About Diana

Mrs. MacArthur’s professional and volunteer lives have, over the years, taken parallel paths, each reinforcing the other. She co-founded and was Chair and CEO of Dynamac Corporation, a science, engineering, and technology company, whose clients included more than 20 U.S. government agencies, such as NASA, from which it received numerous awards. Previously, she was an early member of the Peace Corps, serving in senior-level positions, traveling to Iran, Turkey, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Colombia. She also managed for GE a national health education and information clearing house and outreach center under contract to NIH.  

In recognition of her expertise in science and technology policy and technology transfer, she was appointed by President Clinton to the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). She participated in studies on energy, the environment, biodiversity, national security, and information infrastructure protection. In recognition of her work in the Peace Corps, the Girl Scouts of the USA, and with a national organization of inner-city youth gangs incorporated by the law firm of Hogan & Hartson in Washington D.C., she was appointed by President Johnson to the President’s Council on Youth Opportunity. In the mental health field, she served as a Trustee of the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas for 25 years and subsequently the Menninger-Baylor College of Medicine-The Methodist Hospital Foundation in Houston, Texas.

In addition, Mrs. MacArthur served on the Board of Visitors of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI); the Board of Directors of the Science & Technology Corporation at UNM; the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute; and the Board of Directors and President of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation; the Executive Committee of the Business-Higher Education Forum; and the Advisory Board of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. She was also on the Advisory Board to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Board of Directors of The Atlantic Council, and the Business Advisory Committee to the Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at the University of Denver Graduate School of International Studies. 

Mrs. MacArthur has a B.A. from Vassar College (Phi Beta Kappa), majoring in economics, and spent her junior year studying at the University of Geneva and Graduate Institute of International Studies. She was among the first U.S. high school students selected by the American Field Service to live with families in France. She received the 1993 KPMG Peat Marwick High Tech Entrepreneur Award. In 2006, she received UMBI’s first Biotechnology Industry Award. She presently is an Emeritus Board member of the Santa Fe Opera and an honorary advisor to the Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation. 

After the sale of Dynamac in 2010, Mrs. MacArthur used her broad experience, in areas such as corporate management, science and technology, education, community development, and foreign relations, to embark on a school building project in Pakistan where her daughter had taught school. As a private citizen, she financed and shepherded the construction of the Center for Educational Excellence, in the village of MurtazaAbad, in the Hunza Valley of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. The Center is a 23,000-sq.-ft. reinforced concrete structure that is earthquake-resistant, environmentally friendly, and energy-efficient. It serves pre-K through 12th-grade students, male and female, regardless of religious affiliation, using state of the art pedagogical techniques and curricula. The Center has set the standard as the best constructed building in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It is now a part of the Aga Khan Educational Services, Pakistan. 

In reality, the Center is a community development project, with the school serving as an anchor for creating a vital civil society, empowering people, providing economic opportunity, and connecting the local community to established academic and economic institutions across Pakistan. In the future, the community can help itself because of the financial and construction management expertise it gained from working with U.S. and Pakistani consultants. The Center also demonstrates, in a region now largely influenced by China, what a local community can achieve with the right kind of U.S. private and government (USAID) assistance. This is bringing peoples of the world together at its best! 

Contact Diana at dmacarthur@kewa.com.