Gentry highlights 34 of the Peninsula's most extraordinary women

THE ORIGINALS
The Peninsula Charity Horse Show Committee

Thirty-five years ago, Betsy Glikbarg asked a few of her friends – all young mothers – to help her put on a two-day horse show to raise money for a badly-needed new roof for the barn at the Menlo Circus Club. None of them realized it was a lifetime commitment. Today, that horse show has grown into a world class equestrian competition that last year raised over $400,000 for the Peninsula Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Three thousand spectators a day watched 600 of the country's premier horses and riders in Olympic-caliber competition over six days that were also jam-packed with sold-out social events. The committee for the event now includes more than 140 volunteers, but it's still chaired by Glikbarg and includes the four friends she drafted thirty-five years ago. These five are still running the show.

Original instigator and Chair Betsy Glikbarg is the linchpin of the Menlo Charity Show, the intersection for 600 horses, 180 events, $160,000 in prize money, the town of Atherton, 140 volunteers, 18,000 spectators, the Circus Club, 8,000 prize ribbons, 450 competitors, 27,500 pounds of manure, and the Peninsula Center for the Blind. And though she has ridden horses all her life, this chair of one of the most elite equestrian competitions in the country has never competed in a horse show. Make no mistake, Glikbarg is the architect of this event from start to finish and the master of the small touches that make it so special -- from finding parking places for 100 horse trailers in the middle of Atherton to the coffee and donut brigade that serves the grooms at daybreak. "We're warm and fuzzy," she says. "You're invited into our home, this lovely setting, the Menlo Circus Club. And let's give the community credit. They really got behind this show." Glikbarg loves the camaraderie of the event and the highlight of the week for her is the Tuesday night Exhibitors Dinner, a spaghetti feast attended by everybody from the grooms and youngest riders to the judges and committee members. And after thirty-five years at the helm, she swears there is now a succession plan. "I will never retire," she promises, "but I will step back and let other people carry the ball." For next year, she has brought on five co-chairs. But did she tell them it's a lifetime commitment?

Jane Yates met her first horse when she was three months old and has ridden all her life, though she has never competed. Once, when she was thrown from a horse and suffered a concussion, she thought, "I'm raising five children, maybe I should give this up." All five of those children learned to ride on the family's mean little Welsh pony and two of her daughters, Sharon and Linda, went on to do great things in the sport, including competing at Madison Square Garden. Last year, one of her grandchildren took part in the leadline competition at the Menlo show. Yates is in charge of prizes at the event, which are among the most sought-after on the West Coast riding circuit with sponsors like Hermes, Tiffany & Co. and Ralph Lauren. A former teacher, she still volunteers at Garfield Charter School and has been a Girl Scout leader, President of the Menlo School Association, and co-chair of the Stanford Institute for Research on Women and Gender. The secret to the show's success? "My very, very, very favorite quote is from Theodore Roosevelt. 'The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.' That sums up Betsy Glickbarg."

Nancy Parker grew up on the Stanford campus and rode as a child, but is happy the horse knows what to do if she happens to saddle up today. She met Betsy Glikbarg when they were both in the Junior League and was happy to help out when Glikbarg drafted her to raise money for the barn's new roof. "We were very loosey goosey in the beginning," says Parker. "We knew each other well enough that we just had fun. Today, it takes a lot of hard work, but it still doesn't feel like hard work." Parker is in charge of the all-important "bible" for the show – the binder that lists every event and every award and tells people exactly where they should be for every minute of the six-day event. Her take on the secret to its success? "Everybody would do anything for the Center for the Blind and for each other," she says. A member of the Board of Directors for C.A.R. and the Atherton Police Activities Leaugue and a former trustee of the elementary school district, today Parker spends alot of her time volunteering at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church.

Nan Chapman took her first riding lesson at the Menlo Circus Club when she was seven. Her husband says the worst fib his mother-in-law ever told him was that Nan would get over the horses once they were married. In charge of public relations for the weeklong show, the highlight for Chapman is the $35,000 Grand Prix, an elite jumping competition. The secret to the show's success? "The chair, the cause and the committee," she says. A former mayor of Atherton, over the years Chapman has also served on the Board of Directors of the Junior League, Peninsula Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and Family and Children's Services. Despite her years at the helm of a hunter/jumper competition, Chapman has never ridden a combination jump, but enjoys showing her American saddlebred "Chance". "So called, because at my stage and age," says Chapman, "he's my best chance, last chance and only chance to do well in equestrian competition."

Nancy Robinson is the only member of the original committee who competes in the Charity show, showing her Westphalian hunter, Manhattan. In fact, it's a family affair for the Robinsons. At last year's Menlo show, her daughter Caerry was Best Amateur/Owner Rider, Grand Champion on her hunter Ballari and Reserve Champion on hunter Austin. Having taken a year off from work to ride, Caerry has recently returned from the prestigious East Coast indoor circuit where her horse was Reserve Champion at two of the shows. Nancy's husband, Bob, is co-owner of San Jose British Motors, the sponsor of the $35,000 Grand Prix competition. Robinson oversees the official hospitality committee, but says that "everybody does everything and wears many hats." Next year, she's spearheading a group to improve the jumps in the hunter rings. A former board member for the Pacific Coast Horse Show Association and the United States Equestrian Team, Robinson now serves on the board of CETA at the Woodside Horse Park. The secret to the show's success? "I look at the show from the perspective of an exhibitor and what a lovely show it is. I think we have the best horse show in the country and it just gets better and better," she says.

THE STORYTELLER
Firoozeh Dumas

After her youngest child went off to kindergarten, Firoozeh Dumas wanted something more in her life than the cooking and laundry. So, she decided to write the stories of her life as a gift for her two children. And what marvelous stories they are. A finalist for the PEN award, the best-selling Funny in Farsi is the laugh-out-loud, touching, marvelous memoir of her family’s move from Iran to Whittier, California, where her mother learned English from Monty Hall and her father fell in love with Disneyland, Bob Hope and the free food samples at Price Club. At the end of her first day in America, she writes, “I realized that my father’s description of American had been correct. The bathrooms were clean and the people were very, very kind.” But like all great humorists, Dumas also has much to say about truth, pain, culture and identity. After all, being an Irani in this country for the past thirty years can’t have been a cakewalk. But an optimist and storyteller like her father, Dumas has spun the past into gold. She’s negotiating the movie rights to the book and in April will star in a one-woman show at TheatreWorks based on the book.

THE CRUSADER
Kim Meredith

In 1986, Kim Meredith began volunteering with Planned Parenthood in East Los Angeles teaching middle schoolers about “Postponing Sexual Involvement”. The volunteers wore pink tees (it’s not a gang color) with the logo “The Choice is Yours.” Today, Meredith is COO of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (PPGG), the local affiliate covering six counties from San Mateo to Mendocino whose clinics saw 65,000 clients last year and served another 10,000 through educational outreach. Responsible for fundraising, human resources and medical services, Meredith just wrapped up a $5.3 million capital campaign and is committed to delivering on PPGG’s “goal and highest mission of preventing unintended pregnancy.” It’s a cause close to her heart and part of her family’s story -- her father is a retired family practitioner who served migrant worker women and her mother is a pro-choice elected official. A former President of the Junior League, Meredith also serves on the board of the George Lucas Educational Foundation when she’s not spending time being a part of her daughter’s favorite things in life or trying to play golf with her husband. “I like to work. It’s in my nature,” she says. “And Planned Parenthood is my passion.”

THE RESTAURATEUR
Ciya Martorana

Seventeen years ago, she left behind a career as an actress for a part that has made her a star to those who seek the best gnocchi al sugo on the Peninsula. Today, Ciya Martorana acts as more of a director in her role as operating partner of Menlo Park’s Carpaccio Ristorante. But before she took over the Crane Street restaurant that has the ambiance of a sophisticated neighborhood joint and a menu that makes regulars out of those in the know, she danced to What’s New, Pussycat?on Ed Sullivan, appeared in a Coca-Cola commercial, starred as Annie Sullivan in Miracle Worker, did Liza’s first show on Broadway, and collaborated with choreographer Bob Fosse. She never forgot Fosse’s advice to “always see the whole picture”, so at Carpaccio, she answers the phones, tastes the wines, oversees the books, hires, fires, and never forgets where you like to be seated. The restaurant’s lasagna is her own recipe -- she carried it around for 30 years, cooking it on the road and in summer stock, stashing the pots and pans in her trunk. And if you need further proof of her acting ability, consider -- this purveyor of vitello piccata, who regularly leads her customers on food and wine tours of Italy, is actually Greek!

THE ANIMAL LOVER
Laura Regan

Laura Regan has the best of both worlds as a renowned illustrator and artist. Her original artworks of exotic animals hang in Las Vegas’ Mirage Hotel, the homes of private collectors and the Smithsonian Institute. But Regan’s flora and fauna is also licensed to appear on T-shirts, key chains, greeting cards, puzzles and china, as well as posters that raise funds for the San Francisco Zoo and the World Wildlife Fund. And in the last ten years, she has illustrated eleven children’s books, creating icy palettes of the Arctic and lush watercolors of boat-billed herons for best-selling children’s authors like Jane Yolen. Self-taught, Regan works in oils and gouache. She says she can’t do line drawings. “It happens with paint. All of a sudden, I see dimension.” Using very small brushes to enhance detail, Regan typically works from twenty or thirty pictures of a wildlife subject scattered about her cozy studio tucked under the eaves of the Woodside home where she and her husband raised their six children – sort of like the Brady Bunch, amid spider monkeys, zebra and the African savannah.

THE PARTY GAL
Suzy Somers

In 1982, Suzy Somers was standing on a ladder hanging decorations for a friend’s party when a woman asked her if she produced parties for a living. Suzy said, “No.” But Suzy’s husband, who happened to be holding the ladder, said “Yes.” And with that, Always r.s.v.p. was born, an event planning business that caters to a range of clients from Bear Stearns and the San Francisco 49ers to brides and best friends throwing baby showers. Whether you want an extravaganza or hot dogs and cake, Somers will plan everything from the invitation with custom graphics to the live entertainment or just provide the goody bags with rubber ducky soaps for the birthday party. Her job, she says, is to create the client’s event, not the planner’s party. And she is happy to work with you if your budget runs to Perrier Jouet or just to Red Bull. Somers and her staff have filled requests from the sublime to the ridiculous. Helping a father of the bride and the groom find a tap dance teacher, so they could timestep through an original song they had written to surprise the bride. And finding a group of drag queens to high kick at the christening of a yacht. This mother of three and three-time breast cancer survivor knows that people come to party planners for the big events in their lives, rites of passage like important birthdays, graduations and anniversaries, and she’s determined to make their dreams come true. “We’re in the business of making memories,” she says.

THE GATEKEEPERS

They act as therapists and diplomats, but are probably more often thought of as the gatekeepers to our children’s futures. Leading parents through the application dance of open houses, testing, interviews and then… the waiting, they’re the admission directors of local private schools and of one of the most elite universities in the country. Faced with the challenge of whom to admit among so many qualified candidates, they view themselves not as keeping people out of the hallowed halls, but of creating the alchemy of a community of scholars for the faculty within. They may be gatekeepers, but integrity and empathy are the watchwords of these four, who above all are advocates for their applicants.

Jill Lee has been the Director of Admission for 15 years at Castilleja School, the Palo Alto prep school for girls in grades 6 through 12. With a total enrollment of 415, Lee and her committee interview hundreds of candidates for the 80 to 90 seats available each year, in a search for girls who exemplify the “Five C’s of Castilleja” – conscience, charity, courage, character and courtesy. “We deal with some extraordinary young women who are really capable,” she says. “But we’re small. We can’t accept everyone.” Teasing out who a 10-year-old is from an essay or drawing out a 14-year-old in an interview is the work of a core group of faculty and administrators, who, Lee says, have a “vested interest” in these girls who will take a seat in their classrooms the following year. “The committee really considers what gifts the student will bring to the school,” she says. Her favorite role is as an ambassador for the school, telling its stories and showing it off. But most importantly, she wants the nervous children and hopeful families who come through Castilleja to feel at ease through the process. “We spend many hours in very thoughtful, careful consideration of the applicants,” says Lee. “I know what it feels like to want to be known.”

Ten years ago, when someone asked Stanford Dean of Admission Robin Mamlet what she did, they had no idea what she was talking about when she said she was in admissions. “Now when I meet someone new, I do everything I can not to tell them what I do, because chances are they’re close to someone I haven’t admitted or they have a ton of questions and I’m just trying to get to the dry cleaners,” she says. In addition to navigating the constituencies of faculty, financial aid, alumnae, and athletics while evaluating almost 20,000 applications, Mamlet also has a national profile, frequently speaking on behalf of the university. From that pulpit, she has spent the last four years speaking out about the negative effects of the stressful scramble for admission to the country’s most prestigious colleges. And last year Stanford, along with Harvard and Yale, instituted a single-choice early-action policy, under which students apply early to only one school, but are not bound to attend. “We’re starting to make inroads in decreasing the frenzy,” says Mamlet. “And Stanford has a leadership role nationally in ratcheting things down.” Seeking to ratchet down the pressure in her own life, Mamlet recently announced she will leave Stanford in June to spend more time with her husband and four children.

Stanford’s Director of Admission Anna Marie Porras and her siblings were the first generation in her family to go to college and to this day, she has strong feelings about the power of education. “Stanford changed me and I want others to share that,” says Porras, who joined the admissions department after graduation and fourteen years later can’t imagine leaving. Each year, Stanford considers more than 19,000 applicants to enroll a freshman class of 1,640. The art of admission has evolved in recent years, says Porras, from seeking to admit the well-rounded student to seeking to admit a well-rounded class, “a class that’s diverse across many dimensions.” She says, “Some are admitted because they’re great scientists, some are talented in the fine arts, and some are great human beings. All have academic strengths.” In fact, 79% of those admitted have a GPA of 4.0 or higher. Nevertheless, making judgments about a young person’s life is not a science. “There are no clear answers,” says Porras. “You have to have the ability to live with ambiguity and to see potential, potential that’s untapped in some cases. They’re 17-year-olds.” And every year on graduation day, she is reminded of why she does this job. “It’s so powerful,” she says, “to be part of an institution that changes people’s lives.”

Before she was Director of Admission at Hillsborough’s Crystal Springs Uplands School, Abby Wilder was a trustee, a parent and a student there. “I know this institution pretty well,” she says, “since I’ve been around here one way or another since I was twelve.” With an enrollment of 350, Wilder’s program admits about 65 new students each year, typically receiving five or six applications for every seat available. Some parents feel it can be tougher getting into a private high school on the Peninsula than the Ivy League, so it’s no surprise the hardest part of Wilder’s job is saying no to great kids. Having gone through the process herself, she knows how stressful it is. “What I’d most like parents to know is that we bend over backwards to be fair to everybody,” she says. And it’s not always the applicants with the highest test scores who are admitted. “I’m a stickler for seeking out kids who are very nice and respectful of other people,” she says. “We’re a small community and it’s important we really try to get kids who will come to be happily engaged in that community.”

THE GREEN THUMBS
Lena Dawson and Susann Mirabella

In the early 1900s, Procter & Gamble heir Elizabeth Gamble plowed up an old pony ring and orchard at the corner of Waverley and Embarcadero in Palo Alto to plant cutting gardens. Today, the historic estate and its surrounding 2.5 acres of gardens are lovingly preserved by a group led by the Garden Club of Palo Alto. On April 29th and 30th, almost 3,000 people will take the horticultural foundation’s 20th annual Spring Tour, “Special Gardens for A Special Year”, co-chaired by Lena Dawson and Susann Mirabella. The perfect choice to guide this Palo Alto institution’s largest and most important fundraiser, Dawson and Mirabella are sisters, as well as passionate community volunteers, who had been looking for a project they could tackle together.

Raised in rural Sweden, where their father was the caretaker of a castle estate set on an island, working side by side with him in the gardens was a ritual. “It was almost like a fantasy world,” says Mirabella. Recruited by Pan Am, Dawson became a stewardess on the most glamorous routes in air travel -- Paris, Rome, Istanbul, London and Morocco -- finally settling down in Palo Alto when she married. Mirabella came for a visit and met her future husband at a Stanford dance her sister insisted she attend. Today the two live just a few blocks down the street from each other. “We’re more than sisters,” says Dawson. “We’re best friends.” Mother to two children, ages 10 and 9, Mirabella, a former banker, is also a trustee for the Phillips Brooks School. Dawson, whose daughter attends Cal Poly, is married to the attorney who stole her away from Pan Am and is a member of the Peninsula Ball Committee and the Benefit Committee of Castilleja School. An avid gardener who “loves to be out there in the dirt”, Dawson isn’t so particular she won’t let her yellow labs out to play while she plants spring bulbs. As for Mirabella, she’s content to simply contemplate her favorite flower – the red rose. And both are very happy to be working together on the Spring Tour.

THE CHEF
Pamela Keith

Chef Pamela Keith was taught to cook by her grandmother who instilled in her “a reverence for food and things made with the hands.” Those lessons served Keith well from the baking of her first apple pie which she proudly took to kindergarten “show and tell”, through her job as a bartender that paid for college, and an earlier career in catering and the hotel industry. Then, at 37, Keith decided to live her dream and enrolled at Ritz Escoffier, the famed Paris cooking school, where she quickly mastered speaking “kitchen French” and “lived and breathed French food.” Her only job condition since has been to “stay close to the food” and after stints in the grand cuisine of the Hotel Ritz and as culinary director of Draeger’s, she opened her own business, offering catering, private lessons, and kitchen coaching, putting together menus, shopping lists and cooking instructions for families. Keith is evangelical about “the importance of a family cooking together and sitting at the table and committing themselves to the food and conversation.” When she’s not cooking, though, she loves the spicy Chinese at San Mateo’s Little Szechuan and the El Salvadoran food at Amelia’s in Redwood City.

THE WRITER
Diane Middlebrook

Virginia Woolf once asked, “How can one make a life out of six cardboard boxes full of tailors’ bills, love letters and old picture postcards?” Diane Middlebrook, Stanford professor emerita of English, has made a life out of such boxes as a master of that most difficult of literary genres – biography. Beginning with the award-winning, best-selling Anne Sexton: A Biography, Middlebrook has plumbed the lives of provocative women -- as she says, “women whom other women have a strong reaction to.” In Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton, she took a frank look at the jazz musician born Dorothy Lucille who lived for 54 years as a man. And Her Husband: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, a Marriage, has been called the “gold standard” in the chronicling of the two poets’ mythic lives. Middlebrook finds herself well-suited to the art of biography at this point in her life. “The occupation of the research, the interviewing, the travel, the long process of formulating a very complicated life is very gratifying,” she says. “I like the fact that it’s a slow process and fraught with anxiety, because it’s hard to understand other people.” Married since 1985 to the scientist and playwright Carl Djerassi, who invented the first oral contraceptive, Middlebrook will next tackle a biography of Ovid, whose Metamorphoses she taught for 35 years in her Stanford classes, bringing her scrupulous, evenhanded and elegant approach to the master of narrative himself.

THE PORTRAITIST
Claudia Marshall

Portrait artist Claudia Marshall had a drawing pencil in her hand before she could talk, but for twenty years she toiled in corporate marketing at Boole & Babbage and went on to found the software company Windy Hill Productions. In her spare time, she studied at the renowned Crown Point Press and collected other artists’ work -- from Nathan Oliveira to Robert Motherwell. But since 1977, Marshall’s own work has been commissioned and sold across the country. Portraiture is in the midst of a vogue and Marshall follows in the footsteps of popular San Francisco artist Virginia Seeger. Her “head and shoulders” portraits are worked in charcoal, pastel or acrylic, with the objective of capturing an exact likeness of the subject. The portraits have a nostalgic, almost idealized quality, yet Marshall obtains a remarkable resemblance in the work. When she’s not producing portrait commissions, she paints her second love – landscapes. Now completing construction on a studio in Woodside, she plans to expand into larger pieces and work more in oils. “But I’ll always do portraits because it’s so rewarding,” she says.

THE BEAUTY
Bella Schneider

With a degree from Berkeley and a baby girl on the way, Bella Schneider opened her first salon at the age of 25. Today, she is the architect, mastermind and inspiration behind an $11-million beauty empire that includes LaBelle Day Spas in San Francisco, Palo Alto and Stanford; the School of Advanced Aesthetics, which trains her employees and other salon owners; and her own line of LaBelle beauty products from Apple-Pectin Enzyme Peels to Champagne Body Splash. An originator of the concept of luxury day spas, Schneider continues to set the gold standard, cosseting clients with herbal tea and lavender neck wraps, offering cutting-edge Medi/spa services, and tending stressed-out debutantes, CEOs and soccer moms with treatments that range from reflexology to make-up musts. “I am in the business of mood,” says Schneider, “making people feel good about themselves.” The best advertisement for her own business, the elegant Schneider has the same glow her devoted following swears by – they’re willing to wait weeks for an appointment for her trademark custom facials. Now in the midst of expansions at all three of her locations, the Palo Alto spa is undergoing an ambitious renovation that will showcase star hair stylist, Sammy Zelcer, and provide an even more sybaritic setting for the see-and-be-seen crowd that flocks to Bella Schneider’s spas.

THE DOCTORS

In 1970, only 7% of physicians were women. These four were part of the vanguard that pursued careers in medicine throughout the 1980s, making women half of all medical school graduates. All four trained at Stanford University Medical Center and all are now at the top of the game they helped create. For them, the field of medicine has provided enormous job satisfaction and the flexibility to have both a career and a family. Best of all, and lucky for us, they’re true believers – they went into medicine and stayed with it because they wanted to make a difference.

Dr. Susan Hoffman grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where her father was a computer programmer for the National Laboratories, her grandmother was a nuclear chemist and her grandfather was a physicist. No surprise that when she went to UCLA, she thought she might do graduate work in science. But there, she set her sights on medical school. “Then when I started work in the hospital, what I enjoyed most was learning all about somebody and getting to see them through different stages of their life,” she says. “In order to have that kind of interaction, internal medicine was best.” Married to a plastic surgeon with whom she has three children, ages 15, 13 and 9, Hoffman spends about 40 hours a week at her Welch Road practice, but also finds herself making calls after soccer practice on Saturday. And for Hoffman, house calls are not a thing of the past, but one of her favorite things to do. “There are a lot of people who feel medicine is not the career path it used to be,” she says, “but really what you get out of it is a good sense of self and a lot of satisfaction. I want girls to know it’s a good career choice.”

When Dr. Sara Bunting was in high school she would accompany her father, an oncologist, on his morning hospital rounds. But during her training at UCSF and Stanford, she decided not to follow in his footsteps and instead pursued internal medicine, because she realized what she wanted to do was establish long term relationships with her patients. Today, working from her “nice little neighborhood office” in Palo Alto, her practice is so successful, she hasn’t taken on new patients in seven years – though she recently brought on a new partner. When she’s not working, family is her “number one priority.” But she admits she’s lucky -- her husband, a senior mechanical engineer at Apple Computer, takes on a lot of the household responsibilities and the primary parenting of her stepson. Nevertheless, she, too, believes medicine is a great career for women, though it’s still tough and very time-consuming. “I never feel as if there’s enough time for patients, especially when they’re hurting,” she says. And sometimes when she’s on vacation, she wishes she was like everybody else on the plane and could settle into her seat with a novel instead of the New England Journal of Medicine.

In her Welch Road practice, surgeon Jocelyn Dunn specializes in the treatment of breast disease and breast cancer. The most common type of cancer among women in the United States, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer by the time they reach their eighties. Dunn chose surgery as a specialty because, she says, “I like the fact that you can identify a problem and fix it.” And she likes having a “niche practice”, because it allows her to focus on her patients. “It sounds corny, but the daily reward of taking care of people is the reason most of us went into medicine,” she says. Married to a vascular surgeon with whom she has two young children, Dunn says being a physician isn’t difficult -- it’s doing everything else, too. Though there isn’t a single weeknight or weekend that she doesn’t work, she thinks medicine is still a great career for women. “You can make it whatever you want it to be,” she says. “And it’s one of the few jobs where, on a daily basis, you can make a difference.”

When Dr. Sarah Watson started at Menlo Medical Clinic in 1988, there were no other women internists on staff. Today, the mother of two, ages 8 and 12, who is married to an attorney, says the hardest thing about her life is combining work and parenthood. Nevertheless, she says, “I’ve been in practice for 18 years and medicine is one of the most forgiving professions for women because you can actually control your schedule. Once you put in your training, it’s pretty flexible.” Watson sees patients five days a week, but leaves the Crane Street offices every day at 4 p.m. in order to get home for soccer practice, play dates and dinner. She chose internal medicine because she found it to be the most intellectually challenging specialty. And she’s clearly not afraid of a challenge – in addition to being a mom, a wife and a physician, four days a week she’s up at 5:45 a.m., rain or shine, to run for an hour and twenty minutes. Oh, and she also has time for a book club. But she assured us, “I am not an accomplished musician.”

THE OLYMPIANS

The passage in 1972 of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act propelled a dramatic increase in girls’ participation in sports. Thirty years ago, 2% of college athletes were women and they received only about $100,000 in scholarships. Today, women comprise 42% of college athletes and receive more than $400 million in scholarships. And nowhere are these athletes better showcased than at the Olympics, where women are the ones to watch. In the summer of 2004, thirty-seven Stanford-affiliated athletes set off for the Games in Athens. They returned with 17 medals – 13 of them earned by women. Along for the ride of a lifetime were these three student athletes, who have perfected a balancing act between hitting the books and the gym – sisters Dana and Tara Kirk and Ogonna Nnamani. And they’ll be back in 2008 for Beijing.

One of the brightest up-and-comers on the world swimming scene, Stanford junior Dana Kirk grew up on Oyster Bay in Washington and was in the water from the time she was six months old. She played basketball and baseball, but when she was six, “swimming kind of picked me,” she says. “I just liked it best.” Kirk qualified for the Olympics in the 200-meter butterfly, but also competes in the 200-meter medley and middle-distance freestyle. A communications and political science major, she says being a student athlete requires a lot of time management. “It’s a lot of learning what you need to do to do the best on your test and make it to practice the next morning.” A high school All-American and Homecoming Princess, Kirk is Stanford’s top performer in the butterfly. The Stanford and Olympic women’s swim coach Richard Quick has said of Kirk, “When she tells herself what she’s going to do, she cuts her heart out to do it.” Dana’s role model is older sister and roommate Tara. “I am in awe of the fact that she’s done so much in school and swimming,” she says. “But lately, she has not been doing her dishes at all.” The girls made history as the first sisters to make an Olympic swim team.

One of the world’s top breaststrokers, Tara Kirk came late to the pool. As a 10-year-old gymnast, she broke her arm and took up swimming as part of her rehabilitation. “I wasn’t very good at all,” she says. “But I got better and one day I figured out how to swim breaststroke.” That’s an understatement. In her collegiate career, Kirk never lost a 100-meter breaststroke race. She has won 7 NCAA titles, holds the NCAA, Pac-10, U.S. Open, and Stanford records in both the 50 and 100-meter events, and in 2004 was named NCAA Swimmer of the Year and NCAA Athlete of the Year. Oh, and she brought home the silver in the 400-meter medley relay in Athens. Now finishing up a 5-year program that will earn her a bachelors degree in human biology and a masters in anthropology, Kirk considers her education at Stanford to be her greatest accomplishment and is considering graduate work in infectious diseases. In the meantime, she continues to train 25 to 30 hours a week in preparation for 2008. How does she motivate herself? “It’s almost like a habit – coming into the pool and giving your best,” she says. “Once excellence becomes part of your everyday life, it’s easier to do.”

Athens was the first Olympics for 6’1” volleyball player Ogonna Nnamani, but it won’t be her last. The only collegiate player for the U.S. National Team, the outside hitter also leads the Pac-10 Conference in kills and holds the single season record at Stanford. In all 28 matches last year, she recorded double figures in kills and continues to wow the Farm crowds as a senior. Nnamani started playing volleyball when she was 13 in her hometown of Bloomington, Illinois. “But I’m not a natural. It took a while,” she says. She credits her parents with providing the guidance and inspiration that got her to Stanford, where she is majoring in human biology with the goal of becoming a doctor. The three-time All American and Academic All-American says representing the U.S. volleyball team at the XVII Pan-American games in the Dominican Republic was one of the greatest athletic experiences she has ever had. But it doesn’t quite equal the first match against China at the Athens Olympics when she looked into the stands to see her entire family. The most important gift an athlete can have, she believes, is a strong mental attitude. “Will, perseverance, never giving up,” she says. “It’s like the ultimate alchemy. You can change nothing into something.”

THE TEACHERS

Teaching is hard. It requires enthusiasm, resilience, a sense of adventure, a flair for the theatrical, a knack for problem-solving, stamina and patience, patience, patience. It’s not for the faint of heart, but for those who retain a sense of wonder at the end of a long day in a room filled with students clamoring to be seen and heard. We rely on and hope for our teachers to be up to the task of the defining moments of those days and their awesome responsibility. As teacher Esme Codell wrote in Educating Esme, “Thirty-one children. Thirty-one chances. Thirty-one futures, our future.” Here on the Peninsula, we are fortunate to have many teachers looking out for our future, teachers who are not just good, but gifted. Here are four of them.

Beth Wise has been a teacher for 23 years, for much of that time at Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School, the extraordinary laboratory school at the forefront of research in early childhood development. After many years as a classroom teacher, Wise designed and now leads a play-based music curriculum for all 400 Bing preschoolers “Children have a natural affinity for music,” says Wise. “It’s a tool that brings them together so they can see their ideas expressed in another way.” A teaching style marked by compassion and openness is critical for teachers of preschoolers, she says. “This age is magical because they’re so receptive to your positive influence. That’s why it’s crucial to be respectful of children and really honor what they say and do.” A former artist in residence at the Wolf Trap Foundation, Wise recently received an award from Stanford’s School of Education for her contributions to the education of low-income children and youth. “I feel teaching is a calling for me,” she says. “I’m one of those lucky ones who really found what I love to do.”

As the physical education teacher for 170 students in grades 3 through 6 at Pinewood School, Donna Owens is part coach and part camp counselor. Luckily, she has more energy than most of her charges. In addition to the seven periods of physical education each student takes every week, it’s the rare child who isn’t part of the intramural sports program she runs during the school’s lunch hour. She is also always available for lessons in rules, honesty, inappropriate language and treating others with respect. Owens believes that ultimately the most important thing she teaches her students is self-confidence. “I don’t grade on their athletic ability. I grade them on their willingness to do the 50-yard dash,” she says. “We play competitive sports, but I don’t make a big deal out of winning and losing. It’s how they play the game. When the kids leave the playground, I hope what they’re walking away with is that it was fun.” It must be, because Owens is also the teacher Pinewood graduates return to the Los Altos campus to visit, year after year.

Karen Clancy’s first job was at the local movie theatre, where she was quickly promoted from working the candy counter to cashier. That experience came in handy when she was trying to come up with a way to make learning fun for her fifth graders at Menlo Park’s Oak Knoll School. With some actual movie theatre seats – with cupholders -- she found on Ebay, it was Hooray for Hollywood in the reading area, with a Director’s chair and an Oscar for the Star of the Week. “Teaching isn’t an 8 to 3 job,” says Clancy. “It has to be part of who you are. You have to love doing it. I’m always thinking about it, no matter where I am.” A teacher at Oak Knoll since 1997, Clancy’s favorite subjects are history and social studies, but her real forte in a classroom full of fifth graders intent on testing her is going with the flow. “Nothing is too unusual,” she says. “One week, it’s a dad showing up with pumpkins for everyone in the middle of a reading lesson. And the next it’s someone throwing up in the middle of class.”

Castilleja school biology teacher Eryl Barker believes that people go into teaching for two reasons – either they’re interested in the topic they’re teaching or they’re interested in young people. “Content comes secondly for me,” she says. “I really enjoy being with young people” -- whether it’s in her human biology class with the “impetuous eighth graders who really want to be engaged” or with the “more measured” twelfth graders who scramble to gain admission to her popular seminar, Introduction to Bioethics and Biotechnology. Nevertheless, Barker has a “real passion” for teaching human biology and the bioethics course she developed during a sabbatical from her 20-year teaching career at Castilleja. Her seminar students consider the ethics of biomedical technologies and scientific discoveries, as well as the medical, scientific, and political factors inherent in reproductive technologies like IVF and the genome project. Barker thinks these are important subjects for girls who need to know what is going on in the world. “My view is that we educate our girls,” she says. “But are they educated citizens?”

THE RISK TAKER
Vinita Gupta

Quick Eagle Networks Chairman Vinita Gupta became a Silicon Valley legend in 1994 as the first Indian-born woman to take her company public. She then cemented her status as a winning risk-taker when, foreseeing tough times ahead, she took the maker of networking products private again in 1999. In the midst of the corporate craze to go public, she couldn’t find a lawyer who even knew how to take her company down that road less traveled. “There’s very little new thinking in these areas,” says Gupta, who holds two patents for inventions in communications. “Technology changes much more rapidly than other fields, so there has to be a bigger element of risk-taking.” Today, Quick Eagle is 100% employee-owned with more than $20 million in annual sales. When she’s not at her desk in the Sunnyvale office, she serves as a Trustee of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, chairing their Research Institute, and of the America India Foundation, as well as on the board of Maitri, which supports South Asian victims of domestic violence. Charming and whip-smart, Gupta is a woman of many, passionate interests, from hiking the fjords of Norway and the rim of the Grand Canyon to competitive bridge. And, believe it or not of a tech legend and mother of two, she says she “loves to party”.

THE LADY
Kingsley Jack

Etiquette coach Kingsley Jack has a mantra -- “You never get a second chance at a first impression.” Raised in New Orleans, where you’re not allowed to fail at manners or parties, Jack not only instructs her clients in how to navigate a place setting, but also in the lost art of conversation and the importance of firm handshakes. She got into the business of fish forks, tact, and thank you notes, when former Stanford football coach Tyrone Willingham asked her to work with his players, who needed some coaching of a different stripe for appearances at donor receptions and banquets. Today, her classes in the social graces for young people are by far the most popular part of her business -- Ms. Beehaven – though she works with clients aged 9 to 90 and also offers instruction in interview techniques and event planning. She finds the state of manners in Silicon Valley today to be “mostly null and void”, with the biggest lapses in civility in cell phone usage and the faux pas of failing to R.s.v.p.. “The informality of California is great,” she says, “but with no rules, we get sloppy.” Having raised two debutante daughters, Jack loves working with young people and understands the difference social grace can make. “People like you better if you’re well-behaved,” she says.

THE CEO
Julie Shimer

Julie Shimer had a long and successful career as a vice president and general manager at large companies like Motorola, 3Com and AT&T Bell. But she wanted some CEO experience, so she started looking for a small company with big company potential. In 2001, she made her now-or-never decision, jumping off the corporate ladder and into the fast and unforgiving game of the start-up as President and CEO of Vocera Communications. The four-year-old company sells a breakthrough wireless communications system that may owe some credit to the creators of Star Trek. Using a combination of Wi-Fi, voice-over-internet, and speech recognition technologies, the Vocera system allows users wearing a badge weighing only two ounces to instantly communicate with others, recognizing names from spoken commands and connecting users throughout a building or campus. The product replaces overhead paging systems in hospitals, retail stores and hotels and has been used in trials by the Marines at Camp Pendleton. It looks like Shimer’s bet on a start-up is paying off, with the system now installed in more than 100 locations from El Camino Hospital to Best Buy. And when her 60-hour workweek is over, she and her husband pilot their single-engine plane out over Silicon Valley and away from it all.

Copyright 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 Christine VanDeVelde. All rights reserved.