Alison Overseth Is New Trustee Board Chair

At its meeting this weekend, the Smith College Board of Trustees elected Alison Overseth, a member of the class of 1980, as the next chair of the board. She will serve a three-year term beginning July 1.

Overseth succeeds Deborah L. Duncan, class of 1977.

A member of the Smith board of trustees since 2012 and vice chair since 2018, Overseth has chaired the board’s external affairs and advancement committees. She also was a member of Smith’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility and served on the steering committee for Smith’s record-setting Women for the World campaign, which raised $486 million for Smith’s key priorities between 2012 and 2017.

Overseth is chief executive officer of the Partnership for After School Education (PASE), a nonprofit which works with hundreds of community based organizations, higher education institutions and corporate partners to improve the quality of opportunities available to young people living in poverty in New York City. With more than 25 years of experience in the youth-serving profession, Overseth directed a management initiative for the Fund for the City of New York to strengthen the nonprofit agencies that provide community support for young people, and served for 12 years as the founding president of PASE’s board of directors.

A member of the advisory board of The Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School, Overseth has taught leadership courses at Bank Street College of Education and is a director of the Millennial Action Project. She is a trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, and also serves as a trustee of the UNR Asbestos-Disease Claims Trust. From 1984 to 1992, she was a director at The First Boston Corporation, specializing in corporate restructurings.

Overseth majored in economics at Smith and earned her M.B.A. degree at Columbia Business School. She lives in New York City.

Founded in 1871, Smith College educates women of promise for lives of distinction. Among the largest women’s liberal arts colleges in the United States, Smith enrolls 2,600 students from nearly every state and 68 countries.