Karin Urquhart

Growing up in Fairfax, the young Karin Alstrom spent long, happy hours roaming Marin’s hills. In the early 1970s, when her favorite Cascade Canyon was targeted for development, Ms. Urquhart declared, “Over my dead body!”, and launched a career that swept her from devoted mother of seven to environmentalist with respected credentials and political sophistication. […]

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 […]

Marguerita C. Johnson

When Marguerita Johnson graduated with a Master’s in Education in the 1930s, there were few teaching positions in the North for an African-American woman. When she was unable to find work in her home state of Illinois, she moved to Florida and taught in a one-room school house until the advent of the Second World […]

Dr. Millie Hughes-Fulford

Millie Hughes-Fulford, Marin’s first astronaut, orbited space for nine days in June 1991 as a payload specialist aboard NASA’s first Spacelab mission dedicated to biomedical studies. The SLS-1 mission flew over 3.8 million miles, 140 orbits, and its crew completed over eighteen experiments during a nine-day period, bringing back more medical data than any previous […]

Emily Gates

Emily Gates is known not only as a inspirational community member and role model for young women and girls, but also as one of the most respected and beloved chorus and musical theater teachers in Northern California. Born and educated in Ohio, Ms. Gates married her high school sweetheart and began a music teaching career […]