NML Board Members and Officers (Click on name to view bio)
Pat Barr-Harrison, Ph.D. (Trustee)
Kristoffer Booker (Secretary)
Debra Kieft (Trustee)
Rebecca McGinnis (Trustee)
Terri Marlow (Trustee)
Linda Murphy Marshall (Trustee)
Laura Murray (Trustee)
Gregory J. Nedved (President and Chair)
Jill Robbins, Ph.D. (Vice President and Assistant Chair)
Kristoffer Booker earned a degree in Chinese and studied in Taiwan. He has several years of experience working in greater China. He has also worked in a number of roles related to China trade, including product distribution, export contract administration, and trade finance. Kris enjoys the same passion for learning languages shared by the Museum’s leadership and sees our nation’s linguistic diversity as a strength and a connection to the global community. Kris has agreed, if approved, to become the Secretary of the Board of Trustees.
Debra Kieft has been affiliated with NML since 2008 as an exhibit designer and preparator, flag designer and maker, associate and volunteer. She has worked for over 20 years in legal offices. Debra holds BA and MA degrees in the arts from Lycoming College and University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has a long time love for the French language and has always been interested in world cultures, languages, and alphabets. As time permits, she spends time learning Latin and Ancient Greek, as well as perfecting fine art skills in oil painting and drawing and fiber arts. She is contributing her skills to the development of NML’s virtual exhibit on dialectology research. Debra has a longtime affiliation with the Museum of the Alphabet in Waxhaw, North Carolina where she has served as alphabet docent, exhibit designer, preparator, and educational writer on indigenous languages. It was during a trip to Thailand and Myanmar when she realized the language translation needs for indigenous people groups. She continues to support language translation projects in Kenya and Asia. It is her goal to study and learn a tonal language.
Terri Marlow is a native NW Ohioan whose 40+ year teaching career took place in West Virginia, although she stayed in contact with her Ohio roots through the Alliance at Ohio University and the Central States conferences. Currently she is a member of both the OH and WV Language Teachers Associations and ACTFL and NNELL as well. Since she has “graduated” from her HS career, Terri devotes more time to promoting the study of languages and cultures, working with both states’ advocacy committees and participating in Language Advocacy Day sponsored by JNCL-NCLIS.
Linda Murphy Marshall, Ph.D. earned a BA in Spanish from the University of Denver, an MA in Spanish, and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature, both from St. Louis University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She completed more than half of a second Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (French, German, and Russian) at Washington University in St. Louis before relocating to the East Coast. She also earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Dr. Marshall worked both as a senior language analyst and senior intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency during a career spanning more than thirty years.
At NSA she initially worked with Spanish, Portuguese, and French, but later studied and worked with a number of African languages including two South African “click” languages: Xhosa and Sotho. She went on to study and work with Shona (Zimbabwe), Swahili (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and elsewhere), and Amharic (Ethiopia).
During the course of her career at NSA, she traveled to Africa on more than a dozen TDYs, many of them during hazardous conditions: following the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya by Al-Qaeda; during the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo; in the midst of a coup attempt in Zambia, and immediately following the end of apartheid in South Africa. She was part of a team accompanying former President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Tanzania. In addition, she traveled to Ethiopia twice, to Swaziland, and went on multiple language immersion trips to South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, and Portugal.
From 2009 to 2013, she split her time between NSA and the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language/CASL, where she worked as a Senior Research Analyst, focusing on sub-Saharan African languages.]
In addition to her work as a translator and linguist, Dr. Marshall earned an MFA in Writing in 2018 and has had several dozen essays published in literary journals. Her memoir is being published in July of 2022: Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery. She is in the final stages of editing a second memoir about her numerous work trips to Africa, to Spain, and to Brazil, entitled: Through the Windows of Words: A Memoir.
Laura K. Murray, Ph.D., is a native of the District of Columbia where she attended local public schools. She earned a BA in Anthropology from Rice University, Houston, TX, and a Ph.D. in Oriental Studies, specializing in Modern Chinese History, from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Her education included intensive study of Chinese, including two years in Taiwan at the Inter-University Program in Chinese Language Studies in Taipei (Stanford Center), and additional study at Northwest University in Xi’an, China. Dr. Murray was a career employee of the National Security Agency from 1985 until her retirement in 2018. Her career spanned language-focused assignments in operations, management, research, and education and training, in locations both in the U.S. and overseas. Significant positions included serving as the Deputy Dean of the Center for Language at the National Cryptologic School (NCS), the training arm of NSA, as well as the Technical Director for the College of Language and Area Studies at the NCS.
She also held positions as Technical Director for the Center for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland, directing multiple language research projects, and as Director of the Foreign Language Program Office of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) overseeing language operations for the intelligence community. In that position she launched the STARTALK program, a new effort under the National Security Language Initiative, to provide summer language learning opportunities in languages critical to national security, as well as professional development for teachers of those languages.
From its start in 2007 to date, STARTALK has provided training for more than 70,000 participants, including over 13,000 teachers, in all 50 states and DC. Dr. Murray’s career has been recognized by numerous awards, including the Sydney Jaffe Award, from NSA, for outstanding contributions to the cryptologic language field; the A. Ronald Walton Award from the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages, in recognition of a career of distinguished service on behalf of the less-commonly taught languages; the inaugural Foreign Language Lifetime Achievement Award from ODNI; and the Exceptional Civilian Service Award from NSA.
Gregory J. Nedved, President and Chair of the Board of Trustees, has been affiliated since 2008 with NML, where he has served in various capacities (exhibit designer, docent, newsletter editor, associate, trustee, secretary). He led the effort to create NML’s unique International Flag of Language in 2008. An award winning Defense Department historian, he has nearly 30 years of experience with Chinese-Mandarin as a military and government linguist, translator, interpreter, instructor, and freelancer.
He has been a two-time president of the Defense Department’s Crypto-Linguistic Association, a professional language organization, and continues to run the organization’s newsletter. He is interested in the preservation of Native American languages and culture, having helped fund a Mi’kmaq (Nova Scotia/New Brunswick) language preservation DVD (cartoon) in 2006 (he had earlier helped fund a library on the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation in his home state of South Dakota).
He has written books and articles on topics as diverse as vexillology, presidential trivia, steamboats and Chinese history. He is currently a docent at the National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade, Maryland. He has a B.A. from Saint Vincent College in history, M.A. from Hawaii Pacific University in diplomacy and military studies and is a graduate of the Naval War College Fleet Seminar Program and the University of Chicago’s Advanced Translation Certification Program.
Jill Robbins, Ph.D., Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, develops online learning materials for English learners. She is currently working with the U.S Agency for Global Media as a Language Learning Specialist. She has taught language learners and teachers in the U.S., Japan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, and China. Her research explores language learning strategies and metacognition.
Dr. Robbins is the co-author of Integrating EFL Standards into Chinese Classroom Settings, Impact Listening 2, and The Learning Strategies Handbook. Dr. Robbins has served on the NML Board of Trustees from 2007 and helps maintain the NML website. She earned a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University.