Sydney Smith Gordon
Sydney Smith Gordon (Lifetime Trustee) has been on the board of trustees of Columbia College since 1970.
She is a member of the Fischetti Scholarship Fund and the Michael Merritt Endowment and Scholarship Fund. Standing committees of the board on which she serves include Marketing, Campus Environment, Academic Affairs, and Planning. Since 1983, she has been on the Executive Council of the Chicago Associates of the Stratford Festival of Canada, retiring in 2003. She also served as public relations director to The Writers' Theater-Chicago and the Sara Siddons Society, as well as the Chicago Associates of the Stratford Festival of Canada, providing PR support to the 28 actors chosen by the Festival's artistic director. Chicago area professional actors spend one or more full seasons at Stratford, and actors are cast in several plays within the Three Theatre Complex. PR profiles keep Chicago, LA, and NYC drama desks and directors aware of their accomplishments. She also served as a Chicago media contact for the Stratford Festival Theatre's Department of Communications.
A veteran radio and TV broadcaster in New York under the professional name Sydney Smith, she had programs on Dumont TV, ABC-TV, WPIX, and on National NBC-TV on Pat Weaver's Today Show, with Dave Garroway, and the Home Show, with Arlene Francis and Hugh Downs. Her own NBC Radio show, By-Line Syndey Smith, aired daily on the eastern seaboard, and she was on the NBC Radio network show, Monitor, which was interviewed and taped from Italy and France. Ms. Gordon was a theatre/movie critic/reviewer on AM Radio, as well as emcee of the New York Film Critics Awards NBC Radio.
Ms. Gordon is a former board member of the Alliance for Volunteerism in Washington, D.C., a coalition of twenty-one national voluntary organizations. She is a past president of Call for Action, a national volunteer Action Line affiliated with forty-five Radio and TV stations, serving 250,000 callers annually. Over a twenty-year span, she was director of both WIND and WGN Radio CFA affiliates in Chicago, serving as a writer, producer, and host on information advocacy programs for each station. She produced Ask the Expert programs on both stations with volunteer lawyers, CPAs, physicians, and other authorities. During her tenure as national CFA's regional director and national president, she testified before the FCC in Washington on behalf of the Broadcast/CFA partnership and compiled information for the Federal Trade Commission, HUD, and other federal agencies on problem areas in the country.
As a freelance writer, she worked on publicity and promotion for the Snowmass Resort Association at the One World Music Festival in Aspen/Snowmass Colorado. She was a press contact and accreditation and research person for Jazz Aspen/Snowmass events. In 1997, Aspen celebrated their 50th Anniversary, and she served as event coordinator to "Pioneer Ski Week," representing Aspen/Snowmass at Ski U.S.A. in Toronto, Canada, and the International Ski Show, Olympic Hall, London, and England. She performed as consultant/facilitator to the Guest Services Training Department, Silvertree Hotel and Snowmass Conference Center.
Ms. Gordon resides in Colorado.