, Russia  She is the founder of the Faberge Arts Foundation (Washington and St. Petersburg) and has organized traveling exhibitions, documentary films, books and website projects on various topics in the field of culture and the arts.  She received an honors degree in political science and Russian language from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with graduate work in education, and subsequently held positions at the White House, Treasury Department and American Enterprise Institute.


Luigi De Luca, Member at Large, is President of the Italian Cultural Society of Washington, DC, an NIH science researcher and student of the classics. He holds a doctoral degree in biochemistry from the University of Pavia, a Classics MA (specializing in Latin) from the University of Maryland and is enrolled in a Ph.D program (Greek) at the Catholic University of America. He has taught Nutritional Biochemistry at MIT and, in addition to teaching Latin in middle school, currently teaches two Nutritional Biochemistry graduate courses at Johns Hopkins. His 30-plus years at NIH focused on the nutritional requirements of normal cells, investigating how cancer cells can develop in various organs and how they may be inhibited from growing by essential nutrients.



Joel Ehrman, Member at Large, is a Senior Sales Director at ARINC Inc, the world's largest aviation communications and navigation company.  He has over 13 years of international sales experience working with airlines and the business aviation community.  He holds a degree in gemology from the Federal University of Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais, Brazil) and a degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He has special interest in the history of Imperial Rome.  Joel speaks French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Thai.


Lucy Hamachek, Member at Large and our Development Chair, is a graduate of Georgetown University in French and economics and pursued graduate studies in economics at the Universite' de Strasbourg as a Fulbright scholar. She served as an economist for Congress' Joint Economic Committee and in various capacities in the US Department of Commerce, including Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy from 1977-1980. She is a student of Italian, having pursued studies both in Italy and the US. She has served on the boards of the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) and the Italian Cultural Society of Washington, DC. She is a volunteer teacher of English to adult immigrants. She speaks French and Italian.

Anna Lawton, Member at Large, holds a PhD in Russian Language and Literature from UCLA and a Doctorate in Languages and Institutions of Eastern Europe from Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples, Italy.  She has been an Associate Professor of Russian studies at Purdue University and has taught courses in film studies and visual culture at Georgetown University for 15 years.  She has published numerous articles and books on Russian/Soviet film and has served on the National Gallery of Art’s Film Advisory Board.  She is Managing Editor of the World Bank magazine Development OUTREACH and is the Publisher of the independent press, New Academia Publishing.  She has lived in Italy and Russia and speaks Italian, Russian and French.

Deborah McDonald, Member at Large, works in the US Secretary of State's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization.  She began working for State at the American Embassy, Rome, where she served as Community Liaison Officer and rover secretary, and worked in the Office of Caucasus and Central Asian Affairs after returning to Washington.  She has taught Spanish in Baltimore County and City Public Schools and English as a Second Language in Washington, DC, Texas and Louisiana.  She holds degrees in Spanish Education (BA) and Teaching English as a Second Language (MS) from the State University of New York at Albany.  She speaks Spanish and Italian.

Dian Olson, Member at Large, has a BA in psychology from Lewis and Clark College and an MA in psychology from North Carolina State University.  The wife of a US Foreign Service Officer, she has lived 15 years abroad in India, Austria, Tunisia and Panama.  She served as a consular officer and community liaison officer at three embassies and, in the US, has been a mental health and substance abuse counselor.  She speaks Persian, French and Spanish.

  Tom Wukitsch, Member at Large and Webmaster, spent the first 7 of his 35 years of US Government service in the Navy and the rest as a State Department Foreign Service Officer, working principally in Middle East and European assignments.  Between military and Foreign Service employment he designed computers for a major US communications company and taught ancient history.  He has  BA (History/Archeology -- Loyola-Chicago) and MA (Strategic Asset Management -- JMIC, Washington DC) degrees.  He now teaches Ancient History and Archeology at the Arlington Learning in Retirement Institute (George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia).  (Web site:  http://www.mmdtkw.org/ALRItkwPages.html.)  He speaks Arabic and Italian  and has worked in German, ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and other classical languages. 

-----------------------------------------------------------



Some members of the SMATCH Board of Directors at an April, 2006 meeting