Queens Museum Announces Four New Trustees

12.16.19

The Board of Trustees of the Queens Museum welcomes four new board members – Dr. Yvonne Riley-Tepie, Alexa Van de Walle, Bevin Savage-Yamazaki and Sable Elyse Smith. “We are thrilled to welcome four new trustees who will bring their diverse skills and expertise. Their collective experience adds an important dimension to our board as we look toward the future of the Queens Museum.” said Mark J. Coleman, Chair of the Board of Trustees.

Dr. Yvonne Riley-Tepie is Vice President of Regional Giving for the TD Bank Charitable Foundation and the Office of Charitable Giving. She oversees all social impact activities in the Bank’s New York Metro Market. She began her career at TD Bank as Vice President of U.S. Field Marketing Strategy in 2005.

She was named one of the 40 most influential business people of African descent under the age of 40 by The Network Journal and received the YWCA’s Woman of Influence Award in 2010, the Queens Courier’s Top Woman in Business in 2011, among many other awards. In 2016, Ms. Tepie received the CEO Leadership Award for Marketing at TD Bank. She is currently a member of the Boards of the New York City College of Technology Foundation and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy. 

Bevin Savage Yamazaki leads Gensler’s Foundations, Associations and Organizations practices. Prior to working at Gensler she worked on the construction of Dia:Beacon, in Beacon NY. She has worked with artists Vito Acconci, Leni Schwendinger, Chris Burden and Dennis Oppenheim on various projects in Europe and the U.S.

In her more than 20 years of experience, she has worked with a range of cultural and not-for-profit institutions including the New York Public Library, Queens Public Library, The Knight Foundation, The Grace Institute and the South Street Seaport Museum. Bevin has also worked with the New Museum on a series of complex and large scale installations and with the Queens Museum on the Never Built New York exhibition.

Yamazaki recently completed the renewal of the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice landmark headquarters, the design and construction of the Museum of the Dog in New York City and a Master Plan for the Rockwell Museum of Art in Corning, NY.

Sable Elyse Smith is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator based in New York and Richmond, Virginia. Using video, sculpture, photography, and text, she points to the carceral, the personal, the political, and the quotidian to speak about issues of violence that are largely unseen and potentially imperceptible. Ordinary Violence (September 2017-February 2018), Sable’s first solo museum show, was exhibited at the Queens Museum as part of the Museum’s Jerome Fellows program. Her work has been featured at MoMA PS1, The New Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Rachel Uffner Gallery, and Recess Assembly, New York; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Artist Television Access, San Francisco; and Birkbeck Cinema in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries, London. Her writing has been published in Radical Teacher, Studio Magazine and Affidavit and she is currently working on her first book. Smith has received awards from Creative Capital, Fine Arts Work Center, the Queens Museum, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Franklin Furnace Fund, and Art Matters. She is currently Assistant Professor of Sculpture & Extended Media at the University of Richmond.

Alexa (Lexi) Van de Walle spent more than 25 years in marketing and advertising where she rose to be a senior executive working in brand management including on data-driven customer loyalty programs; television, radio, print and internet advertising; direct mail; public relations and new product development for consumer packaged goods, financial services and drug companies. She worked for American Express, Citigroup, Pfizer, The New York Times and Ogilvy & Mather. 

In the next phase of her business career, Van de Walle turned her attention to non-profits and food advocacy projects. For the past 10 years, she was on the executive board of The Culinary Trust, the foundation of the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She has certificates in nutrition counseling and culinary arts, an MBA degree in Marketing from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a B.A. in English from Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Lexi is also an award-winning photographer focused on food, street and travel photography.