Dana Hall welcomes alumna Virginia (Ginny) Gilder ’76 as the first speaker in the 2011-12 Wannamaker Lecture Series. Gilder, principal of her own investment business and president of one of her family’s philanthropic entities, will speak to the Dana Hall community on Thursday, January 12 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Gilder’s businesses invest in projects throughout the world that seek to level the economic playing field and promote social justice. She is a co-founder and former board member of the Seattle Girls’ School, and in 2008 bought the professional women’s basketball team Seattle Storm with three other women in an effort to keep the team from going bankrupt.

A lifelong rower, Gilder won an Olympic silver medal in 1984 in rowing as the stroke of the women’s quad. She also qualified for the Olympic team in 1980, though the Americans boycotted the games that year. Currently the record holder for the women’s elite single for the Head of the Charles Regatta, Gilder won the race in 1982, 1983 and 1984. She also placed third at the 1983 World Championships for the single scull.

The Wannamaker Lecture Series, in memory of Lyall Wannamaker Plumb ’55, is an endowed fund made possible by the generosity of the members of the Dana Hall Class of 1955, friends and the Wannamaker family.

The lecture will take place in Waldo Auditorium located in the Classroom Building on the Dana Hall campus in Wellesley. For more information please call (781) 235-3010.