About Us: Silicon Valley Moms Blog Contributors
A byte of Silicon Valley life....... Welcome to Silicon Valley, where 40+ moms write about being CEOs at work and CFOs at home, where houses are expensive, kids love sushi and have web businesses, and moms are too busy chauffeuring kids to raise a sword in the mommywars.
Silicon Valley Moms Blog is a member of the Silicon Valley Moms Group. Other blogs in the group include DC Metro Moms Blog , New York City Moms Blog, Chicago Moms Blog, Los Angeles Moms Blog, 50-Something Moms Blog and New Jersey Moms Blog. Soon to launch: MidWest Moms Blog, Pacific North West Moms Blog, Philadelphia Moms Blog and Rocky Mountain Moms Blog.
Come Meet The Silicon Valley Moms Blog Contributors!
FOUNDING TEAM for Silicon Valley Moms Blog:
PARTNER - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP & CO-FOUNDER: Jill Asher is the co-founder of Silicon Valley Moms Group. The idea came to Jill over three years ago (March 2006) to start Silicon Valley Moms Blog, following her one year "Presidency" of PAMP. Inviting friend after friend to join this "crazy idea" that moms would want to write about parenting experiences in their regional area, Jill has watched Silicon Valley Moms Group blossom to over eleven collaborative blogging communities and 350+ contributors.
By far, her biggest challenge and greatest joy is motherhood. Jill and her husband are the proud parents of two elementary school aged daughters. Jill admits that she is NOT A PERFECT PARENT and fears her daughter's teenage years. Her girls can be heard running around the house screaming, "Mommy is blogging again!" and she needs to bribe from time to time them with treats. Is she allowed to admit that? On the bright side, Jill really digs living in Silicon Valley and tries her best to blend in, praying that no one will hear her "New Jersey accent". Unless, of course, she is royally upset.
Jill Asher handles PR, Marketing, Business Development. Community Development and outreach for SVMoms Group. Jill Asher also consults with companies on social media strategy, blogger outreach and content creation.
CO-FOUNDER, Silicon Valley Moms Blog: Pamela Miller Hornik missed the dot com boom while giving birth and raising four children (ages 11, 9 ,7, 5) in and around the Bay Area. After years of living vicariously through her husband's work with Silicon Valley companies, Pamela decided to launch her own startup, Silicon Valley Moms Blog. Before SV Moms Blog, Pamela spent her days volunteering in classrooms throughout Palo Alto and chauffeuring her children to and from a myriad of activities. Now Pamela spends her days volunteering in classrooms, chauffeuring her children, and blogging about her daily travails on SV Moms Blog, her shopping fashion and shopping addiction on SF Bay Style and on her personal site, VOX blog. Along with classroom and extracurricular intrigue, Pamela blogs about her various addictions, including shopping, traveling, and sitting on non-profit boards. Despite living a mere block away from Stanford's campus, Pamela proudly displays a Cal alumni sticker on her minivan -- Go Bears!
PARTNER, SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP: Tekla S. Nee, a cofounder of the Silicon Valley Moms Group, serves as editor-in-chief and CFO for the network of blogs. She has been writing about parenting for more than 25 years for magazines like Parenting, BabyTalk, Working Woman, Special Reports: Family, and Better Health and Living. She blogged for five years before there was such a word, writing a weekly column about about her life with three kids for the Palo Alto Daily News. She's published three books, The Mommy Rescue Guide First Year; The Mommy Zone: Tales from the Trenches of Parenthood; and The Everything Baby's First Year Book (also published in Russian and Chinese). And that's just in her spare time, during the day, she masquerades as a mild-mannered technology journalist working for a major metropolitan magazine.
PARTNER (Co-Founder) - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP & CHIEF TECHNOLOGY MOM: Beth Blecherman is a techie turned blogger mom who is in charge of blogging technology and development for the Silicon Valley Moms Group network. She also works on the outreach/development to obtain new bloggers and organizing events for the network. Beth started her career in application development, then system auditing and her last role was Senior Manager, Computer Process Integrity, for Deloitte (and here are 5 things to know about me).
After senior management she decided to take on family management (with husband and three boys, two of which are twins preschoolers). As a mother, she went through technology withdrawal and was intrigued by Web 2.0 technology - so decided to try blogging. She also enjoys online social networking including Twitter and Facebook. Beth's personal blog is on tips, tricks, and discussions about parents use of technology for their families (Techmamas). She blogs at SFBayStyle to discuss her favorite fashion obsessions and MOMocrats for discussions about politics. Along with never missing out on watching red carpet fashions, she also obsessively watches makeover shows and organizes makeovers for moms (with the SVmoms team) in her spare time.
We are so happy to have over 40 contributors including:
xxxx
AKEMI Akemi is a Bay Area native who thought she knew the region well - until she had her twin boys, born in 2004. Now she has discovered a whole new world of parks and community centers and child friendly eateries, all of which appeared out of nowhere, she swears!
She blogs for her twins club (Gemini Crickets) at Mad About Multiples and at her personal blog, Chalk and Cheese Chronicles. She is @svtwinmom on Twitter.
xxxxxxxxxx
Alison van Diggelen Alison van Diggelen is host of FreshDialogues a venue for her lively audio interviews and commentary. She interviews leaders in green technology, business and the arts. She has also been blogging on her award-winning website Siliconmom since 2000. A former columnist for the San Jose Mercury News (check out some favorite columns and Bay Area Parent, she has written many profiles and features for the Silicon Valley Business Journal and commentaries for NPR's KQED radio and KLIV radio. Her writing has appeared in San Jose Magazine, The Financial Times of London and The Glasgow Herald. She's been interviewed about siliconmom.com on KTVU Mornings on Two, Silicon Valley Business and BBC radio (great fun at two in the morning!)
A proud Prius driver, Alison blogs about green tech, green living, politics
and inspiring Silicon Valley events. She hales from Bonnie Scotland, has
degrees in economics from Paisley and Cambridge Universities, has two
rambunctious children, and an adventure-loving techie husband. Alison has
lived in Silicon Valley since 1994 and firmly believes it's the center of
the universe.
ALIX was lured to Silicon Valley by Apple Computer in the early 90s where she worked in strategy and research after earning her MBA at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. After recovering from a chronic illness that took her away from her beloved work, she married her beloved husband and is now raising their 5 year old twins. She blogs about them under their pseudonyms, Kitty Cat and Guy-Guy. Alix is a nutritionist and blogs frequently at med nauseum blog about research supporting dietary and environmental causes of chronic illness. Alix also runs a small wind energy fund in memory of her mother, Rudd Mayer.
xxxxx
AMY Wehrfritz first headed to Silicon Valley at age three when her family drove across the country to relocate from New England. In that great migration of the early 1970’s, when semiconductor companies hadn’t yet become Superfund sites and a house in Saratoga could be bought for thirty thousand dollars, she and her siblings survived the trip seatbelt-free, playing license plate alphabet while bouncing around the station wagon and fighting over the "way back" seat. Having lived Saratoga, Los Gatos, Campbell, San Jose, Santa Clara, New Almaden, San Francisco, Los Altos and two zip codes in Palo Alto, Amy can claim most of Silicon Valley as her old stomping ground. She has finally settled down (or so she says), having moved to England with her husband and their two school-age children in 2006. They are gradually becoming accustomed to the slower pace of life in the English countryside, although compared to Silicon Valley it's a bit like throwing one's car into reverse in the middle of 280.
With 15 years of high tech marketing experience under her belt, Amy can usually be found in her home office working as a marketing communications consultant for various companies in Silicon Valley and around the world. She often shows up for school pick-up with paint in her hair or plaster under her nails, evidence of her determination to eradicate from the family home all traces of vinyl wallpaper, artex ceilings, fringed lampshades, and anything that can be described as ‘avocado.’
An artist and writer at heart, Angela O. finds boundless inspiration in the interconnections between the natural and cultural wonders she teaches about in her college Geography courses. Although silk painting and introspective poetry gave way to finger painting and Dr. Seuss after her girls were born, she has recently returned to her creative roots with the completion of a college textbook and her first, full-length feature screenplay.
In an attempt to stave off "writer's spread" (having a Chef for a husband doesn't help), she's also taking Kung Fu classes--at the Los Angeles Wing Chun Academy. Having lived both north and south of the 36th parallel, she's California born-and-bred (okay, there WAS that 9 month stint in Scotland), and has one foot in each half of the state.
She looks forward to the day when her writing can make her a living. And when her kids grow big enough to carry their own luggage so she can take them on adventures of the kind they've only read about in their mother's stories. In addition to her writing on the Silicon Valley Mom's Blog, be sure to catch Angela O.'s personal blogs: A World of Words and From Basic Training to Black Sash: A Mother's Wing Chun Journey
xxxxx
Bonggamom is the alias for Ana, mom to a daughter and twin sons. She has participated in both the internet boom (as a software product manager in a successful startup) and internet bust (as a biz-school graduate desperately job-seeking in the Valley), and is now happily participating in the blogging world (as a stressed-out stay-at-home parent who needs an emotional outlet cheaper than shopping).
Despite attaining an MS from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard, she is barely getting passing grades in her pursuit of an MFA (Masters in Family Administration) from the Universe-ity of Motherhood. She exercises her entrepreneurial urges by designing jewelry, painting children's faces at birthday parties and hawking her children's used clothes and toys on Craigslist. Now that her boys are beginning their elementary school adventures, she plans to spend her newfound free time volunteering, finding new ways to avoid laundry, and of course, blogging.
Why "bonggamom"? The word "bongga" (rhymes with "congga") is a Filipino term meaning glamorous in an outrageous, fabulous, over-the-top way. Ana believes all moms can and should aspire to be bongga moms, but acknowledges that her own efforts to achieve such a state are hampered by her constantly stained jeans. Ana writes on her personal blog, Finding Bonggamom and her review blog, Bonggamom Finds. She is also a contributor to the Filipina Moms Blog and the City Editor for Being Savvy Silicon Valley.
xxxxx
Bonnie Gray is mom to a super active toddler boy and wife to a super techie hubby. In her pre-mom life, Bonnie had a career managing software product releases, having grown up in Silicon Valley, where all her family friends were either computer programmers or electrical engineers. When motherhood knocked on her door, Bonnie walked onto a new path to her true passions: raising a close-knit family, writing and connecting with other women in similar seasons in life. After TJ was born, Bonnie quit the rat-race of Silicon Valley to dedicate time to creating a new family culture, space for writing, and new connections with moms to support and encourage each other.
Bonnie continues to feed her entrepreneurial spirit, managing a company she launched as a new mom, Just Peachy Baby, an ultra-chic line of baby products. To nurture her soul, Bonnie has returned to her first passion for writing. Bonnie loves being outdoors in nature, hanging out with friends over coffee, and reading good books at night when she should be sleeping. Bonnie writes for several blogs, including
Just Peachy Baby Blog, where the engineer and photographer in her likes to collect ideas and tips on parenting as a mom on-the-go.
Darryle Pollack started her blog,"I Never Signed Up for This", in honor of all the times she has said those words--as a mother, breast cancer survivor, artist, writer, chocoholic, tv journalist, Yale graduate, procrastinator, and wife (because her husband always says he comes last on her list). Absolutely nothing turned out the way she expected---and the path of her life continues to be as disorganized as her desk and as jagged as the pieces in her mosaics. This includes her entrance into the blogosphere----via the Huffington Post---- and the creation of her latest project, Cluttercast, Connecting Through Clutter.
xxxx
David Mott is a divorced single dad with shared custody of a pre-teen son and a teenage daughter. He's a former Silicon Valley software engineer turned writer and novelist. At his Dad's House blog, he offers stories, tips, and advice on single parenting, raising teens, two-home families, and relationships formed in an age of online dating, text messaging, friends with benefits, hookups, and booty calls.
ENOCH CHOI, MD is a daily blogger with 2 young children and a darling wife of a dozen years. He's a full time Family Medicine physician practicing urgent care as a partner at Palo Alto Medical Foundation where he sees patients in clinic, as well as sees patients virtually online via a personal health record (PHR) enabling prescriptions, referrals, etc. He is the product manager of community as a founding employee at MedHelp.org. He has an active EMR consulting/expert witness practice for clients such as Sutter Health, Epic Systems and Misys. His past EMR/PHR/community product management roles at Medicalogic enabled the company to go public and acquire Medscape.
Enoch serves on the boards of Palo Alto Community Fund, Palo Alto Menlo Park Parents Club, Abundant Life Christian Fellowship Medical Ministry, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church Medical Missions, Health2.0 conference and Sophia's Garden. He volunteers his time as adjunct clinical instructor of Internal Medicine at Stanford University Medical School, as a provider at the Community Pregnancy Center of Mountain View, and with Google Co-Op Health Topic.
Erica has recently "come home" to Silicon Valley after twenty years of living just about everywhere else. Having lived here in the late-70s and throughout the 80s, she finds it is a whole new world. She brought with her an exuberant baby boy and a saint of a husband. Since moving here, we hatched our very own California baby who is now a spitfire of a toddler. Erica has blogged for a website for urban parents, writes her own musings on the world at Well Thought Out Spot and occasionally publishes in print magazines and newspapers. Apparently, she can't keep her opinions to herself! Mostly though, she stays home with the small humans, manages the care of an ailing, disabled parent and works a little when she can.
A few times a year she dusts off her Ph.D. and puts it to work on research projects. She does research and writing projects for Princeton University where she used to teach Public Policy and International Relations. In her former life, she studied in England, Switzerland and France, worked in foreign policy in Washington, D.C., and whooped it up for a few years in New York City. At times, she longs to parachute back into her old life for a few days but realizes she would miss her kids too much.
x
Jamie Risdon Lentzner is the mother of two school age children, a boy and a girl, two dogs and is married to a great guy originally from Southern California. Jamie on the other hand is a Bay Area native, spent her entire childhood in San Mateo, until she attended college at SJSU. Despite partying way too much in college, she graduated with a Computer Arts Degree.
After college Jamie worked for two failed start-ups in the "male dominated" game industry in Silicon Valley. After realizing that educational software was better than shooting at aliens she joined The Learning Company in 1995. Jamie left her job when her son was born in 1999 and moved to Foster City soon after. In 2002 her daughter was born and soon after she started her company, Jamie's Painting & Design. Her company makes ceramic wall art and keepsakes for children. Her products have been featured in top magazines, newspapers and on TV. She also licenses her popular artwork to other companies. When not working Jamie can also be found writing a sometimes humorous, always honest blog about running her own business at JPD Mom.
Jane Maynard is a mom to two awesome little girls: a toddler-going-on-kid and a darn cute baby. They were both easy from birth, so Jane honestly doesn't know what to do with a crying baby. Which means most of her friends hate her. Jane's surfer dude husband is doing a post-doc at Stanford, bringing the Maynards to this lovely part of California. In her free time (ha ha), Jane is a freelance graphic designer, which she loves for two reasons. 1) Her creative artsy side can pay the bills. 2) She can work at home and be with the girls 24/7, which is ALMOST always awesome. She's an East Coast girl at heart – she's from New Jersey and went to school at Boston University. She thought she wanted to be a high-powered businessperson when she was in college, but then she moved to kick-back San Diego, got a taste of the good life and decided business school sounded like a drag. After working several years for a wireless company doing public relations & corporate communications, Baby #1 arrived and Jane happily said "Adios and Good Riddance!" to Corporate America.
Jane loves cannoli , H&H Bagels, yoga, reading, and...um...romantic walks on the beach? She uses way too many smiley emoticons, exclamation points and ellipses in her online writing...but it's just because she's happy and likes dots!!!! :) Jane also blogs at This Week for Dinner
, where she takes pretty pictures of food and fakes being a good cook
Jessica is a very busy Silicon Valley freelancing writer mama. She has two daughters, one born in May 2005 and the other born in July 2007. Her handsome husband, M, is a hardworking personal injury lawyer determined to right as many wrongs as humanly possible. When she isn't busy writing, cooking, doing laundry, and taking care of her little family she can be found on the Internet, Twittering, blogging, and reading blogs. What free time is left over (if any) she likes to spend reading, knitting, or watching TV.
She spent the first chunk of her life in Paris, France, where she was born. She met her husband one hot summer in Boston, MA and, after spending a year there, made him move to France with her so she could finish up a Masters in English Literature (the irony of this is not lost on her). As soon as she presented her thesis they packed up their things to come live in Silicon Valley. At the time of their decision the San Francisco Bay Area was the place to live. By the time they actually got here the economy had crashed and no jobs were to be found in their respective fields. Radical career changes has brought them to their current happy place, which goes to show that sometimes things do happen for a reason. Jessica blogs daily at It's my life... and posts many product reviews and giveaways at The Lemonade Stand. She's also a contributing writer at many other blogs and sites.
.
JMIRANDA is a pen-name for Jean, a Korean immigrant who has lived in 'burbs of Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles, before finally settling down in the Bay Area for the last 18 years. With a serial-entrepreneur husband, three kids (BGB: 7.5, 6, and 4 yr olds), and a full-time job in the tech industry, dinner most nights are a family event in downtown Palo Alto. She spurns most studies that come out disputing the past studies (many Ph.D. candidates need to publish "something new", no?) but sticks to little gems from her parents/relatives/intuition when it comes to parenting (I mean, really, they study for few years and call themselves experts when we have thousands of years of evolutionary success residing right here inside our brain? *pshaw* Go with your gut instincts, girl friends!). When not working, blogging, or trying to occupy the energetic children, you can find her listening to music, occasional movies (with her husband), and planning (and re-planning) the much sought-after concept called "vacation".
KARIANNA is a work-from-home mother of two boys (born in 2001 and 2004.) She was raised in Northern California before defecting to the east coast for college and graduate school. She has dual-Ivy degrees, although they are stuffed somewhere in storage, so really the only ivy in her life is either poisonous or climbing up the side of her deck.
She picked up a Michigan-and-Maine bred boy to be her husband. Once she was expecting her first child, she quit being a New York City Neuroscientist and decided to come "back home" to Northern California to become Mom. Her eldest son was diagnosed with pdd-nos at age four after the family experienced two years of bureaucratic hoop-jumping. Her younger son is thus-far neurotypical, although definitely an energetic handful.
She writes about her experiences with autistic spectrum disorders and life at The Karianna Spectrum and does product reviews via the Parent Bloggers Network on Reviews from the Couch.
.
KIMBERLY KAUER works as a stay at home mom/personal assistant to her kids Clover (2002) and Rocket (2006) following a career in journalism where she was a reporter covering California environmental policy. Kimberly grew up in Marin and after a few moves to San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Boston, settled with her husband, a software engineer, in Silicon Valley. She started her blog Tippy Toes and Tantrums last year when she started to suspect her husband wasn't listening when she talked. Kimberly does not drive a minivan, she dreams of running away alone to any place with a beach and potable water and is insanely jealous of people who get free lunches at work.
Kirsten is a stay at home mom to twin girls (born 2002) and a son (born 2005). She and her workaholic husband recently traded their life in San Francisco for a house in the suburbs and a mini-van. They are learning to love suburban life. The huge backyard and walk to a fantastic public school are helping the adjustment. Kirsten blogs about raising mixed race children, among other things at The Norwindians. She was born in San Francisco and raised on the peninsula. She left the Bay Area to attend college in Southern California, but returned after graduation and never looked back. Prior to life with kids she worked for a management consulting firm. These days, when not trying to decide what to make for dinner or attempting to get all three kids into the car, she enjoys reading, organizing her closets (really!), running and shopping online. She despises play-dough, windy days and taking out the trash.
x
LIA FREITAS is the mother of one year old daughter, LG. Prior to becoming a mom, Lia shaped the minds of todays youth while being a 2nd grade teacher. Today, she is a stay at home mom working to shape her daughter's mind. Lia has struggled with post partum depression while trying to figure out her new role as mother and Chief Household Officer. Lia started blogging in March as a way to chronicle her daughters life for out of town family. Since then, blogging has turned into her daily therapy, helping her get through this transition in life. She is hoping to start a career in writing and build on her personal blog Freitas Family.
LINDA D (aka MommyTwinGirls) is Mommy to twin preschool girls who keep her perplexed, laughing, frustrated, smiling, irritated, and generally happy from moment to moment. Her writing obsession began from her need to record every hilarious and heartwarming story about her family. She mourned the passing of her scrapbooking fixation over a year ago right around the time she started blogging. Her “scrapbook” is now her family blog called It's Never Easy But It's Always Fun.
Linda D grew up in San Diego but considers herself a Bay Area local. Attending Stanford University was her motivation for leaving the monotonous daily life of sunny, 80-degree beach weather to the more unpredictable seasons of the Bay Area. Professionally and pre-kids, Linda D was deep into the daily life of a Silicon Valley executive running global marketing in a hi-tech company. She then started and ran her own scrapbooking company until the industry changed. Around that time, she had her twin angels and her priorities completely changed.
After a brief return to the hi-tech jungle, she decided it was time to start her dream career as a professional photographer, establishing Solheim Photography at the end of 2008. She juggles the endless tasks of building her photography business with her personal life (co-Content Manager for her local parents of multiples club, Gemini Crickets POM club), and her daughters' unending preschool projects and activities. Someday, she vows to expend her energy learning Norwegian – her husband's native tongue – fearing the onset of her twin girls' pubescent years and the tales they will tell.
.
LINSEY K s Mommy to boy/girl twin preschoolers and a surprise baby girl (Linsey and her husband were one of those couples who mistakenly thought they needed fertility drugs to get pregnant ha!). Linsey is herself a twin with her beloved sister that lives much too far away in Newfoundland, Canada (you know, nearby the icebergs where the Titanic sank). She is continually trying to find the perfect balance in life. While she would like to just travel, read novels, run, do yoga, paint, garden... she always feels the pull of work (both paid and volunteer) and the myriad of activities that are available in Silicon Valley. Linsey's "free" time is spent sitting on the board of her twins club, the Gemini Crickets (Co-President 2007/2008, Newsletter Editor and
Auction Chair 2006/2007), and dabbling in digital stuff to make her life a little easier and a lot more fun (lately, scrapbooking sans paper and playing with her new MAC, yes, she has made the switch from a PC).
On the work side of things, she is a part-time business and technology lawyer with her own practice Krolik Legal, working out of her house...and Starbucks. She especially loves working with bloggers and start-up businesses (Go momprenuers!) with their legal issues. In fact, Linsey is the attorney for Silicon Valley Moms Blog and all the associated blogs in the Silicon Valley Moms Group. In her life before kids, Linsey earned a JD/MBA from Santa Clara University and worked for several Silicon Valley tech companies, some start-ups, others more established. A cancer diagnosis, which came as the dot-com bubble burst, provided quite an adjustment in her perspective on life. A survivor for 6 years now, she now works to live instead of the other way around. Linsey also blogs at her family blog, Me Too You, her business law blog, Whereas and at her twins club blog, Gemini Crickets Blog.
Lisa M, a Silicon Valley native, is a stay at home mother of two children, a girl of eight and a boy of four years. Just a few years out of high school, she landed a job at a data communications company (this was pre-internet). She then moved onto to various telecommunication companies in the valley working as a project manager. A few months before the big dot com bust, her daughter was born; so she decided the timing was right to leave the high tech world behind (although seeing her then company de-listed on NASDAQ may have had also something to do with it) and focus her energies on raising her children.
She and her husband of 9 years live in the Silicon Valley. She bores her children on a regular basis with her tales of growing up in pre-silicon Valley--a time when ranches and orchards, rather than high tech companies such as Apple and HP--dominated the landscape. Secretly she harbors a midlife fantasy of leaving her average tract home in the burbs for a farm in the hills, with horses. In her free time she can be found going to book readings, hanging out in the library, writing, perfecting the art of espresso making, collecting sea shells at the beach with the kids, working out at the gym, going shopping with her identical twin sister and frequenting farmers markets--and--if she can drag out her children out of the house--hiking.
She blogs regularly at Silicon Valley Dive where she likes to muse about life in the Silicon Valley, her family or anything worth philosophizing over.
xxxxx
MARTHA FEINGOLD has 4 kids born between 1988 and 1996; a drama queen, an actor, a semi-goth and a jock..a family that came together by open adoption, in-vitro fertilization(twins) and surprise. 2 girls, 2 boys, oldest in college, youngest dealing with the challenges of Type 1 (Juvenile) diabetes. As a parent, she's worked full time, part-time, job shared, worked at home and even had a couple of SAHM stints. She's currently working full time as the media director for a high-tech public-relations agency after spending 25 years as a TV news writer, producer and executive. Her husband is a 1960s Berkeley radical who grew up to be a politically conservative attorney. She's a classic East-coast bred liberal, which makes for interesting conversations and the reality that they cancel each other out every time they go to the polls. She can be very cranky if she's not in the middle of reading at least one good book at any given time
Monica started blogging as a way to enjoy being creative while her infant son was asleep, without requiring hours of choreography prep, a dozen dancers, and studio space. After moving to the Bay Area to attend college, she's lived in six different towns on the Peninsula and in the South Bay. Real estate prices aside, it's a fabulous place to live. She met her husband in a vintage ballroom dance troupe at Stanford, and now they both work full time in high tech. Monica writes about life, sleep deprivation, plush weaponry and being a mom to two young boys at Lady M.
Myrna blogs from the heart of Silicon Valley. She moved back about a year ago and can’t believe she ever left. Although, when she last lived here, things were a little different. Her life centered around her Advertising career and locating the best restaurant and bar for friend meet-ups. Giving up her high-tech centered career for one involving diapers was necessary when she and her husband moved overseas. After giving birth in Toulouse (can you say pain in French?) they happily relocated twice more before coming back to the U.S. where they put down roots in Austin, Texas before coming back to the Bay Area. Myrna volunteers for her kids schools (they will be gone soon you know) and is a social media junkie. Life as a 50-Something mom has never been so good! Myrna also write for her blog about teens, TangerineTimes.com.
Nicole Pelton is mom to two little boys a year apart, which means they can both be on the same soccer team, whew. She's either a victim or a beneficiary of the tough economy, hoping to network her way to a new high tech marketing job before her severance runs out. Her husband left his high paying high-tech job to pursue his dream of becoming a professional soccer coach. He's got the kids well on their way to professional soccer players, while I resist the call of the soccer mom. When not looking for a job or referring fights between her kids, she crams in cooking, reading, volunteering, taking advantage of free exercise programs, drinking martinis and wine (not together), can't miss TV shows, and of course blogging. Nicole can be found at Not Just a Working Mom and does the occasional review at Not Just a Working Mom Reviews. She's also working on a newmarketing blog.
PAMELA W. joined SVMB at the invitation of Jill and the other Pamela. Her previous career included ten years in print media, writing, editing, designing and managing the pages of several newspapers including The Miami Herald and the Boston Globe. After that she took a vacation as her mother labeled it to attend Harvard Business School presumably because she wasn't ready to have kids yet.t
Chasing internet pioneers, Pamela W. moved to Palo Alto in the summer of 1996 and worked for a huge media company bringing newspapers online and making fun, interesting and completely unprofitable online products before bailing and joining a startup in 1998. Four years, three kids, two lofty titles and one IPO, she decided to stay home with her three little ones, well, because she could. And because the company shut down the San Francisco office and her job was moved to LA. When not dragging her children cross country to bond with their cousins and other family that refuse to acknowledge California as a state, she resides in Palo Alto with her husband of 15 years, and three children ages 5, 6 1/2, and 8.
REBECCA lives the Silicon Valley life every work day. Although currently working as a lawyer and start-up exec, Rebecca in a previous life was far more interesting. She used to be a regular columnist with weekly columns about Internet companies that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle and CBS MarketWatch and was a TV commentator who appeared regularly on TechTV, PBS and CNBC. Most notably, Rebecca had a blog back in the days when they were called personal home pages from 1995 through 2001.
When not working, blogging or relishing every moment she manages to spend with her family, Rebecca sits on a couple of nonprofit boards and runs a mailing list for working lawyer mothers called, appropriately, LocoParentis. She has a a couple of plants. Ok, one plant and it is barely alive. And actually, it is her daughter's plant.
Robyn Roark is a full-time working mom. She is a Silicon Valley native and has never ventured too far away from home. Robyn works as a Senior Program Manager at a Fortune 100 company. During the day, she bosses around men that are old enough to be her father. At home, she gets bossed around by a little boy who refuses to wear pants.
Robyn has a BA in Feminist Politics and holds various certifications in Project and Program Management, Team Development, ITIL, Six Sigma and others. In between corporate meetings that pay the bills, being an officer on her son's preschool Board of Directors, and managing to cook a home cooked meal every day, Robyn writes on her personal blog, Who's the Boss? (www.whosthebossblog.com)
Roxane Dover is a 30-something snowboarding rookie who is actively bruising herself while trying to teach her children that one is never too old to take up a new sport. A graduate of Phillips Academy, Wesleyan University and Columbia University’s Teachers College, Rox is also a former Yale School of Management admissions officer who ultimately traded in the Ivy League for the Little League. Happily married to her boarding school sweetheart, the Guv, for over a decade, Roxane is proud mom to daughter Petunia (born in 2000) and son Dash (born in 2005). With child #1, she worked full-time, worked part-time, attended graduate school full-time, attended graduate school part-time, and combined all of the above in various fashions. Yet with the addition of child #2, she barely has time to shower most days.
Roxane moved from New Jersey and the New Jersey Moms Blog to Silicon Valley and the Silicon Valley Moms Blog in August 2008. She and her family are thrilled to be Californians now and look forward to hiking and biking in the constant sunshine. In the summertime, though, you’ll still find Rox and her brood in a barn-red cottage in Vermont’s Green Mountains, her favorite place on earth. You can find more on Rox and her family's antics on her personal blog at Rox and Roll.
Sarah E. is raising two boys and a husband. She's not shy and she loves to swim. Sarah is a native Californian and she's never leaving. Ever. She's a dorky former engineer who left Cisco after ten years to co-run a baby bottle company, Adiri, with two other local moms. Now she's back to her tech roots, working on a hip, edgy new online show and site for moms called JuiceBoxJungle. Sarah loves to snuggle.
.
.
Sarah Granger is a new mom who's been published online since the days of the BBS. She worked as an IT consultant before participating in three high-tech start-ups and managing online communications for nonprofits. Directing behind the scenes, Sarah launched "the first true weblog to be put up by a politician," (according to Wired News) for former U.S. Senator Gary Hart during the 2004 presidential campaign. Her articles on social engineering are required reading in computer security courses at universities around the world and she continues to freelance for a variety of publications.
Bringing sci-fi to the stage, Sarah wrote, directed and co-produced what may have been the world's first Cyberpunk play in 1995 before graduating from the University of Michigan. Sarah has edited three books, two columns and several blogs. Sarah's blog at sairy.com, features ruminations on technology, politics, philanthropy and culture. She is also Founding Editor of SFBayStyle.com, a blog highlighting the diversity of fashion and style in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Sidney is the screen name of a small town, Midwestern gal who headed West in search of milder winters and moved to San Francisco--not realizing that she would be giving up summers! She's proud to say that she met her husband at a Jerry Garcia concert in Golden Gate Park. 15 years and four kids later, she found herself in the Western Silicon Valley Burbs. Sidney has 3 sons (two of which are twins) and one daughter all born within a 3 1/2 year span. Sidney's lofty goals for oh-nine are to master the Teaser in Pilates, learn when to say "no", hone up on her budding archery skills, and figure out a way to juggle, homework, laundry, after school sports, and a new puppy without sprouting more grey hairs.
SHEILA BD (aka Xiaolinmama) is a mommy of a 7 year-old pokemon obsessed boy and a certified 4 year-old ballerina princess. She loves being a soccer mom, volunteering at her children's schools and watching Xiaolin Showdown with her kids, hence the name of her personal blog Xiaolinmama. In her spare time, (between midnight and 2 a.m.) she loves shopping on-line, reading blogs and catching reruns of Grey's Anatomy, Top Chef and the Office.
In between shuttling kids to school, soccer games and ballet class, she is a work-at-home (more accurately, Work at Starbuck's) non-profit consultant and trainer. She has worked with many Silicon Valley non-profits developing strategies to engage young people in public service, fundraising and supporting adults, schools and youth organizations in implementing youth development programs. She writes about Silicon Valley community based organizations and resources at Starfish Circle. You can also find her random musings on her adventures raising Silicon Valley kids at Filipinamoms blog and Blog Mamas.
STACY - Out of the corn and into the sushi, Stacy Libby is a converted Californian hailing from the great state of Iowa. Stacy enjoys spending time with her husband and young daughter. She also tries to find time for reading, cooking, running and good red wine (okay, there is always time for red wine.) Her TiVo, iPod and IBM ThinkPad are the evil enablers that feed her pop culture addiction, which she writes about in her blog Laptop Television Mom. When not being a mom, a wife, a pop culture addict and/or basking in California’s 70-degree weather, she is a VP and founder of Voce Communications in Sunnyvale, Calif. (okay, she apologizes for the “70-degree weather” brag, but sushi isn't the only thing that keeps her in California).xxxx
STEPHANIE V. is a self employed headhunter (no, not high tech) who lives in the East bay. She wrote "The Active Creative Child" (Hohm Press.)Additionally, she has done two radio shows (KOMO and "The Parents Journal w/Bobbi Conner".) She also has a long running discussion with Harpo (i.e. Oprah) which may or may not culminate in something. She has her M.S. in Psychology with an interest in the Creative Arts as a therapeutic tool. A 3rd generation Nor Cal native, she is a native of San Jose. (Her mom used to pick apricots and this valley used to be an orchard-really! )
A proud non politically correct type with no political affiliation, she is married to a husband who works in the airline industry. Mom to two sons, both actors and film-makers - she can relate to every mom who is exhausted by their kids. Also mom to Golden Retriever dog daughter Erica, cats Linus and Cleo. When not recruiting, her true passions are writing and watercolor painting. Family first, other passions to include: thrift stores and flea markets, animal rights, the right to be individual and not labeled--and the opportunity for all to create.
With roots in Texas and Maryland, Tina is now firmly planted in Silicon Valley soil. She was reeled to the bay area by Hewlett-Packard where she served her time and was released in 2007 from her golden handcuffs after 24 years of good behavior. Having just completed a whole house remodel, Tina is now in the blogging trenches as well as starting up a new company with her blogging partner, Kristina. Tina has three daughters, ages 10, 14 and 17. Tina's faithful golden retriever, Koa, is always by her side as she types away on her computer. Tina's husband is with a startup which is another way of saying he's rarely home and Tina and the kids are left to fend for themselves in this high tech jungle. Tina enjoys photography, blogging, traveling, hiking, cooking, hanging out with friends, and counting her money, which doesn't take long these days.
Continue reading "About Us: Silicon Valley Moms Blog Contributors" »
Recent Comments