Sara Maud Lydiatt-Vanier became a Jerome Foundation Member in 2009. As a direct family relation to Jerome she grew up appreciating his life, work and legacy. On a daily basis, she is surrounded by his art; Jerome Hill’s paintings decorate her office. Lydiatt-Vanier also has a strong connection to the Camargo foundation, having spent a year living in France and often visiting the Foundation over the last 25 years.
In her own professional life Lydiatt-Vanier owns an art gallery in Montreal, Canada that specializes in photography, and oversees her family businesses serving as administrator for some 20 companies in the areas of farming, forestry and land development in Canada, the USA, and New Zealand. Lydiatt-Vanier also serves as director of the Hill Farm Historical Society, the Organix Foundation, and the Kenauk Institute.
Lydiatt-Vanier has a Masters of Arts in the history of the decorative arts, design history, and material culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York, USA (2002). Her love for trains, travel, design, and her own family history, inspired her MA thesis: Transcontinental Travels: Two American Limited Trains, 1900-1914, which examined the interiors of early twentieth-century transcontinental railcars, exploring the relationship between railcar design features that impacted early tourism, comfort of travel, and had influence on the newly opened American West. Lydiatt-Vanier has BA in English Literature (1994) and a BFA in Art History from Concordia University (1999). She is married and has two young children.