Carlie Wilmans

Founder + Founding Trustee

Carlie Wilmans has deep roots in the arts, with ancestors who played an active part in the California art scene dating back to the Gold Rush. She earned an undergraduate degree in art history from Sonoma State University and subsequently went on to study pre-Columbian art at the graduate level at the University of Texas, Austin. In 2003, she began her current post as director of the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, a granting foundation that supports the arts in the Bay Area. In addition to her work with the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and the 500 Capp Street Foundation, Ms. Wilmans has served as a trustee of both California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art since 2006. She is also trustee emeritus of the American Conservatory Theater, for which she served as an active trustee from 2005 through 2013.