Diana Phillips

Diana Phillips is Board Chair of FXB USA , which is part of FXB Global, an international not-for-profit organization with over thirty years’ experience in breaking the cycle of poverty, with an emphasis on children. She is also a member of the FXB Global Board which governs the FXB Foundation and therefore all the FXB and François-Xavier Bagnoud NGOs and entities around the world, including FXB Climate Advocates. Additionally, it is linked to the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard, the FXB Center at Rutgers University and FXB Aerospace at the University of Michigan.

From 1985 until her retirement, she worked at Sotheby’s, the international art auction house, where she was an Executive Vice President of the firm and Worldwide Director of Press and Corporate Affairs. In that capacity she oversaw and managed the corporate affairs for the then-public company as well as the international publicity campaigns for Sotheby’s most celebrated auctions. It was in that role that she first met Albina du Boisrouvray, founder of FXB, who had chosen Sotheby’s to auction her collections in 1989, following the tragic death in a helicopter accident of her only child, François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB).

Diana is the President of The Shubert Foundation, the nation’s largest private funder dedicated to unrestricted funding of not-for-profit theatres and dance companies. She is also a Director of The Shubert Organization, the largest theatre owner on Broadway.

Born in Cape Town, Diana left South Africa with her family because of apartheid and emigrated first to London and then to New York. She has a B.A. in Classics from Queens College of The City University of New York and a Master’s Degree in Latin from Brown University . She taught Latin for nine years and, prior to joining Sotheby’s, worked at Hill & Knowlton, the international public relations firm.