Scripps College is pleased to announce that Lynne Thompson ’72 will step into her new role as chair of the Board of Trustees on July 1, 2018. She was unanimously elected to the position by the Board in March 2017.
Mark Herron, the outgoing chair, said, “Lynne’s leadership experience, her creativity, and her commitment to the College make her uniquely qualified for this role, and I have the utmost confidence in her ability to lead the Board.”
A member of the Class of 1972, Thompson served as student council president. She became a trustee of the College in 1998, when she was elected president of the Alumnae Leadership Council, a role she occupied until 2000. In 2003, she was appointed the Lois Langland Alumna in Residence. Thompson rejoined the Board in 2014 and, since then, has assumed various leadership roles, including as chair of the Educational Policy Committee. She has been a member of the Audit Committee, the Board Committee on Diversity and Inclusivity, the Campaign Steering Committee, the Executive Committee, the Nominations and Governance Committee, and the most recent Presidential Search Committee.
Thompson received her BA in social psychology from Scripps and her JD from Southwestern University School of Law. She was director of the Employee and Labor Relations Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, for 20 years, until her retirement in 2014. More recently, she served as the Interim Title IX Officer at the University of California, Riverside.
An accomplished and award-winning poet, Thompson has published several collections of her verse, including the Perugia Press Prize-winning Beg No Pardon (2007), Start With A Small Guitar (2013), and Jezebels on the Loose (2015). Her work has appeared in the North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Ecotone. Thompson received an Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles in 2015. She currently sits on the board of artworxLA, an arts program aimed at reducing the dropout rate for high school students in Los Angeles, and she is the reviews and essays editor for the poetry journal Spillway.
“I am thrilled that Lynne has been chosen to helm the Board,” said Scripps President Lara Tiedens. “She has been an asset to the College, and I look forward to continuing our work together as she assumes her new role.”
Thompson currently resides in Los Angeles.