Lola Van Wagenen
| Lola Van Wagenen | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 1938 (age 78) Provo, Utah, United States |
| Occupation | Historian, activist |
| Spouse(s) |
Robert Redford (1958–1985) George Burrill (2002–present) |
| Children |
Amy Redford August Scott Redford Shauna Schlosser James Redford |
Lola Van Wagenen is an American historian and environmental activist. In 1970 she co-founded Consumer Action Now, a not-for-profit educational organization, and in 1995 co-founded Clio Visualizing History, Inc. to promote history education. (In 2003 Clio changed its corporate structure becoming a not-for-profit organization providing educational films and online history exhibits and resources).
Van Wagenen was born in Provo, Utah in December 1938. She was raised in a Mormon family, but as an adult has explored other sources of religious and philosophical thought.
She met her first husband, actor Robert Redford, in Los Angeles in 1957. They were married on September 12, 1958, in Provo, Utah (following a secret wedding a few months earlier in Las Vegas, Nevada) They were divorced in 1985. The couple had four children.
Van Wagenen received her bachelor's degree at Vermont College in 1982 and her master's degree in Public History at New York University (NYU)in 1984. Ten years later she completed her Ph.D. in American History at NYU. Her doctoral dissertation was published as a book, Sister-Wives and Suffragists: Polygamy and the Politics of Woman Suffrage 1870-1896, in 2003. In October 2012 she received the Distinguished Alumni/Alumnae Achievement Award from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at NYU.
She married George Burrill, Ph.D., the founder of the international development firm ARD, on July 17, 2002, in Shelburne, Vermont. Burrill is the Honorary Consul from New Zealand to Vermont. He was a US delegate to the United States New Zealand Partnership Forum in 2011, held in Christchurch, New Zealand, when a devastating earthquake struck the city. After his return to Vermont, the couple organized a successful fundraiser which netted over $70,000 for earthquake recovery programs. Van Wagenen serves on the Robertson Scholars selection committee, which grants scholarships to international students at Duke University and University of North Carolina. The couple established the New American Scholarship Fund at Champlain College in 2012.
Since the 1970s, Van Wagenen has served on the Board of Directors or in other capacities with various charitable organizations, including Shelburne Farms, the Vermont Historical Society and the New York Women’s Foundation. She served on the Task Force on Appropriate Technology with the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment in 1977. In 1979 she was a member of the National Commission on the International Year of the Child.
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