Cecilia Zamora
Cecilia Zamora is the Executive Director of the Latino Council, a San Rafael non profit seeded by the United Way of the Bay Area in 1997. The Latino Council’s focus is strategic planning, organizational development, board diversity, data gathering/research, and advocacy/public policy development. The Latino Council, once known as the Latino Services Project, helps other […]
Zara Babitzke, MA
Zara’s Early Years birth through 20’s Growing up in the steel town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from a lower middle class family, Zara was born a twin. Her younger sister came along seven years later. At the age of two, Zara and her fraternal twin sister met their father for the first time. He had been […]
FELECIA GAIL GASTON
Felecia Gail Gaston was denied admission to her local school of ballet when she was a child because of the color of her skin. Years later, this painful experience was to become the impetus for one of her greatest accomplishments. In the late 80s, while serving as the Community Relations/Cultural Events Coordinator at the Marin […]
ELIZABETH THACHER KENT
Elizabeth Thacher Kent, a matriarch in the founding family of Kentfield, is one of the few Marin County women to be elected posthumously to the Marin Women’s Hall of Fame. Kent was a distinguished proponent of women’s rights and international peace, and was instrumental in securing women’s right to vote. Kent took up permanent residence […]
DONNA GARSKE
Since 1974, Donna Garske has been devoted to spirited activism on behalf of women, working initially with women in the criminal justice system, and then as Executive Director of Marin Abused Women’s Services (MAWS). Throughout her seventeen years at MAWS, she has led the way with innovative responses to men’s violence against women, including an […]
ELBERTA ERIKSSON
Elberta Eriksson is a social worker, family therapist, and a leader in child advocacy and family issues. A graduate of Sacramento and San Francisco State Universities, she is on the faculty at Dominican College and the California Graduate School of Psychology. As the Director of the Multi-Cultural Outreach Project at the Family Service Agency in […]
The Rev. Janie Adams Spahr
The Rev. Spahr first began serving people in Marin in 1975 as Associate Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in San Rafael. In 1979, she was forced to resign as Executive Director of the Oakland Council of Presbyterian Churches when she came out as a lesbian. She founded and served as Executive Director of Spectrum […]
Ethel Seiderman
Ethel Seiderman is nationally recognized for her creative approaches to childcare and family, establishing cooperative nursery schools tied to parent education programs. Growing up in the Bronx during the Depression years, and educated at Brooklyn College during the McCarthy era, Ms. Seiderman worked in the settlement movement, first at the Henry Street Settlement House in […]
Annette Klang Smail
In the 1940s, Annette Klang Smail began her career as a social reformer by working for the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) in Chicago. Long an advocate of solutions to economic problems, she lobbied at the local, state and national levels against poverty, racism and gender discrimination. Ms. Smail spearheaded the grassroots efforts to have […]
Sylvia M. Siegel
A long time consumer activist, as founder of TURN (Toward Utility Rate Normalization) in 1973, Sylvia Siegel became the main protagonist and protector of all utility-paying consumers. After finding that no one was really challenging the utilities companies, Ms. Siegel became a self-taught expert of complicated utility law. Ms. Siegel’s work led to the utility […]
