Abigail Feder-Kane

Senior Director of Institutional Support

Prior to coming to Barnard in June 2005, Abby worked at WNYC, New York Public Radio, most recently as Director of Foundation and Government Relations.  During her 5-year tenure at WNYC, she served in a variety of administrative and operational positions, including Director of Special Projects, in which capacity she oversaw the station’s facility search and participated in an internal review of programming. From 1995-1999, she was the Assistant to the Labor Operations Director at the Metropolitan Opera, providing crucial research for the negotiation of 24 collective bargaining agreements with 18 unions. Abby holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Theatre from Northwestern University – her research focused on ways in which femininity has been constructed in popular culture – and a B.A. in History from Swarthmore College.
 
Did you know that Abby...

• Studied Chinese as an undergraduate and traveled to China in 1987.
• Got first post-college job because she was called on stage by Penn & Teller on the opening night of their first Broadway show.
• Worked as an off-off-Broadway stage manager in the late 80s and might very well have become a professional stage manager had George H.W. Bush not won the 1988 Presidential election (there is a connection, but you’ll have to ask her about that one).
• Her husband and she had their co-op board interview on September 11, 2001 (btw, they got the apartment). 
• In 1992, she wrote a seminar paper on media representations of Ladies Figure Skating, because she wanted an excuse to watch the competitions.  That essay was subsequently published in an academic  journal, anthologized in three books, excerpted in the Village Voice and led to her covering the Gay Games figure skating competition for the Voice, being quoted in Sports Illustrated and appearing on NPR’s On the Media.