A retired art museum administrator, Debbie Shepherd has spent her subsequent career in volunteer and board leadership across the art and historic preservation world. She currently serves as a Governor of the Decorative Arts Trust, where she sits on the Program Committee, and she has held a variety of other positions, including member of the Director’s Advisory Board at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, where she chaired membership and a donor travel program; member of a historic preservation board in Palo Alto, California; member of a grant-making commission in Santa Clara County, California; member of the Circle of the National Gallery of Art; and member of the Collections Committee at Sylvester Manor, Shelter Island, New York. She is recognized for her expertise in historic preservation advocacy, museum membership and donor programs, and nonprofit board governance.
Prior to her volunteer career, Debbie researched and organized exhibitions and coordinated corporate support at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, the International Exhibitions Foundation, and the National Gallery of Art.
Debbie and her husband Michael have been coming to Shelter Island from 1963 and 1975 respectively and are joined there by their two daughters and six grandchildren, many of whom attend camp at Sylvester Manor. She first visited the Manor in the late 1970s when she came to meet Alice Fiske and see her collection of American paintings.
