Here’s an update bio as I noted recently my original had been inadvertently deleted from the site.

After graduating in English from the Honors College, Ohio State University, I moved to Boston, with my first career job being a trust officer at a major commercial bank. Happily, I was also able to pursue my love of international travel, primarily in Europe, because of generous vacation. Once I completed my MBA from Boston University, I went to live and work on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, helping client companies via marketing research and strategies. A longing to own a home brought me back to Boston where I bought a condo, and worked on the client side in both new products and established personal care brands including Dry Idea and White Rain.

A friend at my condo led to my meeting Tom Atkinson over a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries at her doctoral celebration. Tom and I wed two years later in a truly memorable ceremony at Blithewold, an estate on Narragansett Bay in Bristol, RI, and a few months later we bought our home in Wellesley, MA.

I went back into consulting, and both Tom and I worked hard and traveled often. But we both wanted kids, and so we were thrilled to have Reid and later Liam. Ironically, Tom’s job took us to the Cincinnati area for a few years. Once back in Wellesley, I focused on parenting our sons. Involvement in their education led me to a new career, tutoring disabled, struggling, and gifted students that has been a great source of personal satisfaction.

I haven’t lost the travel bug and have enjoyed in-depth visits to Romania, Hungary, Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia, Morocco, Bhutan, India, Russia, and the Baltics states, Japan, Borneo (privileged to see 33 orangutans interacting in the wild!), Java and Bali. Recently, Tom and I traveled to Hawai’i, fortunately before the heavy restrictions hit. Travel grants me lots of opportunity to pursue photography, another long-time passion and to write about my observations of the wonderfully diverse people and cultures I’ve experienced. And, lastly, I haven’t lost my voracious reading habit, especially historical fiction written by women.

When age impinges on my mobility, I’d love to write young adult novels that inspire diversity and social justice in the upcoming generation.

Having been selected for the Antlers yearbook staff sophomore year, I engaged in a very wide variety of activities before being co-editor my senior year. As juniors, Marje Holden and I were asked to solicit local businesses for advertising to bolster our budget. Later, accompanied by a professional photographer, we returned to those businesses for ad photos, composed primarily of Marje and me, acting like, um, customers?

When the proofs came back, I laughed so hard! The photographer took every shot at such an angle that I was hidden from view, typically behind Marj. Maybe he thought I wasn’t photogenic enough? Who knows! But if you want to see how consistently I was, metaphorically speaking, just an arm or a leg, check out the ads in the 1967 DPHS yearbook!