THE 2015 Nominating Committee - Chris
Patillo, Nancy Cork and Chair Karen Lemelin announce the nominations for the
board of directors for the California Genealogical Society. The candidates were presented to and accepted
by the board at the November meeting. Nominations will be presented at the
Annual Business Meeting on Saturday, January 23, 2016.
The nominated members for board of director positions
are:
·
Maureen
Hanlon
·
Vicky
Kolakowski
·
Stewart
Blandón Traiman
The
three nominees will be nominated for their first two-year term. Nominated for a second term is Felicia
Addison. Nominated for their third terms are Karen Lemelin, Nicka Smith, and
Henry Snyder.
Continuing
a first term are Linda Okazaki, Todd Armstrong, Therese Hart-Pignotti and Kathie
Jones. Continuing their second terms are Diana Edwards and Shannon Reese. Continuing a third term are Lisa Gorrell and
Jim Sorenson. Ellen Fernandez Sacco will continue as past-president. Kim Cotton will not be continuing on the
board and Jeffrey Vaillant is ending his third term.
Here
are the new board nominees:
Maureen Hanlon
Maureen Hanlon joined The California Genealogical Society after
attending “A Day of Irish
Information” in 2008. She then became a Desk Duty volunteer, went on the
Salt Lake City trip, and last year started doing post-class evaluation surveys
for the organization. In addition, Maureen has provided consultations on both Irish
and Beginning genealogy at both of our sponsored Ancestry Days events. She also recently fielded and analyzed a CGS Member Survey.
In October, she became our coordinator for In-Service
Education. Her first job in that capacity was organizing the just completed
Beginning Genealogy Series which resulted in four attendees becoming new
members.
Maureen retired last year from a career in health care that
included health policy research, quality improvement, and supporting
networking and educational conferences for providers. Retirement has allowed
Maureen to focus on her own Irish research, spend time with her three adult
children, and attack long deferred home improvements.
Vicky Kolakowski
Vicky
Kolakowski began doing family history research in high school, but put it away
until genealogy software became widely available in the 1990s and online
databases in the early 2000s.
She
did not become serious about genealogy until after her election as a state
court judge in 2010, when her mother expressed frustration that so many
relatives were passing without leaving behind information about the previous
generations, and particularly her immigrant ancestors (seven of Vicky's eight
great-grandparents were immigrants, and the other was a child of immigrants).
Vicky
spends almost all of her free time and vacations researching family history and
visiting a variety of repositories and places where her ancestors lived and
worked. She has primarily focused on Irish and Eastern European genealogy
for her own family. However, almost three quarters of her wife Cynthia's
ancestry can be traced to pre-Revolutionary United States, and so Vicky has
spent extensive time researching a large variety of resources throughout the
U.S.
The
California Genealogical Society has been an important source for her
genealogical education and camaraderie since 2011.
Stewart Blandón Traiman
Genealogy
has been an obsession for Stewart Blandón Traiman for 30 years. He began by
interviewing parents, grandparents and other relations about his roots in
Nicaragua. He is still hoping to prove the family legend of escaping the
Spanish Inquisition.
When
he married Leland Traiman, 25 years ago, he took on the new adventure researching
Ukrainian and Polish Jews. Stewart has also
researched his children’s origins back to the colonial United States. Whenever
a friend asks, Stewart is happy to trace their family stories and among his
family tree collections, he now has 8 trees in perpetual progress.
Stewart
was born in San Francisco 50 years ago. Through life’s twists and turns he
graduated from Stanford Medical School and practiced as an Internal Medicine
Physician until 2005 when he saw more interesting opportunities in the world of
Electronic Health Records. He now works as a Clinical Informatist at Alameda
Health Systems which gives him an outlet for working with data. Stewart
wonders, however, if he missed his calling as a librarian. (Maybe in the next
career.)
Stewart
discovered the California Genealogical Society through its wonderful classes.
In January 2014, Stewart became a volunteer as the editor and publisher of the
monthly electronic newsletter (eNews). He hopes to one day turn one of his
trees into a published work. Stewart also paints acrylic abstracts, loves to
cook fancy food and enjoys science fiction in any media.
The
California Genealogical Society's bylaws outline the requirements for Directors
in Article V, Section 1:
1.
The number of directors shall be not less than five (5) nor more than twenty
(20).
2.
The last active past president, he or she consenting, shall serve as a Member
of the Board of Directors until replaced by a new past president
willing to serve on the Board of Directors.
3.
Immediate family members of Directors are ineligible for candidacy during
the period of the sitting Director's term.
4.
The term of each Director shall be two (2) years from the date of election.
5.
Any vacancy in the Board during an unexpired term may but is not required to
be filled by the Board. Such Director shall serve until a successor Director is elected.
6.
Directors shall be limited to a maximum of three successive two-year terms, or
a total of six (6) consecutive years.
