About the Silicon Valley Moms Blog
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. and New Jersey 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 considers herself a community builder, exemplified by creating collaborative blogs, growing high-tech and bio-tech companies as a Human Resource Executive, and even taking the role of "President" for the local parent's club, PAMP. Her other passion is community outreach and supporting local non profits. Jill learned never to take "no" for an answer, and has proven that will a little faith, communication and sheer will, communities can support one another.
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 is the Co-Founder of Silicon Valley Moms Blog, Chicago Moms Blog, DC Metro Moms Blog, NYC Moms Blog and New Jersey Moms Blog. More sites to come in the near future! Jill handles PR, Marketing, Business Development and outreach for this collaborative community.
CO-FOUNDER: 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 & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Tekla S. Nee joined the Silicon Valley Moms blog about five minutes after it started because no one besides her children knows how to say no to Pamela. Tekla blogged for five years before there was such a word, writing about her life with three kids in The Mommy Zone for the "Palo Alto Daily News". She parlayed that gig into two books, "The Mommy Zone: Tales from the Trenches of Parenthood" and "The Everything Baby's First Year Book". Neither the books nor the column made real money, so she never gave up her day job, hiding her supermom cape to masquerade as a mild-mannered technology journalist working for a major metropolitan magazine.
PARTNER - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP & CHIEF TECHNOLOGY MOM: Beth Blecherman is a techie turned blogger mom who is in charge of blogging technology and involved with outreach for the Silicon Valley Moms Blog (and here are 5 things to know about me). She started her career in application development, then system auditing and her last role was Senior Manager, Computer Process Integrity, for Deloitte.
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. 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, local events and places to go when she is not chasing after her boys. 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:
AKEMI Akemi is a stay-at-home mom to twin boys (born 2004) who keep her so busy she no longer has time to beat her frizzy hair into submission. A night owl, she's perplexed that her name in Japanese means beautiful dawn. She spent the past year co-hosting the New & Expectant Parents meetings for her local twins club, hoping to help others learn from her parenting mistakes.
In her pre-kid life, she worked in marcom and marketing for tech companies which, for some reason, always happened to be located in and around the area of North First Street, San Jose. An SV native, she dreams of taking her boys on far off travel adventures, although the family rarely even makes it so far as San Francisco. She is hoping to replace her ill-fated foray into scrapbooking with the less expensive hobby of blogging! Akemi also blogs on her personal site, Chalk and Cheese Chronicles.
Alison van Diggelen has been blogging since 2000 on her website Siliconmom, she just didn’t know the word for it back then. She hales from Bonnie Scotland, has two rambunctious children, ages 10 and 12 and an adventure-loving techy husband. Alison has lived in Silicon Valley since 1994 and firmly believes it’s the center of the universe.
A former columnist for the San Jose Mercury News (check out some favorite columns) and Bay Area Parent, she now writes 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 living, politics and inspiring Silicon Valley people, especially mothers. She also firmly believes that becoming a MOM is way better for your career than getting an MBA.
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.
AMY: Although not technically a
Bay Area native, Amy may as well be; her family drove across the country
to relocate from New England when she was just three years old. In that
great migration of the early 1970’s, when semiconductor companies
didn't realize they'd eventually 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, 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
young 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.
A stay-at-home mom with 14 years of high tech marketing experience under her belt, Amy can usually be found in her home office doing consulting work for Silicon Valley companies once the kids are in bed (she just can’t help herself!). 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.’
Anna is the mother of four wild and crazy kids, wife of a worship pastor (on
hiatus), full-on entrepreneur, artist/photographer and a way-too-busy
friend to some great women. Born in rural Minnesota in the
mid-seventies, Anna had the typical small town upbringing as a complete
tom-boy: hanging from trees and playing high school hockey. She has
since grown to appreciate her more feminine side and wears clothes that
fit and sometimes even earrings! Anna's oldest son is a high school
freshman and youngest daughter just turned two. Despite the craziness
of managing a full-time photography business (most recently joined by
husband-on-hiatus) and a house full of little (and not-so-little)
people, Anna claims that life now is the easiest it has ever been.
Perhaps it is all simply perspective? Just over seven years ago, Anna
and her husband, Brian, moved to California for his position in a local
church. As a Midwesterner, Anna had always been warned of the perils of
life on the West Coast, but has been surprised to find she loves it and
may never leave. She now runs a thriving children's photography
business, Images by Anna, after seasons as an early childhood special
education teacher, a daycare provider, and a stay-at-home mom. She has
worn many hats: teenaged mom, full-time student mom, full-time working
mom, stay-at-home mom, day-care-providing mom, part-time work-from-home
mom and now, full-time work-from-home mom. All of these perspectives
help her to see the many sides of the working/stay-at-home mom issues
and after potty-training at least eight children she can tell you that
there is no magic "pee-in-the-potty-pill"!
>Although they certainly wear her out, Anna's children are the joy at the end of every day. Her favorite line from a children's book comes from the mother of the precocious and exhausting Olivia: "Olivia, you really wear me out, but I love you anyway." Her children hear this phrase nearly every day. Anna loves to blog about the highs and lows of motherhood and life on her photography blog: www.annamayer.com/news.
BONGGAMOM is the alias for Ana, a full-time stay-at-home-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 interent bust (as a biz-school graduate desperately job-seeking in the Valley).
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 for friends and hawking her children's used clothes and toys on Ebay and Craigslist. Now that her boys have begun preschool, she plans to spend her newfound free time (all 6 weekly hours of it) catching up with laundry, volunteering at the local public school her daughter attends, and blogging, which is a cheaper emotional outlet than shopping. Why "bonggamom"? The word "bongga" (rhymes with "congga") is a Filipino term meaning glamorous in an ostentatious, outrageous, fabulous, over-the-top way. Ana believes all moms can and should aspire to be bongga moms (think Divine Miss M, as in M for Mom), but acknowledges that her own efforts to achieve such a state are hampered by her constantly stained jeans. Ana also writes on her personal blog, Finding Bonggamom.
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.
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CHARLENE LI is the mom of daughter K (in 1st grade) and son B (in 2nd grade) and because everyone asks, they are 19 months apart (which is why she stopped at two). She's married to a serial entrepreneur who most recently started his own venture capital firm.
In her professional life, Charlene is an analyst at Forrester Research where she covers media and marketing and amongst other topics, writes about corporate blogging. She has her own professional blog, Charlene Li's blog at blogs.forrester.com/charleneli. Her writing on the Silicon Valley Moms blog is completely separate and independent of her work at Forrester.
In her spare time (all 15 minutes of it each day), Charlene plays the piano, does extreme Sudoku puzzles, and watches as much adventure reality TV (Survivor, Amazing Race) as she can squeeze in. She dreams of one day combining the various calendars in her life (work, personal, kids, husband, parents) into one beautiful, seamless application that magically synchronizes itself, ensuring that she never again schedules a business meeting at the same time as her daughter's kindergarten graduation.
Cheryl Wenzel is a free-lance writer and blogger who writes on a variety of topics related to women’s issues, motherhood, and her experiences as a 50y SAHM of 3y boy/girl twins. Her passion is giving women a voice and promoting more understanding of the experience of motherhood, especially the transition to motherhood. She is the author of the blog New Mom Central, and blogs for the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, 50-Something Moms Blog, and Gemini Crickets Moms Blog. She has been a guest speaker on Natural Moms Talk Radio, a guest lecturer at San Jose State University, and is writing a book about the transition to motherhood.
>When Cheryl is not typing away on her laptop, she is chasing her twin preschoolers and managing the myriad array of activities and responsibilities of a SAHM—nay, the CEO of Home Relations. During her rare “downtime” moments she enjoys walking, talking, reading, thinking, laughing, and hanging out with her family and friends.
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COURTNEY is proud to call herself
a “Jersey Girl” even though she has been living in California since
1994. After graduating from Duke University, she moved to Los
Angeles to get her Masters at the Annenberg School at USC. While
there, she started her career in media research at a major Hollywood
studio. She probably would have stayed in Southern California
and continued working in the television industry had she not met and
fallen in love with a Bay Area native. After getting engaged,
she moved up to the Bay Area and started applying her media research
skills to the still nascent arena of Internet audience measurement and
research. She spent a few years at a couple of Web startups and
one broadband behemoth before landing a job at a startup that has since
become a household name, and starting the marketing research team there
in 2002.
When her first daughter was six months old, Courtney chose to retire in order to become a stay-at-home mom. Now she has a second daughter and is busy running around after a preschooler and a toddler. In addition, she spends her time on several boards, working at her daughter’s co-op preschool, driving to Target 412 times a week, reading, and cooking. She has also started two personal blogs: The Mommy Diaries, a place for her own random thoughts about life as a stay-at-home mom, and Kitchen Chronicles of a Non-Foodie, a blog about her adventures in the kitchen. Most days, Courtney has just one lament about leaving the workforce: she no longer has an excuse to wear all those fabulous shoes in her closet.
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.
ERIKA JURNEY is the mother of three young boys born in 2002, 2002, and 2004, and
no, she is not the mother of twins. (What? How is that possible?) She lives in the Addison school
district and despite having loathed almost all of her own school experience as a
child, is pleased so far with the local schools. Her three boys couldn't be more
different from each other, yet they are, as she hoped all along, growing up to form their own little
gang tribe. As well as being
addicted to blogging, Erika runs a free directory for tiny businesses. She can be found at her
personal blog, the Plain Jane
Mom Blog, she also contributes to Mommybloggers and writes up the good and the bad on her product review blog.
Bay Area native and true California girl, M. Felicity is mom to two beautiful girls BooBoo (2 1/2 yrs. old) and Giggles (6 months old.) There is truly nothing more important to her than her girls. She loves singing, reading, playing, learning and exploring the world with them. She is also married to the man of her dreams whom she met running a marathon.
In her professional life, Felicity is an entrepreneur and recently launched her second company, Cubes&Crayons with its first campus in downtown Menlo Park. She works early in the morning, part of the day and many hours into the night and wouldn't trade it for anything. She enjoys the rush of creating something new and seeing all the hard work pay off. She is an advocate for the importance of finding work-life balance and creating solutions for parents and companies to work together on these issues. Felicity is active in the nonprofit world and has worked on numerous fundraisers in the Bay Area such as Dreams Happens and Vintage Affaire. She is highly involved in the Junior League of Palo Alto- Menlo Park and My New Red Shoes. In her spare time, Felicity loves to run, travel, read, cook, be outdoors, and write. She is new to the blogging world but as a life long writer for both publication and personal interest, she is eager to share her crazy life in this new medium.
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GLENNIA is a lawyer, the wife of a Silicon Valleyscientist guy, and mom to one adorable future super-hero and karate master. She escaped rural Ohio as a young adult and has lived in New York, Chicago, and Austin, Texas before moving to the Silicon Valley in 1997. Glennia traded in her briefcase for a diaper bag in 2001, and only recently returned to full-time work. During her four years as a (never) stay-at-home mom, she managed to travel to over 20 countries with her husband and son, rack up a ton of frequent flyer miles, and volunteer for anything Jill and Pamela asked her to do. Her personal blog is The Silent I, which chronicles her adventures, both foreign and domestic.
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Jamie Risdon Lentzner is mother to two school age children-an 8 year old son and a 5 year old daughter. Jamie is also happily married to a great guy and has a small cocker beagle mix, named Pixel that howls for her dinner on a regular basis. A Bay Area native, she spent her entire childhood in San Mateo, until she finally moved far, far away from home to attend college – in San Jose. Jamie graduated with a computer art degree from SJSU, and a minor in sorority life.
After college she 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 and spent 4 years working with small fuzzy woodland creatures. Jamie and her husband moved to Foster City in 2001 and are never moving again, they love the swamps of Foster City. After her daughter was born she started Jamie’s Painting & Design -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
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Janet Branigan: You can find Janet/"JB" on our SV Moms Blog as well as her personal blog called Go-Go Mommy. Janet is an attorney and ex-special sales professional who gave up the big bucks, big bonuses, and big trips in exchange for big hugs, big tantrums, and big surprises from her two wee ones: Poppy (2004) and Sweet Pea (2006). Janet's personal goal in 2008 is to move from SAHM to WAHM status as a new mompreneur.
Janet moved to Silicon Valley with her husband ("KB") in the fall of 2000 to escape the bitter Michigan winters and to enjoy the sun more than 40 days out of the year. Little known facts: she is the youngest of 10 children (another reason to leave Michigan - for some breathing room), she is becoming obsessed with cooking and recipes, and she has the dubious distinction of being singled out in her college acting class as being "the perfect 'straight man' for working extremely well with pets and children." You can read more on Janet's personal blog, Go-Go Mommy where she is on the move from TypeA quirky girl to ultra mod and hip California mom with a strong sprinkle of midwest backbone and a dash of sophomoric humor!
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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.
KATE is the pen name for a silicon valley mom with lots of experience and a prickly attitude. Kate has been in the silicon valley for 26 years and has spent 18 of them working in or around engineering departments, which requires only that you be smart, good at what you do, and able to talk about technology, coffee, and blowing things up in social moments. She is coming to terms with moving from the city to the suburbs; with (as a mother) now having to rub elbows with former girls from high school whom she thought she'd never have to talk with again; and with keeping an extremely active, creative 5 year old boy happy, healthy, and unravaged by the off-the-charts competitiveness and misplaced educational goals of the silicon valley. Kate's made it through 9 years of infertility only to discover the cosmic joke that is 9 years (projected) of perimenopause, but luckily doesn't look in the mirror much. She comes from an almost clinically iconoclastic family, and is proud that she's refrained from diagnosing her mother in her postings. Her husband is a serial entrepreneur with the paranoia typical of those in the know (e.g. not in favor of posting private information anywhere, ever, period), so she tries to keep him happy.
In the meantime, Kate amuses Jill and Pamela, so they have asked her to join svmoms. Kate's home website is www.anachronisticmom.com, and her home blog is www.anachronisticmom.blogspot.com.
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KATIE left her job as an up-and-coming sales executive, where she made money, had fun, traveled a lot, and was treated with respect and admiration by her colleagues, to spend more time with her kids (now eight and five), where she spends money, drives from piano lessons to T-ball practice, and is regularly attacked as mean, unfair, unreasonable, and a terrible cook ("vegetables??? you're making me eat vegetables???"). In her spare time, she consults for high tech companies who need to re-vamp their sales efforts.
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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.
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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 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 current writing obsession started from her need to record every hilarious and heartwarming story about her family. She has begun to mourn the passing of her scrapbooking fixation, often choosing to blog instead. In fact, she recently started her own 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.
Returning to hi-tech, she juggles full-time work with her non-hi-tech life (co-President & newsletter co-editor for her local parents of multiples club (Geminicrickets.org) 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.
LUCY divides her time between young children, the 101 freeway and various grocery stores. She's also Senior Editor at Bonus.com, a family website, leads journaling workshops for parents and occasionally writes for the Palo Alto Weekly, among other publications.
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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.
Michelle
works as a stay at home mom and the unofficial executive assistant to
her hard-working techie husband. She was born in San Francisco , grew
up in the East Bay , went to college at Santa Clara , moved back to San
Francisco , got married and settled in Silicon Valley . You could say
she’s cased this joint! Michelle is irrationally jealous of people
that have regular babysitting help or a nanny, anyone who lives in a
good school district, and parents of small children who have somehow
figured out how to chair committees for Parents Clubs or pursue
time-committing hobbies. She is convinced she needs a wife of her own.
After
trying for many years with a lot of help to conceive Andrew (born
2004), it took Michelle no time and no extra help to get pregnant with
Justin 6 months later (born 2005). The boys are 15 months apart and a
force to be reckoned with. Michelle started her personal blog, Mom Without a Map
(formerly: Mountain View Mommy) last year when her family & friends
kept asking for more silly emails with stories about the boys. For
some reason people seemed to like the humiliating story of a mom trying
to breastfeed in the park while chasing her one year old and having her
shirt fall off – and the rest is history.
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 as a mom to two boys – age 3 and newborn - at Lady M (http://nupboard.blogspot.com/).
Nanette Donohue is a wife, mom, and teacher in the Silicon Valley. She teaches part-time in a second and third grade class. Education is her passion. She especially loves teaching her students how to problem solve their way through difficult situations.
As a mom, Nanette's determined to raise her children to posses the traits of honesty, loyalty, and integrity. Unfortunately life doesn't always go as planned and mishaps, often, just happen. When they do, she chooses to write about the more humorous moments on her personal blog. Nanette can be found under her pseudo name, Smiling Mom, at SmilingMom.com.
NICOLE is mom to two little boys a year apart, which means they can both be on the same soccer team, whew. She works full time at a semiconductor equipment company where she's had a varied career path. She's currently in a marketing job but is on the ultimate search for a job that leaves her enough time to shop, play and yell at her kids on a regular basis.
Her husband left his high paying high-tech job to pursue his dream of becoming a professional soccer coach. He's already got positions picked out for the kids - the fast and skinny one a striker like dad, and the younger but bigger brother will be the towering fullback. During her scads of free time between work and the kids, she crams in cooking, reading, volunteering, jogging very slowly, drinking martinis and wine (not together), those can't miss TV shows and movies, and now she's adding blogging to that list. She's putting off sleep until the kids are older. Nicole blogs and comments under the name wksocmom and her brand spanking new personal blog is Not Just a Working Mom.
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)
ROSE is the screen name for a very busy Silicon Valley mom. She has one daughter born in May 2005 and a husband who recently finished law school. When she isn't busy cooking, taking care of her little family or working at a synagogue she can be found on the Internet, blogging or 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 summer in Boston, MA and after spending a year there with him 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 SV. When they decided to do this SV was the place to live. By the time they got here the economy had crashed and no jobs were to be found in their respective fields. Radical career change has brought them to the happy place they inhabit now, but has left Rose with a stong desire to write. She writes a little at work and a lot on her blog www.roseslife.blogspot.com. She tries to keep it as anonymous as possible, but fully realizes that anyone who knows her IRL has already recognized her!
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.
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 Palo Alto, CA (okay, she apologizes for the “70-degree weather” brag, but sushi isn't the only thing that keeps her in California).
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SUSAN: After graduating with a B.A. in Rhetoric from Berkeley, Susan found herself on the Bay Area job market equipped with exactly one dress, negligible math skills and a dog-eared copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, which (though she didn't know it at the time) pretty much guaranteed a career in technology. Many years and probably not enough suitable outfits later, she is managing director at a high-tech public relations agency, is married to teacher and writer Jesse Berrett, and is mom to Isaac, who adores Dr. Seuss, is terrified of vacuum cleaners and believes that rhyming is the absolute pinnacle of human accomplishment.
Susan writes about the pleasures and terrors of raising a child with special needs both here and on her personal blog, The Family Room, where, in an effort to shorten the learning curve for other families, she collects information and resources for parents of children who have been diagnosed on the autism spectrum.
STEPHANIE V Stephanie 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.
THIDA is a writer, and mother of a four-year typical daughter and a two-year old special needs son. The first eighteen months of her son's life were spent in and out of the hospital battling a life-threatening tumor. Fortunately his tumor has shrunk dramatically, but he and his family are still dealing with the collateral damage. Even so, strangers and friends describe her son as "engaging", "highly social" and "very happy".
Thida was born one night in Bangkok, but moved to London at age two. Then she spent the rest of her childhood in California when her parents weren't taking her on trips around the world. Despite graduating from Bryn Mawr college with a BA in politics, she became a computer geek before the term existed, and spotting a woman with a computer was remarkable. No wonder she ended up in Silicon Valley. Her non-fiction essay "Gimp Geek" about her life as a computer geek with a movement disorder will be published in the anthology "She's Such a Geek" in November from Seal Press.
While working full-time as a Director of Engineering, she studied for her MBA at UC Berkeley. Thida met her husband in a classic romance: their love bloomed as his startup melted. In 2001, she planned her wedding, got pregnant and graduated, then quit corporate life to stay at home. Thida writes about the San Francisco opera, politics, organic food and of course her ongoing adventures at her blog.
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