Staff & Board of Salt Bay Chamberfest
Wilhelmina Smith, Founder, Artistic & Executive Director
Miriam Fogel, General Manager
Board of Directors
Paul Weislogel, President
Diana Morris, Vice President
Elizabeth Bishop, Treasurer
Gail Fels
Jean Appleby Johnson
Elizabeth Lubetkin Lipton
Joel Russ
Wendy Strothman
Robert Sweet
David Wolfsohn
Staff
Wilhelmina Smith, Founder, Artistic & Executive Director
Miriam Fogel, General Manager
Miriam Fogel joined Salt Bay Chamberfest as General Manager in early 2017. In addition to her role at SBC, she is also Director of Artistic Operations with the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra. She has extensive experience working with music festivals, including Aspen Music Festival (CO), Spoleto Festival dei 2 mondi (Umbria, Italy), Stresa Festival (Lombardy, Italy), Brevard Music Center (NC), and the Mostly Mozart Festival (NY), as well as Salt Bay Chamberfest for two prior summers (in 2012 and 2016). In addition to festivals, she focuses on orchestra management, and worked for the New World Symphony (Miami, FL), Richmond Symphony (VA) (where she was also Project Director of the Menuhin Competition Richmond 2021), The Knights (Brooklyn, NY), and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, Italy). Miriam grew up in New York City and graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor’s degree in music.
Board of Directors
Paul Weislogel, President
Bristol, ME
Paul Weislogel and his wife, Judy, bought their farmhouse in Bristol in 1995 as a vacation home and finally retired here in 2007. Paul’s career in New York entailed negotiating and maintaining journal-publishing agreements with major medical societies, and the acquisition of new ventures for the publishing houses of Elsevier Science and Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott. After earning degrees in biomedical sciences research from Iowa State and Princeton, he taught chemistry and biochemistry at the U.S. Naval Academy. He subsequently conducted post-doctoral research at the Medical School of the University of Amsterdam and later, in this country, was the principal investigator for a National Cancer Institute research contract. A member of the vestry of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Paul sings with its choir and previously with Tapestry Singers. In addition, he serves on the board of Heartwood Theater. The non-gardening months allow for frequent trips back to New York, where Paul and Judy are patrons of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Diana Morris, Vice President
Baltimore, MD
Diana Morris is a consultant focused on strengthening the philanthropic and nonprofit organization sector. From 1997 to 2019, she was the founding director of Open Society Institute-Baltimore, the sole field office of the Open Society Foundations in the United States. The office supports efforts to reform policies and practices that prevent residents from participating fully in the civic, economic, and social life of the region. Diana also directed Open Places, an Open Society Foundations initiative that made long-term investments in Buffalo, San Diego, and Puerto Rico.
Previously, Diana was the director of the Blaustein Philanthropic Group and a program officer at the Ford Foundation, working on refugee and migrant rights globally and on social justice issues in Eastern and Southern Africa. She began her career as Attorney-Adviser for Human Rights and Refugee Matters in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the Department of State. Diana holds an A.B. from Smith College and a J.D. from Boston University, and is a member of the New York State Bar.
Diana currently serves on the boards of Health Care for the Homeless in Maryland and Na’aleh, the Hub for Leadership Learning in Baltimore and provides immigration legal triage through the Maryland Pro Bono Resource Center.
Elizabeth Bishop, Treasurer
Bristol, ME
Upon relocating back to Maine in the summer of 2020, Elizabeth joined the Central Lincoln County and Boothbay Region YMCAs as head of Business Services and Finance. Prior to the YMCA, Elizabeth was a managing director at JPMorgan in London and New York. There she held various risk management positions including overseeing the firm’s operational risk in Asia and Europe, payments risk, and credit risk portfolios of U.S. and European financial institutions. At JPMorgan, she was actively engaged with the firm’s diversity initiatives. Before JPMorgan, Elizabeth was a managing director at Bank of America in Chicago and a financial planning director at IBM in New York. Elizabeth has an MBA from Yale University and an BS-Mathematics from Davidson College.
Elizabeth is a mentor with the Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute, a fundraising class ambassador for Davidson College, and recently volunteered for the Humane Society and SCORE. In her spare time, Elizabeth enjoys cooking, spending time outdoors, and painting.
Elizabeth is delighted to be back in Maine—where she grew up—with her husband Tom. In addition to their two adult daughters, Tom and Elizabeth have a Bernese Mountain Dog and two cats.
Gail Fels
Coral Gables, FL & Jefferson, ME
Gail Fels has lived in Greater Miami since she was four. She graduated from Wellesley College and the University of Chicago Law School. She practiced law, primarily commercial litigation, in Miami for 35 years. She has summered in Maine for more than 40 years and owned a home on Damariscotta Lake for 27 years. A supporter of the arts in both Miami and Maine, she attended the very first year of Salt Bay Chamberfest and almost every year since. She also has supported Bay Chamber Concerts, the Da Ponte String Quartet, and Theater at Monmouth. Additionally, she has served on the board and as an officer of Funding Arts Network of Miami, which grants $250,000 annually to performing arts organizations. She has one son and two granddaughters.
Jean Appleby Johnson
Harpswell, ME
Jean Appleby Johnson is a native of South Carolina, with a BA from Winthrop University and an MPA from the University of Virginia. She worked in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill and in the White House, and as a consultant specializing in interim non-profit executive positions. Jean has served as a trustee of James Madison University, as a board member for the Maine Maritime Museum and Orr’s Island Library, as a member of the Maine Women’s Giving Tree and as chair of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.
Growing up, she thought everyone had two pianos in their living room! Her mother taught piano and instilled in her a love of music. She became a “bass mom” when her oldest son began studying the double bass, and accompanied him for his recitals through high school.
Jean first vacationed in Maine in 1978 with her late husband and moved here full-time in 2006. She first attended Salt Bay Chamberfest in 2007 and fell in love with the high caliber of artists, eclectic mix of programming, and, of course, the ambience of the old barn. She and her husband Charlie live on Orr’s Island. She has two sons who live in Washington, DC.
Elizabeth Lubetkin Lipton
New York City, NY & Pemaquid, ME
Elizabeth Lubetkin Lipton is a native and current New Yorker, and has spent the last 30 summers in Maine, 21 of them on Riverview Road in Pemaquid. She received her Master of Social Work from the Columbia School of Social Work, and worked for over 23 years in various administrative and executive positions in the New York City and State Government. She also worked as the Deputy Director of Labor Relations at Time Inc. Since leaving government service, she received training and still practices as a labor arbitrator and mediator.
Elizabeth currently serves on a number of boards. She is the Vice President for Development for the Women’s City Club of New York, and previously was its President and Vice President for Public Policy. She has also served as co-chair of the Goddard Riverside Community Center’s Musical Evenings Concert Series for the last 25 years, which raises funds through five chamber music concerts a year performed in private homes. Distinguished musician performers featured in the Concert Series have included Jeremy Denk, Romie de Guise-Langlois, Fred Sherry and Mina Smith.
Joel Russ
Walpole, ME
Joel Russ grew up in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, graduated from Wesleyan University in 1966 with a BA in American History, served in the U.S. Army Military Intelligence from 1966 to 1971, graduated from the University of Maine School of Law in 1974, and was admitted to the Maine Bar in 1975.
Joel has held a variety of senior level positions in community-based non-profit organizations including Executive Director of Greater Portland Landmarks, Vice President & General Counsel of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, CEO of the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce, President & CEO of the Maine Science & Technology Foundation, and President of the Four Square Foundation (a private foundation). He also founded a private company, Legacy Philanthropy Management, LLC.
Joel has served on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations including the National Trust for Historic Preservation (Advisory Trustee), United Way of Greater Portland, Maine School of Science & Mathematics, Maine Commission for Community Service, Institute for Civic Leadership, Maine Audubon, World Affairs Council of Maine, Lincoln Theater, and Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust. In addition to Salt Bay Chamberfest, he currently serves on the Boards of Coastal Kids Preschool and the Maine Gun Safety Coalition.
He is married to Carolyn Braun Russ, a retired public school teacher, has two grown sons and three grandchildren, and lives in Walpole. Joel enjoys running, flyfishing, music, wilderness canoeing, and Maine coast boating.
Wendy Strothman
Stockbridge, MA & Newcastle, ME
Wendy Strothman is a literary agent who represents serious non-fiction writers and scholars. She and her husband John Bishop, a pipe organ builder who is on the board of the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ in Portland, now divide their time between Newcastle, ME and Stockbridge, MA after decamping from Greenwich Village in 2020. Their catboat Kingfisher spends the summers in Round Pond.
Wendy started her career at the University of Chicago Press and was publisher of trade books at Houghton Mifflin before founding her literary agency. She has served on non-profit boards, including the Brown University Corporation, Deerfield Academy, and the Yale University Press. She is currently Vice President of the Authors Guild Foundation.
Robert Sweet
Newton, MA & South Bristol, ME
Robert (Skip) Sweet grew up in New York City. After attending schools in Manhattan and Connecticut, he graduated from Harvard College in 1968. After working as an auto mechanic, photographer, bartender, and carpenter, Robert attended Northeastern Law School, clerked for Justice Herbert Wilkins of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and was a partner at Foley Hoag LLP in Boston, where he practiced corporate law for 37 years. He also had a brief career as a restaurateur in Boston. Robert serves as a director at the Boston Medical Center, Bridge Boston Charter School, YouthConnect (a program of the Boys and Girls Club of Boston), The Sheffield Chamber Players, and Kisoro Children’s Foundation. He has an irrational fondness for vintage British automobiles, steep powder, and messing about in boats. Robert and his wife Karen live in Newton, Massachusetts and South Bristol, Maine. His two grown children and one grandchild also reside in Massachusetts.
David Wolfsohn
Philadelphia, PA & Nobleboro, ME