March is Women’s History Month and a time to pause, look back, and recognize the women whose vision, persistence, and courage shaped the world we inhabit today. For Philadelphia Foundation, this moment carries particular meaning. Over our more than 100 years of civic life in Greater Philadelphia, we have had the extraordinary privilege of working alongside, learning from, and being led by women who did not simply participate in this region’s story, they wrote it.

The ten women we are honoring this month span eras, disciplines, and generations. Some held elected office; others built institutions from scratch. Some used the law, some used art, some used data. What they share is an uncompromising commitment to something larger than themselves and a belief that Philadelphia was worth fighting for.

Profiles are listed in alphabetical order by last name.

Kate Allison
Kate Allison built her career on the conviction that clear thinking, strategic communication, and institutional trust are the foundation of everything that works. As the founder and 20-year CEO of Karma Agency, a top strategic communications and branding firm headquartered in Philadelphia, she has earned a reputation as the kind of advisor that executives call when the stakes are highest. Her career spans close to four decades, including her tenure as Managing Director of the Philadelphia office of GolinHarris and as Vice President of Public Affairs for Fidelity Bank, as well as an early chapter as a legislative assistant in the Washington office of then-U.S. Representative Al Gore, Jr. Active in civic life across the region, she has served on the boards of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and the Academy of Music, and was a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at her alma mater, Villanova University. Her relationship with Philadelphia Foundation has been both long and consequential. She first joined the Board of Managers in 2010, and in 2019 led the Second Century Committee, which guided the Foundation’s year-long community engagement initiative marking its 100th anniversary and launching its next century of service. She returned to the board in 2020 and served as Chair through 2023, a period that included some of the most demanding civic work the region has seen, and during which she helped guide the Foundation’s leadership with the same clarity of purpose that has defined her career.

Edna W. Andrade (1917–2008)
Philadelphia has always been a city of artists, but few shaped its visual landscape as quietly and as lastingly as Edna W. Andrade. Born on January 25, 1917, in Portsmouth, Virginia, Andrade spent three decades teaching at the Philadelphia College of Art where she mentored generations of artists who went on to define the region’s creative community. As a painter, she was a pioneering figure in the Op Art movement of the 1960s, producing precisely constructed geometric canvases that seem to shift and vibrate before the viewer’s eyes. Her work earned a place in major collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. At Philadelphia Foundation, Andrade’s impact reaches beyond her lifetime. Through her estate, she established an endowed fund at Philadelphia Foundation dedicated to supporting visual fine artists in Greater Philadelphia. That fund continues to award grants today, ensuring that her commitment to Philadelphia’s artists endures as both a civic and a creative legacy.

Ernesta Drinker Ballard (1920–2005)
Ernesta Drinker Ballard is a study in determination. Born on May 13, 1920, she aspired to pursue law as a career but her father discouraged her from attending college, expecting her to become a wife and mother instead. She educated herself in horticulture, graduating from the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women in 1954 and building a successful greenhouse business before stepping into civic life in ways that permanently transformed Philadelphia. As Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society from 1963 to 1981, she grew the Philadelphia Flower Show into the largest indoor flower show in the United States. With the proceeds, she launched Philadelphia Green, one of the nation’s largest urban community gardening programs, which converted trash-filled vacant lots across the city into vegetable gardens and neighborhood parks. But her ambitions were never limited to horticulture. Ballard served on the Philadelphia Foundation Board of Managers from 1984-94, including as Chairwoman from 1991-94, and was among the founders of the National Organization for Women, co-founder of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, founder of the Philadelphia chapter of NOW, and co-founder of WOMEN’s WAY, the first and largest women’s funding coalition in the country. In 1993, she established the Ernesta D. Ballard Endowment Fund to provide support for WOMEN’s WAY through Philadelphia Foundation.

Carrolle Perry Devonish (1938–2023)
Carrolle Perry Devonish lived at a particular moment in American philanthropy when the question of who gets to decide where resources flow was, at long last, being contested. Perry Devonish devoted more than four decades to ensuring that philanthropy served as a vehicle for social justice, not simply a mechanism for sustaining existing power structures. At Philadelphia Foundation, she made history twice over: as the institution’s fourth Executive Director from 1991 to 1999, she was both the first woman and the first Black person to hold the role. Under her leadership, Philadelphia Foundation earned national recognition as one of the most diverse and progressive community grantmakers in the country. She championed grassroots leaders and neighborhood organizations, commissioned groundbreaking research on the region’s shifting demographics that secured a major Ford Foundation grant, and assumed stewardship of a 200-year-old Benjamin Franklin bequest that continues to fund students in the trades and applied sciences today. After Philadelphia, she carried these lessons far beyond the region, founding the Anguilla Community Foundation, the first charitable foundation established in that territory. The legacy she left at Philadelphia Foundation and in the many lives that she touched is a lesson that philanthropy is not just about money, but about values, relationships, and impact.

Dr. Carmen Febo San Miguel
Dr. Carmen Febo San Miguel arrived in Philadelphia in 1974 to complete her residency in family medicine at Hahnemann Hospital and Medical Center, intending a career in healthcare. She found both that career and a cause. Born in Ciales, Puerto Rico, and trained at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, she encountered in North Philadelphia a community working to preserve its cultural identity against enormous economic and demographic pressure, and she became part of the effort to anchor it. She grew involved with Taller Puertorriqueño, first as a volunteer, then as board chair from 1984 to 1999, and ultimately as Executive Director from 1999 to 2021, leading the organization for more than two decades through a period of sustained and remarkable growth. Under her leadership, Taller became Pennsylvania’s largest Latino arts and cultural organization, completing construction of the $11.5 million El Corazón Cultural Center in 2016 and expanding its youth arts programming. Dr. Febo San Miguel served on the Philadelphia Foundation Board of Managers from 1988-97, and her longstanding relationship with the institution is honored through the Carmen Febo San Miguel Fund at Taller Puertorriqueño, a philanthropic legacy she helped create to ensure that Taller’s work endures for generations to come.

Nessa Forman (1943–2011)
Every city has a story it tells about itself and Nessa Forman was one of those people who told the story for Philadelphians. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 and a master’s in art history there in 1968. She began her career at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin as a features copy editor before rising to Arts and Leisure Editor — a role she held until the paper closed in January 1982. She then joined WHYY in February 1983, where she served for 25 years as Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs. While At WHYY, she developed Civic Space, WHYY’s community partnerships program. Forman was also a co-author of Woofs to the Wise, with proceeds from the book directed to Philadelphia Foundation for arts education for middle school children. She was a passionate advocate for arts education and served as a consultant to Philadelphia Foundation and other nonprofits after her retirement. Through her estate, she established the Nessa Forman, David Forman, Eleanor and Solomon Forman Family Fund at Philadelphia Foundation, which continues to award annual grants to Greater Philadelphia nonprofits serving young people ages 11 to 18 through arts education programs. The fund is, in every sense, a reflection of everything she believed in.

Evelyn (Evie) McNiff
Evie McNiff co-founded Children’s Scholarship Fund Philadelphia (CSFP) in 2001, alongside fellow education advocate Ina Lipman, driven by a conviction that every child deserves access to a quality education, regardless of zip code or family income. Since its founding 25 years ago, CSFP has awarded more than 30,000 K-8th grade scholarships to underserved children across the city. McNiff was one of the founders of Elevate215 (formerly the Philadelphia School Partnership), an organization working to improve student outcomes across public, public charter and private schools. She currently serves on the Philadelphia Foundation Board of Managers, bringing to that role the same commitment to expanding educational access for children across the region that has defined her civic life.

Estelle Richman
Estelle Richman is the kind of public servant cities rely on when the problems are hardest, and she has answered that call more than once. Over a four-decade career, she held leadership roles at every level of government: the first woman to serve as Managing Director of the City of Philadelphia; Commissioner of Public Health for the City of Philadelphia; Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare under Governor Ed Rendell, where she worked to integrate services and expand managed care; and Chief Operating Officer and Acting Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama. In 2022, Philadelphia Foundation co-founded the Civic Coalition to Save Lives, a cross-sector collaboration to address gun violence in Philadelphia, and Richman stepped forward to serve as its inaugural Executive Director. In 2024, Richman received the Philadelphia Award, the region’s most prestigious civic honor, in recognition of this work. Philadelphia Foundation was proud to stand beside her in this effort.

Sharmain Matlock-Turner
Sharmain Matlock-Turner has spent her career building the kind of civic infrastructure that holds a region together, doing so with uncommon depth and endurance. Since 1999, she has served as the first woman CEO of the Urban Affairs Coalition, leading an organization dedicated to civic and nonprofit leadership, fiscal sponsorship, and workforce development. UAC supports dozens of partner organizations and connects employers with skilled talent from communities too often overlooked. She is also a co-founder of the Civic Coalition to Save Lives, the cross-sector collaborative launched in 2021 with support from the Philadelphia Foundation to drive evidence-based gun violence reduction in Philadelphia. In 2023, she received the Philadelphia Award in recognition of that work. Matlock-Turner serves on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and on the Philadelphia Foundation’s Board of Managers, bringing to both roles the same community-centered, data-driven leadership that has defined her career.

Lynn Hardy Yeakel (1941–2022)
Lynn Hardy Yeakel’s life was one of continuous institution-building, beginning in 1976, when she was one of six co-founders of WOMEN’s WAY, the first women’s funding federation in the nation. She served as its CEO from 1980 to 1992, growing it into the largest women’s fundraising coalition in the country. In 1992, galvanized by the treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, she left WOMEN’s WAY to run for U.S. Senate against incumbent Arlen Specter, winning a five-way Democratic primary and coming within three percentage points of defeating him in what became known nationally as the Year of the Woman. She later served as Mid-Atlantic Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Clinton, and then spent nearly two decades at Drexel University College of Medicine leading the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership, where she held the Betty A. Cohen Chair in Women’s Health. There, she created the Woman One Award and Scholarship Fund at Philadelphia Foundation, which has raised significant funds and provided four-year medical school tuition scholarships to underrepresented women in medicine. She was a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania and a Lucretia Mott Award honoree. The Lynn Hardy Yeakel Legacy Fund, established at Philadelphia Foundation, carries her commitment to women’s equality forward as a permanent philanthropic resource for Greater Philadelphia. Her work will outlast her, exactly as she intended.

Honoring the Work by Continuing It

The women honored here built institutions that still stand, programs that still run, and funds that still give. They changed laws, shifted budgets, opened doors, and refused to close them behind them. Some of them did this work alongside Philadelphia Foundation; others helped lead it. All of them understood something we hold close at this institution: that lasting change requires sustained commitment, and that the work of a generation is not finished until the next generation has the tools to carry it forward.

As we mark Women’s History Month, we celebrate these ten leaders not only for what they accomplished and in some cases are still accomplishing, but for how they thought about the future and for trusting that the institutions and communities they cared for would be worth the investment. Philadelphia Foundation is grateful to have been, in so many ways, part of that investment.

To learn more about the funds and legacies these women established at Philadelphia Foundation, or to create your own philanthropic legacy in Greater Philadelphia, visit philafound.org.