Alumni Achievement Award Recipients
The Alumni Achievement Award, given annually by Stephens College, recognizes alumni who have distinguished themselves in their field and their community and have a steadfast commitment to the Ten Ideals of Stephens. This award is the highest honor bestowed on our alumni and is presented during Alumni Weekend.
2024 Alumni Achievement Award
Kristin Atwell Ford ’91
Stories make life rich. We can share them in a theater, by a campfire, or in a boardroom.
Kristin Atwell Ford ’91 is an Emmy® Award-winning storyteller, and her favorite thing is telling stories that create community. With skilled listening and compassion, she brings out the best in people. Kristin’s films explore American history, water, wildlife, the performing arts, reproductive freedom, and the mythology of the West. Kristin’s stories celebrate the alchemy of people and place.
Born in Arizona, Kristin grew up with an uncommon immersion in theater and wilderness adventures. Between performing onstage, apprenticeships at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, MA, teaching writing at Perry-Mansfield School of Performing Arts in Steamboat Springs, CO, and graduating from Stephens College, she explored the canyons and rivers of the American Southwest. These dual interests in nature and the performing arts create a rich synthesis in her work.
Kristin has been an in-house producer for Quantum Leap Productions, a full-service video and messaging boutique, for twenty years. She also shares her messaging skills in the corporate world through speaking engagements and consultations related to culture and internal communications. In 2022, Kristin was recognized as one of InBusiness Magazine’s Women of Achievement.
Kristin started her film career at Concentric Media with Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman. Kristin produced and edited “Woman by Woman,” winner of the 2002 Freddie Award for Women’s Health, about women providing medical services for other women in the villages of India. In 2001, Kristin produced her first documentary, “Quartzite’s Fall: A Wilderness Tale,” about the destruction of a whitewater river rapid in Arizona’s Salt River Canyon. In 2017 Kristin co-produced the world premiere opera, "Riders of the Purple Sage," based on Zane Grey's legendary novel; and directed a film about the creative process behind the opera with fine art painter Ed Mell and composer Craig Bohmler. Her most recent documentary, "The Weight of a Feather," explores the deep significance of feathers to indigenous cultural identity. Kristin is the proud recipient of the 2021 Arizona Governor's Arts Award.
Kristin is the daughter of Sherri Chessen, the hostess of the children’s TV show “The Romper Room” in Phoenix in the early 1960s. Kristin is currently producing the documentary feature, “Miss Sherri and The Pharmacologist,” about how her mother’s highly publicized thalidomide abortion in 1962 impacted reproductive rights and drug safety in the United States and Sweden.
Kristin sits on the Western Council of The Entertainment Community Fund, which provides social services for everyone in entertainment. Kristin is honored to live and film on the lands of the Yavapai, Navajo, Hopi, Maricopa, and Apache People. She makes her home in Arizona with her husband, Dennis Ford, a culture wonk and trapeze artist.
Past Alumnae Achievement Award Recipients
2024
Kristin Atwell Ford '91
2023
Lynda Clugston Webster ’78
2022
Karen Meek ’95
2021
Mattie Carolyn Hall ’67, ’69
2020
Jen Svrcek '90 (awarded in 2021)
2019
VADM Nancy Brown USN (RET) ’73
2018
Donna Ensign Marshall ’58
2017
Melanie May ’77
2016
M. Anne Murphy ’78
2015
Toni Leach Reinis ’67
2014
Ginny Hawley McSwain ’73
2013
Alanna Nash ’72
2012
Jill Griffith ’72
2011
Becca Ayers ’96
2010
Deborah Hamilton ’63
2009
Leslie Foster ’79
2008
Doris Painter Littrell ’58
2007
Mary Josie Cain Blanchard ’67
2006
Ying Li-Oshrin ’89
2005
Katherine Henry
2004
Corky Hale Stoller
2003
Teresa Rouse-Maledy ’78
2002
Bonneau (Bonnie) McElveen Hunter ’72
2001
Jean McFaddin ’62
2000
Toni Grant Verstandig ’74
1999
Alana Smith Shepherd ’49
1998
Mary Mel French ’58
1997
Tomima Edmark Polley ’79
1996
Wendy Manasse Wiese ’81
1995
Annie Potts
1994
Laura Steele Evans ’71
1993
Paula Zahn
1992
Catherine Barton Para ’77
Anne Louise Wallace ’82
1991
Judith Doyen Taylor ’73
1990
Sonja Dabkovich Caproni ’62
Sally Bullard Thornton ’53
1989
Sally Morgan Fitzgerald ’35
1988
Ann Wrobleski ’73
Joyce A. Mitchell ’72
1987
Jill Butler ’64
Margaret Elizabeth McIntosh ’77
1986
Janet Fowler Shaw ’57
1985
Peggy S. Gott Ph.D. ’64
Jean Muir (hon. ’73) ’79
1984
Joyce McClure ’69
Ardys Hogle Thayer ’45
1983
Nell Plopper Euruch Lazarus ’39
Dawn Wells
1982
Jeannette Korab Kalogridis ’71
Lorraine Chambers-McCarty ’40
1981
Leila Bromberg Andrews ’58
Bettye Maxwell Krolick ’46
1980
Laurelle Sheedy Mathis ’70
Sylvia Stone ’55
1979
Kathryn Myer Budzak ’59
Anna Siegelbaum Moldafsky ’50
1978
Madolyn Youse Babcock ’44
M. Susan Hays-Stern ’66-’68
Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick ’46
1977
Patricia Craddock ’57
Lucille Garber Ford ’42
Margaret A. Kilgore ’55
Anita Marie Martini ’58
Martha Naset ’68
Martha Fuller Owens ’51
1976
Diane Lain Murray ’53
Phyllis Walden ’68
Gerridee Stenehjem Wheeler ’47
1975
Sabra Eagan
1974
Bernice Linderman Williamson ’32
1973
Sara Mumma Harral ’32
Jackie Fleisher-Wood ’69
1972
Barbara Rippel Gordon ’63
Marion Cox Lichty ’35
Mary Louise Green Madigan ’42
Peggy Hitchcock Ransom ’47
1970
Doralys Arias ’50
Selma Jeanne Cohen ’39
Geneva Drinkwater ’15
Dorian Hunter ’52
1968
Eleanor Cleveland Anderson ’35
Mary Ellen Stribling Bouldin ’50
Genevieve Miller Esgar ’48
Beatrice Burton Middleton ’18
1967
Ann Case Drummond ’28
Virginia Ralles Parker ’51
Betty Goetz Lall ’45
Eualine Uhl Wright ’31
1966
Mary Ann Calcott D.D.S. ’58
Helen Gregory ’25
Kathryn Wilson Jordan ’28
Patricia Spaulding ’42
1965
Ruth Bundy Armsby ’23
Anita Farlow Blakeslee ’42
Irene Meinershagen Bleckschmidt ’26
Jeannene Thompson Booher ’56
Mary Adelaide Gardner ’40
Janet Garlough ’41
Wilda Tinsley Moening ’34
Wanda Yvonne White ’45
1964
Adrienne Adams Anderson ’25
Wally Funk ’58
Virginia Neville Robertson ’33
Mary (Mimi) Allen Smitten ’43
1963
Patricia White Barry
Dorothy Harcourt Hickerson ’39
Frances Lea McCurdy ’25
Gerda Mehwald Picco ’50
1962
Mary B. Anderson ’29
Nell Plopper Eurich Lazarus ’39
Beulah Winstel Dechert ’37
Margaret Sandzen Greenough ’28
Janet R. Kern ’43
Vivian Saunders Kleinkopf ’54
Jean Clinton Roeschlaub ’44
1961
Phyllis Joan Burline ’48
Madeline Darling Harp ’31
Mildred Benjegerdes Hays ’45
Irmgard Grossman Johnson ’35
Esther Replogle ’23
Helen Ross Staley ’41
Kay Johnson Williams ’24
1960
Margaret Barbee ’18
(Mary) Jane Smisor Bastien ’55
Martha Brian ’50
Shirley A. Field ’42
Gloria Kenney Jones ’44
Carla Shriner Williams ’40
1959
Susanna Laun Alexander ’36
Virginia Carpernter Christ-Janer ’33
Helen Froelich Holt ’32
Marilyn Ellis Keene ’38
Jeanne Butcher Shaffer ’44
1958
Margaret Wolf Dagen ’38
Esther Winifred Daley Kaasa ’30
1957
Betsy Snyder Dew ’37
Olivia Noel Robertson ’22
1956
Frances Jenkins Holter ’44
Jean Cravens Leyda ’20
1955
Evalyn King Joachim ’29
Eudora Vance Scott ’37
Glad Robinson Youse ’20
1954
Eugenia Moore Anderson ’28
Ethlyn Wisegarver Bott ’18
Cordelia Trimble Robinson ’22
1953
Ardenia Chapman ’13
Ina Estes Hubbard ’13
Ruth Lovelace Courteol ’19
1952
Marie Kuhns Hardy ’20
Pauline Brannock Moore ’23
1951
Alice Jones Ewing ’27