Stewart Gamage
Member, The Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership
State Advisory Board
Stewart Gamage joined the University of Virginia in 2008 as the Director of the Morven Project. She is the former Vice President for Public Affairs at the College of William and Mary, where she was responsible for university relations, publications, state and federal government relations and economic development. The Office of Public Affairs is charged with positioning William and Mary in the national marketplace and with its external constituents. She held this post beginning in 1994.
Her experience draws from a wide range of assignments. She has served as Chief Operating Officer of APCO Associates, one of the largest public affairs firms in Washington, D.C.; Policy Director to former House Majority Leader, Dick Gephardt; Director of the Virginia Liaison Office and Senior Assistant to Governors Charles Robb and Gerald Baliles; and Associate Deputy of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House during the Carter Administration. Stewart has also worked as Staff Assistant for the Select Committee on Ethics and Commission on Administrative Review for the U.S. House of Representatives and as Assistant to the Chair of the House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. She was appointed in 1999 by President Bill Clinton to serve on the Commission for Presidential Scholars.
She graduated summa cum laude from William and Mary in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Arts, and earned her MPA from the Washington Public Affairs Center at the University of Southern California in 1979.
In addition to her government experience, Stewart is a founding director of the Phoenix Project, an initiative to prepare Virginia’s next generation of nonprofit leaders while building partnerships between higher education and distressed communities. She serves on the state board of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. At the national level, Stewart was a founding member for Women Executives in State Government and the Democratic Leadership Council. At William and Mary, Stewart has served on the Board of the Society of the Alumni and was Vice Rector of the Board of Visitors.
She is a former W&M Alumni Medallion award recipient and was presented with the Governor’s Award for Community Service by Governor Mark Warner in 2005.
Stewart has two children, Graves and Forbes Tompkins, is married to Joe Stettinius and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Biographical notes provided by the office of Stewart Gamage
