|
|
APH Leadership
Meet the Board Members
|
|
Pat McNees
APH President
|
Pat McNees of Bethesda, Maryland, joined APH in 1999, but has been helping people write their stories since 1990. A commissioned biography about a Midwestern industrialist led her in two directions: helping others write their memoirs and writing organizational histories. Pat came to personal history work after being, in turn, an editor in book publishing, a freelance journalist, and an independent writer-editor. She has written interview-based histories of Crown Equipment (a lift truck company), the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), the NIH Clinical Center (a national research hospital in Bethesda), and, currently, the department of psychiatry at the University of Maryland Medical School. She teaches legacy and life story writing at the Writer's Center in Bethesda.
|
|
Eduardo Zemborain
APH Vice President
|
Eduardo Zemborain, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, discovered and joined APH at the beginning of 2005. The same year, he and his wife and partner, Vicky Randle, attended the APH conference in Grand Rapids, and since then also in Portland and in Salt Lake City. In these last conferences he led two workshops talking about a business approach to the personal history practice. An architect with an MBA and former partner of one of the largest architectural offices in his country, Eduardo started his own personal historian business in 2002 as a consequence of a huge economical breakdown in Argentina (his story is told in detail in the 11th APH Newsletter, Spring 2008). His company, My Special Book, today has a twelve-person professional team and ten correspondents in different cities of America and Europe, and has produced up to 250 books in five different languages. As an enthusiastic international member of the association, he brings to the position of vice president both the challenge of promoting and projecting the action of APH internationally, and his collaboration toward increasing the recognition of the personal history practice as a professionalized discipline.
|
|
Peter Farquhar
APH Treasurer
|
Peter Farquhar lives in San Francisco. He joined the APH in 1998, becoming involved by designing the first website, heading the first Website Committee, and presenting workshops at many annual conferences. In the early 1990s, after twenty years teaching college history and geography, he pioneered the digital archiving of historical materials in association with the Oral History Office at Berkeley. He started his personal history business, Tombo Media, in 1993. Peter conducts workshops on digital recording and archiving and produces finely printed books, accompanied by digitally archived images, texts, and audio/video recordings. He has been editor of an educational institution’s Oral History Alumni Interviews and recently produced an award-winning biography of a California Forty-niner. Peter has also served as treasurer or member of the budget committee of several nonprofit organizations over the past forty years. He looks forward to combining that background with more than a decade of APH experience and friendship to serve you on the APH board as treasurer.
|
|
Mary Ann Mayers
APH Secretary
|
Mary Ann Mayers discovered the APH in 2002 and, within a few short months, attended a regional meeting held in Ann Arbor. The information and encouragement she encountered there inspired her to launch her own personal history business. Three months later, she left a twenty-year career in technology and healthcare research to form Extraordinary Lives, a incinnati-based personal history business. She creates written, photographic and video memoirs for families and businesses. As Secretary for APH and a member of the Executive Committee, Mary Ann looks forward to putting her business acumen and experience to work on behalf of the APH as it continues to inspire and inform personal historians.
|
|
Kathleen McGreevy
APH At-Large Director
|
Kathleen McGreevy joined APH in 2004, not long after she saw a newspaper photo of a man signing his memoir books for his family. She had been the Director of Communication for a multi-hospital health system for 13 years and had previously taught journalism at both the high school and college levels. Realizing that she could use her skills to help individuals and businesses preserve their histories, she opened her business, Chapter Savers LLC, in July 2004. She does video and audio interviews, scans photos, edits the material and helps clients publish their personal stories or business histories in books or on DVDs. She is enormously grateful for the help she has received from APH and its members and hopes, by serving as Director at Large, to help the APH Board and others engaged in this fascinating and worthwhile work.
|
|
Rose Marie Morrell
APH Bylaws Director
|
Rose Marie Morrell of Orem, Utah, joined APH in August 2008 after meeting Paulette Stephens at a genealogy conference. She had just gone through a significant life change and realized that writing personal and family histories was a personal dream she had. She joined APH the next day and is now enjoying the wonderful stories of others. Her company, A Lifetime Remembered, LLC, was started September 1, 2008, and has led her to meet many wonderful people. Rose Marie focuses on writing books because she loves to sit and read stories with her grandchildren. Her short personal histories about family members are their favorites as they learn about grandpa, grandma, aunts, uncles and cousins. With an educational background in business and years of experience writing, organizing, editing, and creating handbooks and other governing documents for businesses and educational institutions, Rose Marie hopes to use her skills and experience to work with the APH bylaws and support the APH membership and board in any way she can.
|
|
Marianne Waller
APH Conference Director
|
Marianne Waller discovered APH just before the 2003 Denver conference as she was casting about for a vocation that might be a bit more socially redemptive than pharmaceutical marketing and advertising. After four incredible conference days, she went home to Philadelphia, eager to get started. By the time she attended the 2004 conference, she was working on a book of short stories for her first paying client, and shortly after the 2005 conference in Ann Arbor, Signature Life Stories was born. As the program chair of the 2009 conference, Marianne is excited about the prospect of serving the APH membership and board in the position of conference director. She is looking forward to supporting the conference events manager and future program chairs and to working with the Conference Visioning Committee to develop and implement short- and long-term conference strategies and plans. Marianne is also deeply committed to balancing the role of the annual conference with other APH educational programs by working closely with the education director as a member of the Education Committee.
|
|
Pam Pacelli
APH Education Director
|
Pam Pacelli, a Chicago native, now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She and her partner, Rob Cooper, run Verissima Productions, specializing in high quality legacy, tributes, and historical films. Pam has been a practicing psychotherapist working with families and couples for over 20 years, and has also created curricula and programs for workshops and seminars in her field and in the community. She looks forward to the launch of the new education page and in working with the Board and the education committee to make certain that the needs of the membership for ongoing education are heard and met. She hopes to utilize increasingly user friendly and sophisticated technology to keep the APH members connected in a learning community 12 months of the year.
|
|
Nancy Heifferon
APH Marketing Director
|
Nancy Heifferon happened upon the APH in 2007, just in time for the early bird registration for the Nashville conference. Thumbing a copy of Cool Careers for Dummies in the bookstore, she found “Personal Historian”—an intriguing variation on the writing and marketing career she has pursued for many years in the San Francisco Bay area. That conference was eye-opening and transformational. Nancy now operates On With Your Story, a startup enterprise in personal, family, and company histories in print. She contributed as a writer and editor to the APH Toolkit. As marketing director, Nancy would bring to the APH thirty years of corporate marketing experience, launching products and building company relationships with customers. She is eager to apply this experience to further expanding the reach and reputation of the APH in support of its members. Nancy also has taught writing and literature at the college level and is president of her Toastmasters club.
|
|
Gillian Hewitt
APH Membership
|
Gillian Hewitt of Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada, joined APH in 2002. After teaching high school for 33 years (among other things), she embarked on a second career of personal historian. She has produced over 25 personal history books for individuals and family-owned businesses. She acted as project director for a book of teachers’ stories, which has sold over 4,000 copies. Her volunteer work included working with students at a private school to produce a book of stories from war vets and a second book on women in World War II. She has served on the APH Board as Director at Large, where she headed the team that developed the APH Member Toolkit, Modules One and Two. Known as the motorcycle mama of APH, she is eager to help the organization grow and develop.
|
|
Jennifer Campbell
APH Nominations Director
|
Jennifer Campbell of Uxbridge, Ontario, joined APH in 2002. After 20 years in print and web publishing, she decided personal histories would be an ideal vehicle for her interviewing, writing and editing skills. Just as she began taking small, tentative steps with her first client, she was awarded an APH conference scholarship, and hasn’t looked back. Since coordinating the Denver conference handouts that year, to becoming Eastern Canada Region co-chair, Newsletter Editor, Toolkit Editor, and enthusiastic Greeter and Registration helper at conferences, Jennifer has embraced APH as an important part of her life. Having witnessed the dedication of board members and countless volunteers in the organization, she knows the heartbeat of APH stays strong through the generous sharing of our members’ expertise and energies. As Nominations Director, she looks forward to helping find a home for the strengths, talents and interests of our members who wish to take on leadership roles.
|
|
Linda Coffin
APH Publications Director
|
Linda Coffin began working as a graphic designer in 1980 and started her own home-based business, PageCrafters, in 1985. Over the years she has produced publications of all types for non-profit organizations and businesses, bothvlarge and small. In 2004, Linda turned to personal and family history work under the business name of HistoryCrafters. She joined APH at the Novemberv2004 annual conference in Baltimore. Since then, she has been active in APH's GotStories group in Minnesota and has attended every APH conference.Linda designed the APH newsletter from 2005-2007 and joined the APH board as Publications Chair in 2007. Linda is working on a history of Quakers invMinnesota, an eight-year project so far, which she hopes to publish soon. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her partner Kathy Webster and their black cat Nick. In her free time, Linda does sudoku puzzles and sings alto/tenor in a community chorus.
|
|
Deb Moore
APH Regions Director
|
Deb Moore of Grand Rapids, Michigan, joined APH in 2003. When she first learned of the personal history field from a life-long friend, Deb immediately knew this was the work she wanted to do after retiring from 33 years of teaching. Since then Deb has helped dozens of people write their memoirs and turn them into books. In addition, she gives presentations on memoir writing in the community and conducts interviews for the Veteran’s History Project. Deb successfully collaborated with five other area APHers to document the professional lives and motivations of Grand Rapids’ leading philanthropists resulting in the broadcast-quality DVD, called The S.O.U.L. (Sharing Our Uncommon Legacy) of Philanthropy, released in the fall of 2008. As Regions Director, Deb hopes to inspire others to work with their local and area colleagues to spread the word about personal history and find fruitful avenues of collaborative work.
|
|
Tom Forster
Website Director
|
Tom Forster of Blairsden-Graeagle, California, joined APH in 2006, and has attended the last three conferences in addition to teaching a pre-conference session on basic video production with Rob Cooper in Salt Lake City. He has worked for filmmaker George Lucas for more than twenty-five years, mostly as the director of operations and facilities at Skywalker Ranch. He currently works part time as director of community Relations for Skywalker Properties Ltd. Tom is a published photographer, videographer, newsletter author, and newspaper columnist. He also works with individuals and groups through his small business called "MtTam Consulting" to plan for a better future. His motto is "linking the past to the present, and planning for a better future." He has loved to study history throughout his life, and finds himself drawn to recording and preserving stories about the past. He will bring those skills to this role, through improving the content on the APH Website in all forms--written, photographic, video, and audio.
|
|
|
