Adrienne Huffman of the State Museum Foundation

Star Profile Adrienne Huffman The State Museum opened about 20 years ago, and now it's about to open an astronomy section with a planetarium and an observatory and support spaces, all for $23,500,000. The additions together are called Windows to New Worlds.

Spearheading the day- to- day fund raising is the executive director of the South Carolina Museum Foundation, Adrienne Huffman.

Huffman was born in Columbia while her mother worked in the State House and her father was a Marine recently returned from South Vietnam. She has an older brother, Jim, by a few years.

Both brother and mother are going into business together in the 800 block of Meeting Street (across from What- A- Burger). The business is a retail operation to be called the Village Dollar Shoppe. Nothing should sell for more than $5.

AfterHuffman's mother divorced and remarried, grammar-school- age Huffman and her brother moved to Minneapolis with their mother and stepfather, who was working with 3M Corporation. After four years in Minneapolis, the company asked Huffman's family to move to Duluth, Ga., about 25 miles northeast of Atlanta.

Huffman began high school in Duluth, but she moved with her family to Fairfax, Va. For her senior year she was able to return to Duluth High School, where she played varsity soccer.

A high school graduate, Huffman moved to Columbia to attend USC as a journalism major on the advertising management track. She stayed with journalism, but she shifted to advertising.

During her college summers, she interned at Columbia's Newman Saylor & Gregory, a large ad and PR firm now called Chernoff Newman. And each spring while in college, Huffman worked for S.C. Representative Annette Young from Summerville.

Huffman was also the social chair of her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta.

Soon after graduating with her journalism degree, Huffman went to work for Georgia- Pacific in building supply sales. She lived in Roanoke, Va. for a year in training.

Still with G- P, Huffman moved to the Marietta, Ga. operation. She actually commuted from Vinings, her home, and she found culture and entertainment in nearby Atlanta.

Having sold enough oriented strand board, Huffman moved to Montgomery, Ala. to edit a bi- monthly magazine for the Alabama Bankers Association and to serve as its assistant legislative lobbyist. Following her stint with the Bankers Association, Huffman spent her work days in contract lobbying.

Huffman's Alabama lobbying put her in touch with Columbia- based legislative lobbying firm Capitol Consultants, where she worked for seven years. While with Capitol Consultants, Huffman helped start the South Carolina Museum Foundation in 2001.

She left Capitol Consultants in early 2006 to work full- time as the executive director of the new foundation.

Huffman is also raising the funds for an operating endowment at the museum. The immediate goal is to put $2.5 million at work in investments to help with the museum's operations.

On her own time, Huffman enjoys her two dogs, an English bulldog and a half- lab/half- boxer she adopted at Pets Inc. Her dog walks/runs probably put a little more than two miles every day on her personal pedometer.