Pratt Institute’s Board of Trustees: Recently Elected Members and New DEI Committee

Derrick Adams’s appointment to Pratt Institute’s Board of Trustees was effective October 15, 2020.

Derrick Adams is a Baltimore-born artist whose work spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance, video, and sound installation. His multidisciplinary practice engages the ways in which individuals’ ideals, aspirations, and personae become attached to specific objects, colors, textures, symbols, and ideologies. His work probes the influence of popular culture on the formation of self-image and the relationship between man and monument as they coexist and embody one another. Adams also examines how African-American experiences intersect with art history, American iconography, and consumerism. Most notably in his Floater series, he portrays Black Americans at leisure, positing that respite itself is a political act when embraced by Black communities. The radicality of this position has materialized in Adams’s work across his Deconstruction Worker, Figure in the Urban Landscape, and Beauty World series.

In formal terms, Adams’s practice is rooted in Deconstructivist philosophies related to the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, and the marriage of complex and improbable forms. His tendency to layer, hybridize, and collage not only images and materials but also different types of sensory experiences links the artist to an estimable lineage of pioneers ranging from Hannah Höch and Henri Matisse to William H. Johnson and Romare Bearden. In Adams’s art, the process can also be understood as an analog: “Everything that we are is based on a specific construction,” he once remarked.

Adams received his MFA from Columbia University in 2003 and BFA from Pratt Institute (in Art and Design Education) in 1996. He is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation’s Studio Program. He received Pratt’s Alumni Achievement Award in 2018.

Adams is a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2019), a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2018), a Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2016), and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2009). He has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including Where I’m From—Derrick Adams (2019) at The Gallery in Baltimore City Hall; Derrick Adams: Sanctuary (2018) at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and Derrick Adams: Transmission (2018) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. His work has been presented in numerous important public exhibitions, including Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth. (2019) at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati; PERFORMA (2015, 2013, and 2005); The Shadows Took Shape (2014) and Radical Presence (2013–14) at The Studio Museum in Harlem; The Channel (2012) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Greater New York (2005) at MoMA PS1; and Open House: Working in Brooklyn (2004) at the Brooklyn Museum. His work resides in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Joan Fallon’s appointment to Pratt Institute’s Board of Trustees was effective December 12, 2019.

Dr. Joan Fallon, Founder and CEO of Curemark, is considered a visionary scientist who has dedicated her life’s work to championing the health and well-being of children worldwide. She is widely recognized for her passion and innovation in defining a successful entrepreneurial venture. Curemark is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel therapies to treat serious diseases for which there are limited treatment options. The company’s pipeline includes a phase III clinical-stage research program for Autism, as well as programs focused on Parkinson’s Disease, schizophrenia, and addiction.

Curemark will commence the filing of a Biological Drug Application for the first novel drug for Autism under the FDA Fast Track Program. Fast Track status is a designation given only to investigational new drugs that are intended to treat serious or life-threatening conditions and that have demonstrated the potential to address unmet medical needs.

Fallon holds over 300 patents worldwide, has written numerous scholarly articles, and lectured extensively across the globe on pediatric developmental problems. A former assistant professor at Yeshiva University in the Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, she holds appointments as a Senior Advisor to the Henry Crown Fellows at The Aspen Institute, as well as a Distinguished Fellow at the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Franklin & Marshall College. She currently serves as a board member at the DREAM Charter School in Harlem; the PitCCh In Foundation started by CC and Amber Sabathia; Springboard Enterprises, an internationally known venture catalyst that supports women-led growth companies; and Vote Run Lead, a bipartisan not-for-profit that encourages women on both sides of the aisle to run for elected office.

She has testified before Congress on the matters of business and intellectual property. She served on the ADA Board of Advisors for the building of the new Yankee Stadium. She traveled to Romania on the first US government Fact-Finding Mission as part of a multidisciplinary healthcare team tasked with determining the health status of the children in orphanages after the fall of the Ceausescu regime.

Fallon is the recipient of numerous awards including being named one of the top 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2020 by Goldman Sachs, 2017 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year NY in Healthcare and received the Creative Entrepreneurship Award from The New York Hall of Science in 2018.

She has a BA degree from Franklin & Marshall College, a doctorate from Palmer University, and has completed her coursework for the MSc in clinical investigation from Harvard University’s joint program with the Institutes at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

William Hilson’s appointment to Pratt Institute’s Board of Trustees was effective October 16, 2019.

William (Bill) Hilson is a former adjunct associate professor (CCE) in Pratt Institute’s graduate Communications Design Department, where he served from 1991 to 2019 and held the role of acting department chair during the 2005–06 academic year. He is a founding director of Mindhive, Inc.; a founding director of the Institute for Sustainable Communication, a 501(c)3 organization devoted to promoting sustainability practices for business and industry; and a partner at Thinstroke LLC.

Hilson has been a featured speaker at Seybold, Impact!, Lasers in Graphics, Digital Spectrum, and color connections, brand identity, and design conferences, as well as seminar events for Apple Marketing and Agfa Corporation. For eight years, he was a group leader for the Creative Problem-Solving Institute and is a colleague of the Creative Education Foundation. 

As creative director to the HiFi Color Project, Hilson helped introduce the new HiFi color printing techniques to the design and printing community. He was first to design and print using an experimental seven-colorant process, the first to use Pantone’s Hexachrome™ in a commercial application, and the first designer to print using a frequency-modulated (“stochastic”) screening system. 

Hilson has served on the board of the Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan, CT, and has served on the board of trustees at Whitby School in Greenwich, CT.