Congratulations to the following Branch-Named
Gift Nominees for AAUW Fund!
What is the AAUW Fund and why we need it?
Each year, AAUW San Jose has the opportunity to designate two Named Gift Honorees early in the calendar year, when the AAUW Funds giving period is closed. Though we honor individuals, it is always the case that accomplishments are team efforts—as these individuals would certainly be quick to point out.
2021 Named Gift Honorees
Pat Diamond, Finance Officer
Pat has been finance officer in past years, and we were lucky that she accepted the position again. Pat has consistently made sure that AAUW SJ completed all tasks relating to taxes, insurance, banking, corporate legalities, budgeting and financial aspects of our headquarters. In passing these tasks from on volunteer to another in the past, some tasks had not been fully addressed, but Pat’s conscientious attention to detail got us back on track. Her detailed updates to the Finance job description will help future Finance Officers to understand what’s required and guide them in doing it—a legacy that will be so helpful. Prior to the pandemic, she helped guide us through recovering a large amount of funds that were hacked from our bank accounts. She has helped us with technology, signing us up for and managing the very necessary Zoom accounts that helped us stay engaged through this last year and a half. We have an electronic voucher process due to Pat’s creativity and helped us navigate email motion approvals. She even has become our tenant upstairs!
Diane Trombetta
When you return to meetings at Headquarters, you’ll recognize Diane Trombetta by her photo with her mom, Ruby Trombetta, in our new coffee bar in the kitchen, the ‘Café Trombetta.’ This was in appreciation for the remodeling of the kitchen and bath. But Diane’s latest contributions are very much appreciated as well. When the pandemic cancelled our Holiday Boutique, Diane volunteered to head up a virtual, online fundraiser, complete with raffle prizes, QR-code and print advertisement, online payment capability! She led the team to create a fun and record-breaking fund raising event, and an ongoing online capability that allows contributions to any of our Community Action Projects all year long! She continued her support of the branch by joining the Nominating Committee and is participating in the group that is helping coordinate a fund-raising calendar to optimize that, led by our President Sonia Wright.
2020 Named Gift Honorees
Nancy Moreno
Nancy has been a VP of membership for several years, and helped the group flow out improved processes for onboarding members. She also helped raise awareness of sexual assault of night shift workers by bringing the documentary ‘Rape on the Night Shift,’ along with informative information from Ruth Silver Taube, an expert in employment law. She also promoted the concept of reverse mentoring, by bringing the students from the Mitty Advocacy Project to inform us of Red Flags and Legislation concerning Human Trafficking—both Child, Labor and Sex Trafficking. Nancy also introduced us to the SJSU Student Campaign and Marketing classes, which provided us great marketing materials to raise awareness of AAUW San Jose at the Women’s Marches. She also ‘loaned’ us her daughters from time to time, to do research on legislation and help create materials for Public Policy!
Nancy’s VERY BUSY new job has taken up a lot of her time, but we want to recognize how many contributions she has made—and welcome her back when her new assignment settles a bit!
Pam Dougherty
The Building and Properties Committee as a whole is a wonder, as anyone who has served on it or attended their meetings will tell you. A true team effort, but leadership counts. As all of you know, the kitchen and bath remodel were huge tasks, and were launched under the leadership of Linda Goldberg. But the devil is in the details, and execution is everything. Pam became the chair and led the charge, arranging materials, managing contractors, and wrangling budgets. We all wish we could enjoy that remodel more, but Covid has changed that. By the way, the analysis of what was needed to make us ‘Covid-Compliant’ was not easy task, but Pam’s sharp eyes and legal experience mean that we can have full confidence we comply with all the safety regulations the county requires. At the same time, Pam looked ahead, arranging for a new roof and solar panels to become more green and give our new tenant some economic savings!
2018 Named Gift Honorees
Archives Committee – Diana Taylor (Chair), Marilyn Jackson, Lida Kluzek, Judith Ohland, Grace O’Leary, Laura Manthey, Bernice Redfern, and Barbara Gilbert: Organized and saved branch paper records dating from 1930s to 2000 in a permanent, secure environment, meeting twice a month for two years. Records involved 50 years of scrapbooks, 70 years of minutes, directories, newsletters, and other documents that needed to be permanently stored in a safe place in case of fire or major earthquake. The cutoff year was 2000 because after that the branch switched to digital records. The Committee used “Records Management Guidelines for States and Branches” prepared by AAUW national’s Archives Task Force and deposited a total of nine (9) linear feet of documents to History San Jose.
Jane Guinther: Served as Tech Trek community action project (CAP) volunteer for over 10 years, leading as chair in most of those years. She actively sought participating middle schools, interfaced with school administrators, interviewed applicants, connected with parents of selected campers, coordinated the Ice Cream Social (Camp Orientation) hosted by the Inter-Branch Council (IBC), and served as “dorm mom” at Stanford. For over seven years, Jane also took charge of Tech Excellence, which was held twice a month for nine months in a year for seventh grade students at the John Muir Middle School. She facilitated classroom stations, maintained materials, handled all technological requirements, and coordinated field trips. On the finance side, she worked with the Interbranch Special Projects Foundation (ISPF) of AAUW Santa Clara County and its officers.
Jacqui Rogers: Chaired Public Policy for two years and coordinated the Human Trafficking program, which was attended by over 40 members and local residents. During Super Bowl 2016, she distributed soap to motels and talked to managers about how to prevent human trafficking. In October 2016, she was one of the presenters at the Propositions Forum prior to the national election. She was a big proponent of equal pay, rallying our members to work with the Bay Area Equal Pay Collaborative (BA=$C) to end gender pay gap and the Coalition for Equal Pay to raise awareness among high school students by distributing science lesson plans, including $0.79 cookies to illustrate pay disparities. She assisted Gloria Leonard at Fall Event for over four years and co-authored several articles for the BONFIRE, thus raising our awareness to public policy issues.