The Inspiration
In July 2000, shortly after her mother’s death, Darlene Chandler Bassett arrived at Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico for a women’s retreat, a box of Kleenex and a copy of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own in her backpack. She retired from her career of twenty years as a corporate executive for entrepreneur Eli Broad five years prior, and had been seeking new passion and direction ever since.
Also arriving at Ghost Ranch was Mary Johnson, a woman who had recently left quite a different career, having served the same twenty years as a nun in the congregation founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The parish church where she worked sent her to the retreat for a week of continuing education. The first evening Mary announced, “This retreat was my fifth choice. It’s very difficult for me to trust older women, and I’m not sure why I’m here.”
Ghost Ranch’s oddest couple had just met.
During an evening session focused on midlife possibilities Mary told of her desire to write her story, asking the universe for “a room of my own and the opportunity to write.” At that moment Darlene found her passion, Mary found a benefactor, and A Room of Her Own Foundation found its’ beginning in the realization of Virginia Woolf’s words, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.” Recognizing a new calling, Darlene offered to fund Mary’s pursuit of a fine arts degree if Mary would help her create a template for an organization that would offer other women the privacy, finances, and creative support to pursue their work.
Just like that, A Room of Her Own Foundation was born. “I decided I would finance Mary’s art, and if I could do it for her, we could do it for other women,” Chandler Bassett said. Together they developed a model for a foundation which would give creative women the money and space they needed to pursue their creative vision.
Today Johnson holds an MFA from Goddard College in Vermont, and is currently writing the memoir of her years working with Mother Teresa, tentatively titled An Unquenchable Thirst: One Woman’s Extraordinary Journey of Faith, Hope, and Clarity. Chandler Bassett continues to bring a unique combination of corporate and nonprofit management experience to the arts. She is committed to building an efficient public foundation which uses performance standards typically reserved for the for-profit world of business; but above all else, she hopes the foundation will help “women of genius, just beyond sight and hearing, who don’t have the time, privacy or money to devote to their art.”
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