Donna has devoted over 55 years of her life to being a social justice activist, first in the Appalachian South, then in the Boston area. For the last 20 years of her professional career, she led a social policy center at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Since 2015, after leaving her university work, she continues to deepen her service as a board member with several local and international nonprofit organizations. In the past six plus years, she has found ways to reignite her passions for the visual arts, completing South Shore Art Center’s (SSAC) Studio Arts Certificate program, and, in April 2022, becoming a juried Gallery Artist at SSAC in Cohasset, MA, where she now serves as a board member. In September 2020, she became a juried member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA). In July 2022, she received the SSAC’s DeeDee Agee Art Award. A book which includes her paintings, “Ways to Survive”, a collaboration with Poet Berna Kahraman, was published in Boston and Istanbul in May 2020 (www.waystosurvive.org). All proceeds from sales of this book were distributed to the four nonprofits Donna and Berna hold dear to their hearts.