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A native Washingtonian, Jennifer Cover Payne, is the first African American professor tenured in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Vermont (UVM) where she was an associate professor of theatre and associate producer and director of the Champlain Shakespeare Festival. At UVM Jennifer directed student productions, created a university-wide Harlem Renaissance program; was credited for bringing African American theatre to Vermont; and performed one woman shows through-out the United States and Oxford England. On her return to the District of Columbia she was a DC Arts Commissioner, curator of education for the Bethune Museum and Archives, and the Executive Director of Camp Fire Boys & Girls of the Potomac Area Council. For the next 24 years, until she retired, Jennifer served as the President of Culture Capital/Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, an umbrella service organization that created and facilitated arts promotion and management assistance for over three hundred arts and culture organizations and institutions and individual artists in DC, MD, and VA. Currently Jennifer serves on the Kennedy Center’s Community Advisory Board where she is co-chair of the Civic Alliances committee. She is also a consultant for the Clemmons Family Farm in Charlotte, Vermont, a visual artist, develops and directs arts programs for her church and is a yoga instructor. She is married, mother of two grown children, a daughter-in-law and one grandchild.