The Nominations Committee offers this slate of officers and board members for election at the 2024 Annual Meeting:
Co-Presidents
Marla Barthen is a registered nurse and healthcare advocate. She has been a member of the ERA NC Alliance since 2019 and has served in several capacities before her current role as co-president. Her nursing career spans three decades and includes critical care, education, management, and community nursing. Marla’s vast experience led her to work in the tv/film industry as a medic RN and consultant. She’s been featured by the American Nurses Association and the North Carolina Nurses Association. Marla uses her platform to raise awareness for gender equality and often enlists her film industry colleagues to support the ERA.
Marla is the past co-president of the League of Women Voters of the Lower Cape Fear. During her tenure she became a field instructor for the University of North Carolina Wilmington and remains active with the student body. Notably, Marla took part in Governor Roy Cooper’s roundtable discussion on SB 20 and helped organize the rally in Wilmington to oppose the limits placed on women and healthcare providers. She is a familiar face and speaker in her community, committed to making Wilmington and North Carolina a healthier and more equitable place to live.
Audrey Muck was among the ERA-NC Alliance’s founders in 2016. She has remained active in the Alliance ever since, serving as VP for Communications, Treasurer, webmaster and member of the PR Committee. She came to activism through the National Organization for Women, first in South Carolina and then as president of the Triad Chapter of NC NOW, and currently serves as Treasurer for the NC NOW PAC. She also served a term on the National NOW Board of Directors. Equality and fairness are her bedrock values.
Her career was in public radio and television for in both the Carolinas, and served as news director for WFDD-FM in Winston-Salem. Audrey currently runs Muddy Creek Studios, producing videos, podcasts, online media, and websites. Her COVID project was to produce a documentary series on women’s rights activists in South Carolina, called “Brazen Belles!” She sings, plays bass and flute with her husband, Eric, in their rock band, OverReaction Jackson.
Vice-President, Membership
Lori Bunton is a retired pharmaceutical executive and longtime activist for women’s rights. She spent nearly 28 years working in established companies as large as Eli Lilly and in start-up biopharmaceutical organizations. Her career spanned sales, marketing and market research. Lori has previously served on the board of Planned Parenthood in TN. In N.C., she was Secretary and Membership Chair with the National Organization for Women and President of the North Carolina Alliance for Healthy Communities in Raleigh. She is past Co-President of the ERA-NC Alliance, where she has been a Board member for seven years, serving as Secretary and VP Membership for the Alliance and recently resumed a Board VP role helping with membership. Lori also serves on the board of ProChoice NC and as VP of Programming with AAUW ODC and recently joined the board of WomenNC. Her other volunteer work has included career coaching with Dress for Success in Durham and moderating panel discussions for the social club, Gray Matters.
Lori has a B.S. in Business Administration and Marketing from the University of Tennessee. Lori has lived all over the U.S. and in Germany and now resides in the Raleigh-Durham area since 2007.
Vice-President, Public Relations
Judy Lotas was a founding partner of Lotas Minard Patton McIver, woman-run ad agency in NYC. Closing after 25 years, the partners went separate ways, Judy to Duck, NC. After serving as co-president of the Dare County League of Women Voters, Judy served on the LWVNC state board and continues to serve the League locally as ERA Chair. Judy’s been fighting for equal rights since she insisted on pushing her own stroller at age 2. Currently she is on the board and VP of Public Relations for the ERA-NC Alliance.
Vice-President, Legislation
Sherry MacQueen is a Civil Engineer with a BSCE from NC State University (1981). She moved to North Carolina in 1971 with her husband and two young daughters. She has lived in Raleigh since. A proud feminist her entire life. One of her fondest memories is marching for passage of the ERA in 1972 when the North Carolina Legislature was voting for ratification. Although the ERA was not ratified then, being part of that movement was life changing. It forever imprinted that the ongoing fight for women’s rights and other civil rights is the pathway to forming the more perfect union that we all deserve.
Sherry is Co-Chair of the NC LWV ERA League Action Team (LAT) responsible for organizing and supporting ERA LATs throughout NC. She was awarded the NC-LWV Leadership Award in 2019. She has been active with the ERA-NC Alliance since 2017, serving two terms on the Board of Directors. On the Legislative Committee, she led the Central Region ERA efforts. She received the Susan B. Anthony Award in recognition of her dedication to the vision of Equal Rights for Women. Currently, she is Acting Legislative Vice President and Co-Chair of the 2024 Candidate Survey and Get Out The Vote (GOTV) Committees.
Treasurer
Virginia is a native of Alabama and has called North Carolina home for the majority of her life. She received her Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1979 and was a founding member of UAB’s Society of Women Engineers chapter. At that time women could be members only of the women’s auxiliary of professional organizations. Virginia is retired from the Volvo Group where her service spanned nearly 40 years working in product development, manufacturing, and business/strategy development. She is a Certified Supply Chain Professional. Based in Carrboro, NC, she has also lived and worked in Sweden.
Virginia is the President of the Women’s Forum of NC, a Lead Organization of the ERA-NC Alliance. She is a founding member of the ERA-NC Alliance and has served as an officer and board member. Virginia is a Past President of North Carolina Business and Professional Women (BPW/NC) and is currently serving as the Chair of the BPW/NC Board of Trustees, a Director on the Board of the BPW/NC Foundation and Co-Treasurer of BPW of the Triad. Virginia is a member of AAUW/Tar Heel Branch and has served on the AAUW/NC State Board. The ERA, Equal Pay, and anti-racist work are her passions. She is dedicated to advocating for women and involving them in the legislative process to improve conditions for all women and their families. When not advocating for women and their families, Virginia focuses on hobbies of weaving, genealogy, and spending time with her husband Michael finding new walking trails.
Secretary
Elaine Okal – Bio and photo coming soon!
Board Members
Sarah Ludington is a respected scholar in the fields of free speech and privacy law, and is a clinical professor of law and director of the First Amendment Clinic at Duke Law. She served as associate dean of academic affairs at Campbell University’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, where she also taught courses in constitutional law, information privacy, and civil procedure. She was previously an associate professor of law at Campbell Law, where she was granted tenure in 2015. She taught legal writing at Duke Law from 2001 to 2008.
Ludington’s work has examined the implications of tenure for the speech of professors and methods for deterring the misuse of personally identifiable information. She has also co-authored articles about the history of sovereign debt repudiation and the doctrine of odious debts, and published a chapter on the history of USDA farm and food subsidies in Food Fights: How the Past Matters in Contemporary Food Debates (UNC Press 2017). Prior to starting her academic career, Ludington practiced law in Washington, D.C., and New York. She clerked for Judges Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Joyce Hens Green of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She also has significant experience teaching literature and writing in secondary schools.
Ludington received her JD with high honors and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. She received the Hervey M. Johnson writing prize for best published note, was a note editor of the law journal, and received the American Jurisprudence Award for Constitutional Law.
Lisa Lukasik is Associate Professor of Law at Campbell University’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, and Director of the Richardson Family Education Equity Clinic.
Professor Lukasik’s teaching and scholarship reflect her 20-plus years of experience in education law. She regularly teaches Public School Law, Special Education Law and Torts in addition to a course on Education as a Human Right in the law school’s study-abroad program at Cambridge University. She also serves as the Director of the Richardson Family Education Equity Clinic.
Lukasik has received multiple teaching awards. She earned the 2022 and 2020 Pro Bono Professor of the Year Award, the 2018 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 2011-2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research based upon her contributions to legal scholarship in the area of public-school law.
In August 2023, Lukasik was appointed to a two-year term on the North Carolina General Assembly’s General Statutes Commission. This appointment came following her work as a pro bono education-law expert on behalf of the ERA-NC Alliance Task Force, for whom she reviewed North Carolina’s education-related general statutes, including Chapter 115C on public K-12 education, for compliance with the Equal Rights Amendment.
Audrey Snyder is an attorney at Ward Black Law supporting the firm in the areas of injury claims, including defective products, occupational diseases, and workers’ compensation. She engages her passion for helping the defenseless and has a desire to “stand up for the little guy.”
Audrey began her undergraduate studies at Campbell University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Psychology Summa Cum Laude. She went on to pursue law at the Campbell University School of Law, obtaining a Juris Doctor and graduating Cum Laude. Audrey served as the President of the North Carolina Association for Women Attorneys in 2023 and has been named by the National Trial Lawyers as “Top 40 Under 40” attorneys in North Carolina. She is the 2024 Chair of the NCAJ Women’s Caucus and was named by North Carolina Lawyers Weekly as a “Rising Star” in 2021.
Audrey currently serves on the ERA-NC Alliance General Statutes Task Force and has provided strong legal support in working with the NC General Statutes Commission.