2023-24 Slate for the Board of the Mount Holyoke Club of the Peninsula
Please take a moment to review the proposed slate for the next fiscal year’s Board. Accept or reject your club’s 2023-24 leaders by June 22, 2023.
Proposed Slate
President: Lisa Weissman ’84
VP Events: April Wang ‘12
Treasurer: Gauri Ganjoo ’19
Secretary: Peri Caylor ’83
Young Alumnae Coordinator: Anna Pickett ‘ 22
Communications chair:
Marie McElligott ’09
Co-chair vacant
Membership chair: Tasha Bergson-Michelson ’93
Members-at-large:
Louise Jeffrey ’00 (for Coast members)
Francisca Sanchez ‘75 (for Central Valley members)
Jen King ’91 (for Peninsula & East Bay members)
Non-Voting Members
Advisers:
Trudy Levy ’69
Barbara Monks
Rose drop coordinators:
Anne Raphael ’62
Trudy Levy ’69
Joanne Petersen ’71
AAR: Eliz Adem ’13
Selected Bios
President – Lisa Weissman ’84
Lisa has a passion for making things better. She’s worked in Organization Change Management for most of her career helping a wide variety of organizations, from nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies, move towards their ideal future state. She has moved quite a bit herself, landing on the Peninsula shortly before the pandemic changed all of our lives. Wherever she goes, she looks for MHC connections, finding amazing, uncommon women who share her passion for making things better. She was delighted to join the board initially as a VP focused on event planning, and then serving as President. She enjoys connecting with other alumnae whether it’s celebrating our traditional college events or exploring local area fun. Her interests include providing stability / permanency for children in need and period equity.
VP Events – April Wang ’12
April graduated in 2012 from Mount Holyoke as a physics major, quite smitten with her Mohome. She obtained a Ph.D. in electrical engineering but with drastically different experiences attending other institutions after leaving South Hadley. As a result, April has been helping MHC physics students with any info on navigating graduate school and career options after MHC. She loves to continue doing so and more as a local club member. April moved to the Bay Area in 2019 and works as a machine learning software developer at a medical device startup. She is passionate about science and tech and connects with strong women pursuing their education and career goals. In her free time, April loves the company of her three cats (she can talk about them for hours) and one human baby. She spends a lot of time exploring urban and suburban hiking trails. She also loves to visit museums, parks, and wineries with her human family.
Secretary – Peri Caylor ’83
Hiking above the fog on Mount Tamalpais one Mountain Day, Peri Caylor ’83 was inspired to join the Mount Holyoke Club of Northern California. She enjoyed cultivating friendships with women of different generations whose backgrounds and interests—aside from Mount Holyoke—differed from her own. Being involved in club events transported her beyond her daily work as a full-time mom and housewife, and her life grew richer for it. Peri has been part of the Mount Holyoke Club of the Peninsula since 2011, and this year is thrilled to be working with a group of talented women to further strengthen ties among area Mount Holyoke alumnae.
Treasurer – Gauri Ganjoo ’19
After graduating from MHC in 2019 and moving back to the bay, Gauri quickly connected with the alumnae club seeking guidance and community. When she was approached about joining the club, she saw an opportunity to start giving back to the community and help others in a small way. She is also a math nerd who once helped create a playing card deck of female mathematicians and loves good stories in the form of books, comics, film, television, standup, etc and is on the lookout for her next obsession.
Co-Communications Chair: Marie McElligott ’09
Marie grew up in Watsonville and her first introduction to the Mount Holyoke Club of the Peninsula was the new student send-off in the fall right before leaving for her freshman year at MHC. She went on to graduate as a physics major from MHC in 2009. She has been involved with the club since moving to San Jose in 2014. After attending a few events, she joined first as a member-at-large, then Young Alum Coordinator and eventually transitioning to Treasurer in 2017 and now Communications chair in 2020. She is working as a program manager at a genetics lab designing and building interfaces for electronic lab results and order delivery.
Membership Chair – Tasha Bergson-Michelson ’93
Tasha serves as the Instructional and Programming Librarian for Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California. Since 1995, she has been exploring what makes for successful information literacy instruction in corporate, nonprofit, subscription, and school libraries. Previously, Bergson-Michelson was the Search Educator at Google, where she wrote an extensive series of Search Education lesson plans, the Power Searching MOOCs and—most importantly—collaborated with other librarians around the world to explore the most effective ways of teaching research skills. Bergson-Michelson was designated a 2014 Mover & Shaker.
Recent Alum Coordinator – Anna Pickett ’22
Since receiving a rose from the Mount Holyoke Club of the Peninsula as a prospective student, Anna knew she wanted to be involved in the local MHC community. Soon after she graduated from MHC, she joined the local club as the recent alum coordinator and continues to work on creating events and resources to support the community. She enjoys being able to help local alums connect and find community together after graduation. Additionally, she will soon start work as a quality engineer at Apple.