I am a writer and editor in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the Board Chair for WriterCoach Connection, a nonprofit organization that seeks to close the achievement gap for middle and high school students through critical thinking and clear writing. I’ve also spent more than 25 years in marketing communications and public relations, published more than 150 articles and contributed to five books.

I’m currently collaborating on a memoir with Hemal Sharifzada about his harrowing cultural and emotional journey through foster care and what helped him succeed.

My book Conversations with Dad is a lighthearted look at my father’s life filled with vignettes from his early years in the 1930s playing mumbly peg and marbles through career, dating life, marriage and seven children to his status as a mature man facing aging in his early eighties.

Recent essays of mine have been published in Charleston and the South and Passionfruit: A Woman’s Travel Journal.

As Board Chair for WriterCoach Connection, I lead a group of dedicated professionals and more than 650 trained volunteers who provide individualized coaching in critical thinking and writing skills—both necessary for a young person to succeed in school and beyond. I have personally coached more than 100 students at all levels of proficiency.

Media credits include an appearance on KGO-TV’s public affairs program Beyond the Headlines. I also helped develop nonprofit educational videos and directed a public education campaign for the 911 system in Alameda County that resulted in continued public funding for the emergency medical services in the county.