Attorney and civic leader Maria Hummer-Tuttle has been elected to the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Hummer-Tuttle practiced law for more than two decades with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, a Los Angeles–based firm currently of more than 350 attorneys. A former chair of the Management Committee and co-managing partner, she is now retired.
Myriad policy, civic, educational, and arts organizations have benefited from Hummer-Tuttle's leadership. She serves on the advisory board of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School and on the program advisory committee for the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands. She is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy and the Council on Foreign Relations. She has served on the boards of many organizations, such as the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, and Children's Institute International. Her board memberships in the arts include the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, and have also included UCLA's Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center (AHMACC) and the Music Center—the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County—and its support group, the Blue Ribbon. In the field of education, she has served on the boards of Scripps College, Mount St. Mary's College, Pitzer College, the Independent Colleges of Southern California, and the Women's Leadership Board of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Hummer-Tuttle interrupted her 36-year record of civic leadership in Southern California from 2005 to 2009, when she and her husband, the Honorable Robert H. Tuttle, lived overseas while he was Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. During her years in London, Hummer-Tuttle and architectural historian Marcus Binney coauthored Winfield House, the first book on the storied Regent's Park mansion where U.S. ambassadors to the United Kingdom live. On returning to Los Angeles, she created a program through the Hummer Tuttle Foundation to help young British students experience the United States.
A native of Southern California, Hummer-Tuttle lives in Los Angeles. She earned her JD at the UCLA School of Law and her BA at Scripps College.
The Board of Trustees is the governing body of Caltech. The Board is led by Kent Kresa, chair, and vice chairs David L. Lee and Ronald K. Linde, and is currently composed of 41 trustees, 13 senior trustees, 25 life members, and one honorary life member.
Written by Ann Motrunich