Muffie Cabot

A member of an American family descended from passengers on the Mayflower, Cabot grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was educated at various boarding schools, and graduated from Smith College.

[1] Her father, Richard Hobart, was an art collector and an investment banker with Loomis Sayles while her mother, Janet Elliott Wulsin, was a former explorer who undertook several National Geographic Society-financed expeditions to Tibet and Outer Mongolia.

[5] Despite being a lifelong Democrat and personal friend of the Kennedy family, she was appointed social secretary to fellow Smith College alumna Nancy Reagan in 1981, serving the First Lady until 1985.

[5][4] She went on to sit on the boards of trustees of the Phillips Collection and the Eureka Foundation, and served as president of the Washington office of the public relations firm of Rogers & Cowan.

[2] In 2003, the Aperture Foundation published Muffie Cabot's Vanished Kingdoms: A Woman Explorer in Tibet, China, and Mongolia, 1921-1925, an account of her mother's travels in early 20th-century Asia.