Post-War & Contemporary Art, Christie's New York

Meghan Doyle joined the Post-War and Contemporary Art Specialist Department at Christie's in New York in August 2018, where she has worked as a researcher, sale coordinator and cataloguer. She has been directly involved in a diverse range of specialized auctions of Post-War and Contemporary Art across sales channels including the sale of ThirtyFive Works by Ed Ruscha, works by Robert Motherwell to benefit the Dedalus Foundation and the groundbreaking July 2020 ONE and Day Sales. She also played a pivotal role in the sourcing, marketing and sale of Beeple’s EVERYDAYS: The First 5000 Days, the first digital-only artwork to be offered at a major auction house, which achieved $69,346,250 in March 2021, and continues to support the development of and education around the burgeoning NFT art market.

Ms. Doyle holds BAs in Art History and Italian, with a minor in Nonprofit Management, from Pepperdine University, where she graduated as valedictorian and was named the Art History student of the year in 2018. During her time at Pepperdine, Meghan studied in Florence, Italy, focusing her studies on the history of Western Art from the Renaissance onward and writing her thesis on a contemporary Northern Irish artist in the context of using art for purposes of reconciliation. In addition, Ms. Doyle has served in positions at a variety of museums, including The British Museum (London), Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art (Malibu, California), presented her research at a national conference and contributed to a global art history textbook in conjunction with an Associate Professor of Art History.

Director of Women and Wealth, Northern Trust

Steph is responsible for leading Elevating Women, Northern Trust's platform dedicated to providing customized resources and advisory services for women. Over the years, she has developed a specialized expertise in utilizing financial strategies and empowering women with the resources to become effective stewards of their wealth. Steph has also worked extensively with women across the country to help them address the financial impact of widowhood, secure equitable settlements in marriage dissolutions, and establish a solid foundation for their next chapter.

Prior to joining Northern Trust, Steph served as Managing Director and Co-Founder of Sendero Women & Wealth, a division of a registered investment advisory firm based in Central Texas. Prior to that, Steph built a national consulting practice as a financial strategist for high-net-worth women in transition. She was also the Founder and CEO of WomenWealthyWise, where she partnered with wealth management firms nationwide to strengthen their women’s initiatives. Prior to starting her businesses, Steph worked in private equity as a Vice President at Gemini Investors, a Boston-based private investment firm focused on providing capital to established, smaller middle market businesses.

Steph’s expertise has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, MarketWatch, Fox News, Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, Barron’s, Bloomberg and Huffington Post.

Steph is a graduate of The University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. She is currently a Governor-appointed trustee of the Texas Emergency Services Retirement System, member of Austin20, and former board president and member of Center for Community Solutions, which serves survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

CEO, The Conservation Center 

Heather Becker's innovative leadership and passion for art preservation have driven The Conservation Center to the forefront of the field of conservation. Heather maintains the philosophy that "...it's about recognizing the intent of the artist. It is our job to preserve and care for the artworks and allow them to have a future life." Her sentiments are echoed in the high standard of care applied to all of the artworks that come into the lab for treatment-whether a piece of fine art or a piece of family history. 

After studying painting and art history on scholarship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the International School of Art in Italy. Heather was inspired to pursue a career in the field of art preservation. In 1989, she developed a national business plan for The Chicago Conservation Center, as the company was formerly known, and purchased the firm from its founder in August 2003. The Center has since expanded to provide conservation services in paintings, works of art on paper, murals, textiles, antique and fine furniture, rare books, frames and gilding, and objects and sculpture. The Center is now the largest private facility of its kind in North America. 

Heather co-founded the largest mural preservation project in the country's history in an effort to bring art back into public education. The project restored hundreds of early 20th century murals in Chicago. She is also the co-founder of New Deal Preservation Association-Midwest Chapter, a nonprofit organization which recorded preserved works from the New Deal Era, as well as Works Public Administration (WPA) Era murals. After years of research, Heather Becker authored a book on Chicago murals and art preservation entitled Art for the People (Chronicle Books) in 2002. 

Heather works to educate a variety of audiences throughout the country on the technological advancement of art conversation. She has lectured at venues as The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Art Basel Miami, the Risk Insurance Society (RIMS), and the Detroit Institute of Arts. 

Heather Becker continues her practice as an artist, specializing in figurative oil paintings and drawings. Heather is represented by Zolla Liberman Gallery in Chicago and has exhibited at major art fairs such as Art Miami and EXPO Chicago. She has studied the ancient practice of Ashtanga yoga for the last 15 years. For nearly a decade, Heather volunteered for Operation Sunrise, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping children with cleft lip and palate and other facial birth defects in medically under-served countries around the world. 

Visual Artist

Amanda Williams is a visual artist who trained as an architect. Amanda's creative practice employs color as a way to draw attention to the complexities of race, place and value in cities. The landscapes in which she operates are the visual residue of the invisible policies and forces that have misshapen most inner cities. Amanda's installations, paintings and works on paper seek to inspire new ways of looking at the familiar and in the process, raise questions about the state of urban space and citizenship in America. Amanda has exhibited widely, including the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, a solo exhibition at the MCA Chicago, and a public project with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. She is a 2018 USA Ford Fellow, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors grantee, an Efroymson Family Arts Fellow, a Leadership Great Chicago Fellow and a member of the multidisciplinary Museum Design team for the Obama Presidential Center. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. Amanda lives and works in Chicago. 

Portrait Credit: Tony Smith