BOARD OF TRUSTEES

TransCultural Exchange’s Board of Trustees provide a variety of expertise, multiple perspectives and oversight to ensure the long-term viability of TransCultural Exchange.

Yemi Alalade is an Invention Educator, a Consultant at Lemelson-MIT (Cambridge, Massachusetts), an accidental artist and founder of ANIKE. Her organization focuses on exploring nature-inspired indigenous knowledge in Africa and promoting representation in invention education. ANIKE’s learning platform/NatureLab enlightens and inspires innovative thinking among youth by charting the evolution of Africa’s indigenous artistic practices in modern technology and disseminating the knowledge. NatureLab’s after-school programs in Cambridge are sponsored by Lemelson-MIT. Yemi completed her undergraduate studies in Economics from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and graduate studies both in Counseling & Therapy (Saint Louis University) and later Museum Studies (Harvard Extension School). A collection of her initial accidental artwork “Orí-Ire: Rhymes, Rhythm & Reanimation” was exhibited at the YWCA Cambridge and featured in Harvard’s Visual & Environmental Studies Documentary highlighting Women at the YWCA in 2018. She enjoys sketching, traveling and documenting artistic practices/indigenous technology within the African diaspora and as an affiliate of the MIT OpenCourseWare Mirror Site Program in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Gordon L. Amgott,  Accountant. Gordon L. Amgott is a Certified Public Bookkeeper with an MBA from Babson College. For over 25 years, Amgott has been the Business Manager for The Country Club. In that capacity, he has helped transform their manual accounting system to a fully computerized one and overseen various national tournaments, improvements to the club’s property and computer systems conversions. In addition Amgott is the Treasurer of the Congregation Agudath Achim in Taunton, Massachusetts and runs his own accounting practice Gordon L. Amgott Financial Services, primarily providing tax preparation and bookkeeping services. He also is a member of the Massachusetts Association of Public Accountants, National Society of Accountants, National Association of Tax Professionals and Taunton Chamber of Commerce and American Association of Daily Money Managers.

Thaddeus Beal was formally educated at Yale College and Stanford Law School. He then practiced law in Boston, first as a criminal prosecutor and then as a corporate and securities lawyer for twelve years. He left active practice in 1985 when he withdrew as a senior partner of the Boston law firm, now Nixon, Peabody to attend The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has continued to work in the legal field in many pro bono capacities, including serving as a hearing officer in matters relating to lawyer misconduct; but he now devotes substantially all of his work life to the practice of art. He has been awarded three Massachusetts Council for the Arts Fellowships. His works are in many collections, including The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and he regularly shows in Boston, Connecticut and New York City. He has served on several charitable boards, and he is currently actively involved as a board member of Discovering Justice, a non-profit dedicated to educating public school students about notions of justice and community involvement, as well as TransCultural Exchange.

Eric Gunther is an artist / designer working at the intersection of technology, experience and well-being. Co-founder and Creative Director of the digital experience design firm SOSO, he envisions a world in which design and technology work hand in hand to bring us closer to ourselves, each other and the planet. With SOSO he has created commissions for clients including Google, IBM and Porsche, and exhibited work internationally. In his art practice, Eric brings together meditation and emotional work with sound and vibration to invent new experiences for the body, heart and mind. His multisensory installation, Seated Catalog of Feelings, brought joy to visitors at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Museum. He also co-directed End Love, a time-bending music video for OK Go, and composes music for dance and film.

Mags Harries is an artist and professor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University. She has also served on the board of numerous organizations, including Boston’s First Night, a yearly celebration of the arts on December 31st, and as a founding board member of Gloucester’s Manship Residency, helping fundraise to acquire the property for the program. In addition, she was one of the founders of Reclamation Artists, which gave artists opportunities to work in public spaces, and she chaired the Public Art Commission for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her own artworks have been exhibited across New England, nationally, and internationally. She has received numerous fellowships and residencies including The Bogliasco Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation (Directors guest), the Baer Art Center, and the American Academy in Rome, among others. Her awards include a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Sculpture/Installation, Marshall Cogan Visiting Artist Fellowship, Massachusetts Governor’s Design Award, NEA Design Excellence Award for Public Art in Transportation, A Grand Bostonian, and Bunting Institute Fellowship at Radcliffe College, Harvard University.

Masha Keryan is an Armenian born artist, living in Boston. Since her teenage years, she’s been involved in the Arevik Armenian Children’s Fund, a nonprofit charity focused on improving the quality of life of Armenian families and schools affected by the 1988 earthquake, and now the war. She also has been a part of various curatorial and programming projects, including at MassArt, a Hacking Arts MIT Media conference and various galleries. Her own work has been exhibited at numerous Boston galleries, often to raise funds for charities. Masha is passionate about bringing people together, art, traveling, cultural integrity and the full spectrum of human nature.

Jeff Plunkett is a former investment management executive. As global general counsel at Natixis Investment Managers, he led the legal function of this top-15 investment management company. Prior to Natixis, he was a corporate and securities law partner at Goodwin Procter, a leading international law firm.  Currently, he is the chairman of the Audit Committee of ALIPH (International Alliance for the Preservation of Heritage in conflict areas), a foundation established in Switzerland by nations and private donors.  He also serves on the board of the French-American Chamber of Commerce – New England, a non-profit that supports companies, entrepreneurs and individuals based in New England and France, and is a past member of the board of trustees of the French Cultural Center in Boston.  He received his A.B. from Dartmouth College and his J.D. from Cornell Law School.

Mary Sherman is an artist, curator and the director of TransCultural Exchange, which she founded in Chicago in 1989. She also teaches at Boston College and Northeastern University and, recently, served as the interim Associate Director of MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology. Additionally, for two decades, she worked as an art critic for such publications as The Chicago Sun-Times, The Boston Globe and ARTnews. She has received numerous grants and awards, including three Fulbright Specialist Grants (Taipei, Istanbul and Trondheim), and been an artist-in-residence at such institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cité Internationale des Arts and the Taipei Artist Village. Among the shows she’s curated, two received awards from the Northeast Chapter of the International Art Critics Association. Her own works, which push the definition of painting into the realm of space and sound, have been shown at numerous institutions, including Taipei’s Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing’s Central Conservatory, Montreal’s International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN) and New York’s Trans Hudson Gallery. 
Photo (©) Winfried Denk.

Rhonda Smith has been a small business manager for much of her working career. In that capacity, she served a large variety of enterprises organizing systems, workflow, and financial accounts. In addition, she has worked for many non-profits, helping several to develop into thriving entities. She studied art at Fordham University, the School of Museum of Fine Arts, and the Cooperativa Mosiacisti, Ravenna, graduating with a BA in Fine Arts from St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY. After many years as a painter, she now works in sculpture, focusing on place/displacement and celebrating the planet’s biomes. Currently, a member of the Kingston Gallery in Boston, MA and the international Pell Lucy Collective, her work has been shown nationally and internationally and is held in many private and corporate collections.

Wen-hao Tien is an artist, teacher and curator who bridges communities across divergent fields. Along with being one of the founding members of the exhibition program at Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies in 2006, she has curated shows and organized interdisciplinary symposiums in universities and unconventional contemporary art spaces. She teaches Chinese calligraphy and conceptual art at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, Boston University, and Northeastern University.  Additionally, as an East Cambridge resident, she lobbied for the establishment of The Foundry in Cambridge, MA, and is an active member there, contributing to its workshops and creative network. Her public art project, In Other Eyes, at The Foundry, is an ongoing project that forges nuances in Multi-culture Cambridge. As the 2020 Artist-in-Residence at Boston’s Pao Art Center, she produced a body of work during a pivotal time in the Asian American civic movements in Boston’s Chinatown. Her art is exhibited frequently in the Northeast and presented at the Boston Sculptors Gallery. Her project, Weed Out, is featured in a new book, Crossing Boundaries & Confounding Identity: Chinese Women in Literature, Art, and Film, SUNY Press 2023.