Describe any previous branch positions and years you served.
Branch President (currently in first term)
Administrative Vice President (one two- year term)
Vice President for Programs (two two-year terms)
Describe any AAUW California positions and years you served.
Member – Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee (currently in first term)
Member – Leadership Development Committee (one two-year term)
Member – International Advocacy Committee (two two-year terms)
Talk about any AAUW California conventions you attended in the last five years.
Convention 2019 – As a member of the Leadership Development Committee Panel, I presented my proposal to use community mapping to identify potential leaders.
Talk about any pertinent community activities or connections and their corresponding dates.
Delegate – United Nations Commission on Status of Women 2018, 2019, 2020
Founder & Board Member – Progressive Oakland Women Empowering Reform (POWER) 2010 – present
Board Member – STAND (formerly Battered Women’s Alternatives) 2000 -2005
Founder & Block Captain – Sheffield Avenue Neighborhood Association 1993-2000
Talk about any AAUW National conventions you have attended.
None attended.
Describe any AAUW National positions and years you served.
None.
Describe your employment/professional experience, including current employment.
- Retired June 2020
- Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies Diablo Valley College
- Assistant Director for Women’s Health Massachusetts Department of Welfare
- Health Analyst U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare
- Assistant Director San Francisco Chinatown Family Planning
- Director of Social Services Providence Hospital, Oakland
- Chief Medical Social Worker University of California, SF Hemodialysis Unit
- Job Development Project National Urban League, San Francisco
Are you available to visit branches statewide?
YES
Describe any other special skills or experience.
- My Academic Background
- Ph.D. UCLA in Anthropology
- MSW University of California, Berkeley
- Fulbright Scholar in Italy
- Examples of Original Programs I Have Developed
- Oakland Progressive Women Empowering Reform (POWER) Co-Founder and Board Member
This organization annually recognizes an outstanding Oakland woman who served her community. In memory of Delilah Beasley, the first Black woman to be published regularly in a major metropolitan newspaper.
- People to People Tours to Cuba
Organized and led eleven tours in conjunction with the Cuban Government before travel to Cuba was curtailed by the U.S. government.
- Service Learning in South Africa
Volunteers lived with South African families and worked for local nonprofit organizations.
- Service Learning in Vietnam
This program is still in the planning stages.
- Sardinian Nuraghe Project, Sardinia, Italy
Recruiting paying volunteers and ESL students from The University of California enabled me to fund and conduct archaeological research and tutor village children in English in exchange for housing for my U.S. team
- Organized an Archaeological Field School on Mount Diablo, California as the first archaeologist to excavate in the state park with students and volunteers.
Give your reasons for running for this office.
I would bring to the position of Director an eclectic background as coalition builder and community organizer, anthropologist, women studies professor and innovator of programs to effectuate social change and cultural understanding. My academic and professional career has been predicated on implementing the kinds of intrinsic changes AAUW advocates at the national, state and local level. However, while AAUW of California reinforces its impact through national and state coalitions, there are many areas in California where our organization remains relatively unknown. Accordingly, one of my goals as a Director would be to expand our footprint on the local level where real changes are needed. I never want to be in a community where a branch exists and hear the question: “What is AAUW?”
I have been schooled in the Saul Alinsky method of community organizing which emphasizes democratic decision making and the development of indigenous leadership and coalition building. I learned these techniques working on my Masters Degree in Social Work Administration and Community Organization, and used them as a volunteer in Martin Luther King’s voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama and other civil rights battles throughout the South. The method enabled me to develop a distribution network for striking farm workers in Delano, a job training program for unskilled workers in San Francisco, and several other significant community projects. More recently, as a member of the State Leadership Development Committee, I used community organization techniques to create a plan for identifying and training potential leaders which I presented as part of a panel at the 2019 California AAUW convention. Currently I sit on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, addressing one of the biggest challenges to AAUW: a homogenous population that cries out for more diverse representation and an aging membership that badly needs revitalization.
This is a juncture where I want to work because progress here increases the success of our overall mission, helps branches bring the AAUW mission to local communities, and assists members to understand intersectionality and the impediments to making our branches more diverse, equitable and inclusive. I am moved by the power of women in all walks of life to work together across traditional arbitrary divides for the betterment of the lives of all women. I had that experience when, as the Assistant Director in charge of Ob/Gyn services for the state of Massachusetts, I worked with a small group of women who gathered after a workshop on women’s health to confront a medical establishment it viewed as paternalistic and condescending. The confrontation changed the ideas of everyone concerned, and out of this came the feminist classic book Our Bodies Our Selves. I am anxious to address the challenges of growth, sustainability and visibility and make a difference as a member of the state board.