New York Museum Announces Strawberry Festival Luncheon

Nancy Newcomb is a former senior executive of Citigroup, where she had a wide variety of global responsibilities, including principal financial officer responsible for worldwide treasury, and co-head of the multinational corporate client business. She retired in 2004 and is a director of DirecTV Group Inc., Moody's and Sysco Corporations and a trustee of the Van Leer Group Foundation, the Netherlands. She has served on numerous non-profit boards, including that of the New-York Historical Society, where she was Board chair for 8 years and is currently co-chair of the executive committee. She is a member of the executive committee of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Foundation for Landscape Studies and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. She is a graduate of Connecticut College, holds an MA from Boston University and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School executive program.

Linda Fairstein, former prosecutor and best-selling crime novelist, will deliver the keynote address. Ms. Fairstein is the author of ten crime novels featuring Manhattan Prosecutor Alex Cooper, the most recent of which, Killer Heat, was a New York Times bestseller. For three decades, from 1972 until 2002, she served in the office of the New York County District Attorney's Office, where she was Chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit. In that position, Ms. Fairstein supervised the investigation and trial of every Manhattan case involving sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and homicide arising out of these crimes.

The first recorded gathering of the New-York Historical Society's Strawberry Festival was on June 15, 1856 in Washington Square Park, where guests enjoyed a stimulating lecture and strawberry feast. This rite of spring disappeared in the 1960s, but was revived in May of 2000. Previous Strawberry Festivals have honored Hillary Clinton, Betsy Gotbaum, Michelle Obama, Anna Quindlen, Leslie Stahl, Christine Quinn and Wendy Wasserstein. -- www.nyhistory.org