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About Pleasant Hill-Martinez AAUW

The Martinez and Pleasant Hill AAUW Branches officially merged September 2012. The Martinez Branch was chartered in 1948, and Pleasant Hill in 1957.  Our newly established branch offers friendship, support for personal and professional growth, community leadership, gender equity and scholarships to our local community.  We have 100+ members who are a diverse group of professional career women, community activists, elected and appointed public officials, teachers, parents, artists.  We are young, single, married, single again, employed and retired.

Congratulations to our Officers elected during our June Brunch for our 2025-2026 year Co-Presidents: Reba Siero, SarahJoy Hanes, and Sherrie Moore, Program Vice President: Carlyn Obringer, Membership Vice Presidents: Diane Peterson and Nancy Hobert, AAUW Fund (EF) Vice Presidents: Gayle Miner and Carolynn Barcklay, Secretary: Sue Greenfeld, and Treasurer: Claudia Bass.

   

Officers 2025-2026

Our Vision Statement: AAUW empowers all women and girls to reach their highest potential.

   

Meet our Pleasant Hill and Martinez past presidents.

Pleasant Hill and Martinez Past Presidents

Members -- The Deposit & Reimbursement Request Form is now available online here. Save, complete, and print the form below.

Barbara Newacheck Memorial Award Winner

Barbara Newacheck was a dynamic member of the Pleasant Hill Branch who embodied the values of AAUW. She passed away in 2004 and in 2005 the Barbara Newacheck Memorial Award was established to honor a member who, like Barbara did, advances the mission of AAUW through her contributions to the Branch and beyond.

This year's recipient of the Barbara Newacheck award is Claudia Bass, our current treasurer. Claudia has been earlier named for two AAUW Gift Fund honorees. Decades ago, Claudia served as President of the Martinez branch and was involved in Tech Trek. More recently, she served as co-president with Jennifer Apkarian. They then took charge of AAUW Fund. She is a committee member on Tech Trek and helps out with our SAM Program. Claudia has had a successful career putting her Special Ed credential to good use in the Contra Costa Education Department. Her family has expanded with two grands and two great grandchildren. Weekend may find her playing Mexican Train, golfing, or drinking wine. Congratulations, Claudia!

Named Gift Honoree

AAUW Fund supports our work to promote equity for women and girls. There are several different entities included within Funds, and all donations are fully tax deductible. Pleasant Hill-Martinez Branch of AAUW has historically been a generous contributor to AAUW Fund. ranking ninth highest in the state in 2016. In the 130 years of Fund, nearly 100 million dollars in over 12,000 fellowships, grants and awards have been given to recipients from the United States and more than 130 other countries. Every contribution of any amount each of us makes truly helps in some way to make the world a better place.

Our 2025 Named Gift Honoree was awarded to Sandy Wolfe for significant contributions to the mission of AAUW. Sandy is a person who contributes to AAUW in many ways, besides just writing a check. Two ways are that she chairs and organizes our AAUW Holiday Party and she also offers her lovely backyard for our Tech Trek Wine and Cheese Fundraiser. We also must not forget her willingness to cut quiche! Congratulations, Sandy.

Our 2025 DVC Scholarship recipient is Tara Lanoie who will be transferring to California State University, East Bay in the Fall of 2025 majoring in psychology. At DVC she majored in psychology and addiction studies. Tara had dropped out of school and faced many personal challenges which she overcame, enrolled at DVC and became successful in school. She is also the first one in her family to attend college. In addition to being a student Tara is a single parent of two girls aged 14 and 5.

At DVC, Tara was a former EOPS (Educational Opportunity Program Services) peer advisor. There she provided assistance and advice to fellow students. She also showed initiative and student leadership by creating The Children’s Clothing Closet where parents can obtain clothing for infants and toddlers as DVC families. Currently she is working as a Drug and Alcohol counselor with twenty-four clients on her case load. In addition to family, work, and school obligations she volunteers at her church.

Tara has shown a tremendous amount of perseverance and resiliency which has contributed to her academic and life success. The faculty and staff at DVC highly recommended her, and a common theme is that the qualities she has would make her a successful counselor and contribute to the community in positive ways. What also drives her is her desire to be a positive role model for her girls, which is especially important to her.

Congratulations to Tara and we wish her well in the next chapter of her education.

The 2021 National Conference for College Student Leaders (NCCWSL) will be held the end of May 2021 and will be virtual. Our student from Diablo Valley College who will be attending is Bryanna Nicole King, and she is 19 years old. She is majoring in communications and marketing and will be transferring next fall. Her sights are on a variety of UC campuses in which she has applied. A common theme from her references were that she is an excellent student, very motivated, encouraging towards others and displays leadership skills. Her school and community activities reflect her leadership skills. Bryanna had an internship with Professional Businesswomen of California conference in 2021. Her role was marketing the conference. In addition to school, Bryanna has started her own online business Bree Sticks Company.

Bryanna was excited about attending NCCWSL. She feels developing leadership skills will help in pursuing her goals. In her essay she said, This conference will help me further develop my voice and use it in school, my business and in the workplace in my future. At our end of the year brunch via Zoom we had the pleasure to hear from Bryanna who attended the virtual from Bryanna after attending NCCWSL this year. She said it was amazing and thanked us for giving her the opportunity to attend. Bryanna enjoyed the workshops. She did highlight a few speakers. One was about rage and the ability to acknowledge your rage but make it productive. Another was how to brand yourself which was especially helpful as Bryanna runs her own business. Next fall she will be attending UCLA, majoring in communications and marketing.

Here is a photo from the 2019 Northern California AAUW October Fund luncheon with members from our branch and Saalem Adera, Fellowship recipient. Part of her grant came from the Martinez Branch 50th Anniversary fellowship. She is attending UC Berkeley and working on her Ph.D. in hydrology (study of water). Once finished with school, Saalem wants to improve planning for access to plentiful and good quality water availability through various parts of the world.

AAUW American Fellowship scholar, Cloe-Mai Le Gall-Scoville, spoke at the 2016 Fund October Luncheon about her doctoral studies. Part of her fellowship also consisted of funds from the Martinez Branch 50th Anniversary fellowship established in 1998. It was particularly meaningful for Branch members, who usually don't get to meet a Fellow who benefited directly from the Branch's fundraising efforts, to meet Cloe. The grant is allowing the language and literature major to concentrate on finishing her thesis on the role of race and gender in 19th century literature. She is pursuing her doctorate at UC Davis.

American Fellowship doctoral scholars pictured are: Dena Al_Adeeb, New York University, Middle Eastern and Islamic Art Studies, Cloe-Mai Le Gall-Scoville, UC Davis, Language and Literature; Maria Tourtchaninvoa, UC Berkeley, Social Work, Abisola Kusimo, Stanford, Mechanical Engineering, Connie Wun, Mills College, Education and Womens Studies.

Special Recognition for Lifetime Member Carol Baier

Lifetime Martinez AAUW member, Carol Baier, was recognized at our 2017 Soup Supper by the speaker, Dianna Vanni Matthias. Carol was Dianna s chemistry teacher in 1953-54 at Alhambra Union High School. It was her first year of teaching at Alhambra and the first of 63 continuous years of membership in our Branch. Dianna was a bright, hard-working junior at the time. When she graduated, she received a $50 scholarship from the Martinez AAUW Branch. She used it to buy a textbook for one of her DVC science classes. In those days, science books were by far the most expensive.

Dianna spoke movingly of Carol s impact on her life. Carol, spotting her abilities, even used contacts at UCSF to obtain bacteria samples so Dianna could learn to transfer them to slides. In her quiet way, Carol strongly encouraged Dianna to pursue education and a career in science even though it was a difficult choice at the time for a woman both in gaining the education and in opportunities for meaningful work.

Dianna has never forgotten Carol, the only female instructor she had in all her education up to and including the doctorate, and Carol s encouragement, her seeking out extra experiences to add interest and challenge to Dianna s classwork and her steadfast support. Dianna had a newspaper picture of herself, Carol and a few other students (all boys) from a 1954 edition of the Contra Costa Gazette, enlarged and framed to present to her. Dianna and her husband have created a $1000 scholarship in Carol s honor for a young woman in the Alhambra Class of 2017 who wants to pursue a career in mathematics or science.

Carol, a biology major from Beloit College in Wisconsin, is an avid environmentalist having been active on the Friends of the Franklin Hills and the creation of the Briones Bio Region. She has been honored by several groups and she has contacts with a number of environmental organizations.

We often don t realize the positive impact our actions, fueled by the values and goals of AAUW, have on the women and girls with whom we interact. Thank you, Carol.

We will dearly miss our friend, Marilyn Tubbs , who passed away in June 2013 and touched so many lives. Marilyn was a member of the Pleasant Hill branch since 1963 and filled just about every position available, including chapter president twice. She was especially interested in education and served on a commission instituted by the City Council. For the branch, she worked very hard at Fair Oaks in the Student Store and volunteered a tremendous amount of time toward the SAM program. She also published our Newsletter for several years and was our first Webmaster. A scholarship fund has been set up in her name. Congratulations to Annie Rana, who was chosen as the recipient in 2013. She is attending the nursing program at the Dominican University of California in San Rafael.

To contact us, email the webmaster at www.aauw-pleasanthill-martinez.org