As the senior director of development at Sixth & I, Amelia Stanley would often say, “Show me the money.”
The bubbly 39-year-old loved fundraising and all things art and musical theater. So when she died of breast cancer a year ago, the staff at Sixth & I knew just how to memorialize her: with the Amelia Stanley Fund for the Arts.
“It was so shocking and sad to lose Amelia, and we knew there would be an outpouring of support for her and us because we loved her so much,” Heather Moran, the CEO of Sixth & I, said in an interview.
Moran spoke with Stanley’s parents and sister, Lucy, as she put together an announcement about Stanley’s death.
“It was just very clear that Amelia would want to use this as an opportunity to get as much support for things she loved as she could,” Moran said. “So it very, very naturally came to pass that we would create a fund to support the things that were important to her.”
The fund recognizes Stanley’s “lifelong dedication to advancing culture, community and philanthropy,” according to Sixth & I’s website.
Stanley was born in Bethesda in 1985 and her family belonged to Washington Hebrew Congregation in D.C. Stanley’s father, Gary Stanley, said he had always enjoyed musical theater and performing arts, a passion he wished to pass down to his daughters.
The Stanleys would regularly visit Imagination Stage and Adventure Theatre, both local children’s theaters — Amelia became a board member at Imagination Stage decades later.
Amelia joined a children’s theater at the start of her middle school years. Gary Stanley recalled taking the family to downtown D.C. to see one of her performances, thinking that Amelia would be part of a choir.
“Much to our surprise … she was brought up as a featured soloist,” Gary Stanley said. “We were proud parents.”
Amelia continued pursuing this passion through middle and high school and went on to graduate from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in arts administration and theater education.
She held positions at Lincoln Center in New York, Avalon Consulting Group, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s PlayMakers Repertory Company.
It was at UNC-Chapel Hill that Amelia was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer in 2019. Amelia continued to live her life and work while receiving treatment for her cancer. Her mother, Libby, had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1991 — both Amelia and Libby had the BRCA gene mutation that is more prevalent among Ashkenazi Jewish women compared to the general population.
In the fall of 2021, Amelia joined Sixth & I, a place that made her feel right at home as a Jewish arts enthusiast.
“She loved it,” Gary Stanley said. “She made an incredible contribution to what Sixth & I does [as] their head of development. You can clearly tell all of her colleagues admired and loved her because she was one of those special people who just lived life as fully as possible. She was enthusiastic about so much and made you enthusiastic about what she was.”
“Amelia … was very proud of all the work we do,” Moran said. “Because she was a theater kid and theater adult, the thing that lit her up more than anything else was when she saw her pop culture stars in our sanctuary.”
She added that Amelia had been excited for Sixth & I’s author talks, such as the events featuring TV writer and producer Phil Rosenthal and journalist Jenna Bush Hager.
“Those events brought her so much joy and energy that it felt exactly right that [an arts fund] is how we could honor Amelia,” Moran said.
Things took a turn in October 2023. Experiencing complications from a cancer drug, Amelia checked herself into Sibley Memorial Hospital. When she was discharged in December 2023, Amelia returned to her childhood home. At this point, the cancer had metastasized into her brain.
Caregivers visited the Bethesda house twice a day to help Amelia, Gary Stanley said. At the end of January 2024, Amelia’s parents helped her move back into her apartment on Connecticut Avenue, where she continued to receive care.
A caregiver found Amelia unconscious in early March 2024 and she was rushed to the hospital. During this month-long stay, Moran and Rabbi Nora Feinstein of Sixth & I came to visit Amelia nearly every other day.
Amelia died in the wee hours of April 2, 2024. At 4:30 a.m. that day, Moran was among the first people Gary Stanley thought to call. Moran and Feinstein arrived within hours.
“They embraced us as a family, comforted us,” Stanley said of the Sixth & I staff, who created a tribute book for the family in addition to the Fund for the Arts.
“I’m an only child, so I don’t have any immediate family on my side to comfort me. I can say without hesitation [Sixth & I has] been one of the primary sources I’ve leaned on for comfort.”
A year after his daughter’s untimely death, Stanley expressed gratitude for the Amelia Stanley Fund for the Arts, which Moran said will help bring “diverse voices from around the city” to Sixth & I for the talks and entertainment that Amelia so enjoyed.
“Her memory continues to live through that fund,” Stanley said. “And in a way, she continues to contribute to the arts here in Washington.”
“I think Amelia would be proud of us that we’re trying to show her the money,” Moran said.
