Heather Sturt Haaga

Heather Sturt Haaga, an artist residing in California, has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit board leadership. Beginning with a local YMCA in 1986 where she was elected the first female Board Chair, she has since served on sixteen boards and committees for both local and global nonprofit organizations. Currently, she is Chair of the Salzburg Global Seminar, based in Austria and Washington, DC, where she has helped to envision a new strategic direction for the next decade. She is a Trustee of Descanso Gardens, a 150-acre green space in metropolitan Los Angeles, a Trustee of Vassar College, a Trustee of Princeton Theological Seminary, where she also serves as co-chair of the $100 million Library Capital Campaign, and a Trustee of the African Wildlife Foundation headquartered in Nairobi. Her interest in art has led her to serve on the Art Committee at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in Pasadena, California and participate as a member of the Advisory Council for the Princeton Art Museum at Princeton University in New Jersey. As an artist, her focus is on plein air painting – primarily landscapes and still lifes. She has had successful shows in Los Angeles and on the East Coast. Her paintings are in collections throughout the country. Prior to becoming an artist, she worked in advertising at J. Walter Thompson in New York, for the U.S. Postal Service in Washington D.C., and at Chesapeake and Potomac (AT&T) where she created the protoype residential marketing plan later used by Phone Center Stores across the country. While in Washington, she and her husband were members of a 13-person group that believed in, raised the money for, and built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Following the birth of her two children she founded Marketing Management Inc., a marketing consulting firm.