Both my professional and personal lives have been somewhat peripatetic, that is, I moved around a bit.  Professionally, I started out in academia (PhD. In political science from Stanford) and taught and served as an administrator at San Jose State University.

I felt the need for more adventure in my life and became a U.S. diplomat.  I spent four years in Greece at the U.S. Embassy and developed a strong bond with Greece, although not with the State Department. After seven years at State, I returned to academia as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Hawaii in Hilo.

Regarding my personal life, I had an early marriage, marrying too young, followed by twenty years as a single woman.  I then had twenty-two extraordinary years with Jim Wilkinson, seventeen of them married, before he passed away in 2010.  Now, and since 2011, I have had the good fortune of a wonderful partnership with Michael Rosenthal.

In 1995, I had the fun, with Jim, of restoring an abandoned olive oil press on the Greek island of Aegina.  We turned it into a quite unusual home.  Years later, we restored another abandoned home near Molivos on the island of Lesbos.  In between our Greek building jags, Jim and I lived for many years in Santa Rosa, California.

At the end of 2010, I moved to Washington, D.C. and met Michael.  He and I now live in a senior retirement community in Virginia, near Washington.  Before and since the height of Covid, we have traveled overseas as much as possible on cruises and trips to exotic places.

In Washington, I became active in the nonprofit world.  I worked as Executive Director of the National Council of Women’s Organizations and volunteered at Cure Cervical Cancer and Gender Health.  In 2014, I founded Light My Fire, a nonprofit which provides grants to women and girls in the developing world for health and education.  Light My Fire has made close to 50 grants totaling nearly $500,000 (https://www.lightmyfirefund.org).

Retirement brought me the fun of a new pastime – creative writing.  In addition to political activism and community life, I immerse myself in writing 15 novels and 2 memoirs. And I love it.