Board of Directors
Dr. Ashley Weedn, MD, MPH has been a Board member since 2019 and currently serves as an Episcopalian and parent alumni. She has had two children who attended SMES for six years; her oldest graduated from SMES in May 2022. Dr. Weedn is a pediatrician, researcher, and Associate Professor at OU Health/OUHSC.
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Amy Costner-Lark serves on the board as a parent. She has one daughter who attends SMES.
Amy is the Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, College of Nursing. In addition to her educational and administrative roles at OU, she also practices as a Family Nurse Practitioner in the Department of Geriatrics.
She is the founder and president of Costner Medical Missions, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization where her team provides medical and dental care in Ecuador, Peru and the Galapagos Islands.
Dr. Linda Mason has an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction. She has been a Board member since 2022 and currently serves as an Episcopalian church member of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church.
She is retired from higher education and public teaching. Her most recent position was Grant Coordinator for the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. She has been a Professor of Education and has provided much professional development for k-12 school and college teachers.
Wes spent 40 years as an Executive & CEO of Chambers of Commerce, Economic Development Organizations and Community Foundations in Kansas City, Baton Rouge, and Ardmore, OK. He is in the Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce Hall of Fame, Oklahoma Economic Development Association Wall of Honor and is recognized as a Life Member of the International Economic Development Council where he was the first recipient of the Leadership in Public Service Award.
In semi-retirement, he is Senior Warden at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church and Chairman of StitchCrew, an organization successfully advancing founders to creating entrepreneurial businesses.
Emily Hendrickson, P.E., ASEP is a Senior Systems Engineer at KBR and parent of a St. Mary’s student. She has served on the board since 2023 as a parent member. Emily has a background in mechanical engineering, focusing on sustainment engineering and cross-disciplinary engineering management. She holds an M.S. in Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. In addition to her work as a systems engineer, Emily serves as a board member for KBR’s internal employee advocacy group, ASPIRE, which seeks to mentor and promote women in leadership within the company.
Denise Kisthardt is new to the board in 2023 and serves as Episcopalian member. Denise and her family have been members of the St. Mary's community since moving to Oklahoma in 2005. Prior to moving to Oklahoma, Denise spent over a decade as a prosecutor and land-use attorney for the City of Phoenix. After staying home full time with her two sons for the better part of a decade, she made the transition to a middle school English teacher, and is in her 10th year of teaching.
Tom is a former SMES parent, his daughter, Mackenzie, attended SMES for six years. This is Tom’s second stint on the Board, having served previously in 2012.
He is an attorney by profession. In addition to being in private practice in Oklahoma City, he retired after 31 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. While a federal attorney, he served a detail to the Department of Justice Office of Legal Education where he planned and taught legal skills and substantive law programs for DOJ attorneys. He later served as the Director for all DOJ legal training and was the DOJ representative for ABA Rule of Law training for Russian and Ukrainian prosecutors after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Tom has regularly taught at DOJ’s National Advocacy Institute on the campus of the University of South Carolina as well as at private continuing legal education courses all over the country. He served in several management positions in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in OKC and was a legal management evaluator for other U.S. Attorneys Offices around the country.
