Sidney Armstrong was elected as a Trustee of the Greater Montana Foundation in 2008 and appointed as Executive Director in 2011 through 2020 by the Board of Trustees. Ms. Armstrong is a consultant for foundations and non-profits, who lives and works in Helena, Montana.
She was Executive Director of the Montana Community Foundation from 1990 to December, 2001. Earlier she served on the staff of Montana Governor Thomas L. Judge, and as staff for the Montana State Senate. She was also part of Governor Brian Schweitzer’s administration, as a member of his Transition Team, in 2004, temporarily as part of his immediate staff and then as a volunteer Advisor. In 2006, she served as a coordinator for the Governor’s Conversation on Endowments and Philanthropy.
Long active in community affairs, she has most recently has served on the boards of the Montana History Foundation, Humanities Montana and the Holter Art Museum.
She is a native Montanan and a graduate of the International School of Geneva, Switzerland and the University of Montana. Armstrong’s Irish immigrant maternal great-grandparents came in a covered wagon to Virginia City in 1865. Eventually they settled as ranchers on the banks of the Missouri River outside Helena. Her late father, Associated Press newsman Richard K. O’Malley, grew up in the mining city of Butte and his book, Mile High, Mile Deep, recounting his youth, was republished by well-known painter and publisher, Russell Chatham and then recently re-issued in a quality paperback, 2018. She is the mother of four, the grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of one, born in 2018.