Mary Austin is a Founder of San Francisco Center for the Book. She is an artist's book collector and philanthropist with extensive experience in non-profit management. She served as Curator and Assistant Director of the Museum of Printing History in Houston, TX for many years before becoming Director of Explore Print! in San Francisco. Mary is the proprietor of The Underground Press.
Kathleen is a Founder of San Francisco Center for the Book. She is the owner of Burch Typografica, a past member of Burning Books Press and a past president of The Book Club of California.
Growing up, Rebecca (Becky) Cook spent many weekends in the garage designing and printing on their C&P. She often surprised her parents by announcing she had volunteered to print tickets for the Homecoming Dance or campaign posters for a friend in Youth and Government. Becky attended University of California, San Diego and after receiving a degree in Mathematics she began her 27 year career in High-tech Supply Chain management. Becky leads art seminars at her children's school, takes paper making and bookbinding classes at SFCB, and fills her living room with various art projects. In 2023 Becky retired to spend time with family, volunteer and focus on moving her family printing studio to the San Francisco Peninsula.
Coleen is successful in business with her husband, Paul. She attended and holds a diploma from the American Academy of Bookbinding and is a successful design binder. She has worked with Don Glaister as his studio assistant. Coleen is very well acquainted with the leadership and management of the American Academy of Bookbinding and helps to strengthen relations between San Francisco Center for the Book and that organization. She is a past President of the Hand Bookbinders of California.
David is the Curator of Rare Books and Literary Manuscripts at The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley. He previously worked at the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; and St Edmund Hall, Oxford University.
Meryl has been a business trial lawyer for over 30 years and is currently a litigation partner at Bryan Cave. She has a particular passion for making things, which has expanded to include bookbinding. She has taken a number of classes at the Center, which led her to want to expand her involvement with this wonderful organization. She also loves to read books.
Mark is a Silicon Valley technology professional with a background in computer imaging and digital printing/publishing. He has held senior and executive roles at large corporations and early stage venture-funded companies in engineering, business development, sales and marketing. He has a passion for books and maps, along with an interest and curiosity in the history of printing and traditional printmaking techniques.
Margaret has a MBA from Stanford, was VP of marketing at several Silicon Valley marketing firms, and is now with Cisco. She has been on the San Francisco Center for the Book board since 1998.
Judy Shasky Nadler joins the board after a decade at Sunset Magazine, two terms as mayor of the city of Santa Clara, and 11 years as Senior Fellow in Government Ethics at Santa Clara University, where she provided ethics education to public officials and the press.
She has served on many non-profit boards and held leadership positions with the Arts Council of Silicon Valley, Harvard Kennedy School Alumni Council, Triton Museum of Art, American Leadership Forum, and United States Conference of Mayors.
Her lifelong love of books has led her to learn letterpress printing, bookbinding, paper marbling, Copperplate calligraphy, and many other skills at SFCB.
Beth was first introduced to making books in the photography program at San Jose State. She loves binding books for their perfect marriage of functionality and creativity. After learning the basics of a well-made book at SFCB she went on to study fine binding at the American Academy of Bookbinding in Telluride CO. She works primarily with leather to create bindings for public and private collections. Her work can be seen at https://bredmond.weebly.com.
David Senior is the Director of Library at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was formerly the Senior Bibliographer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he managed collection development of MoMA’s Library, including the library’s artists’ books collection. Senior has lectured and published widely on the history of artists' publications and modes of archiving avant-garde art and design activities of the 20th century. He has also curated numerous exhibitions of books, magazines and printed ephemera. Since 2009, Senior has produced a program of events for Printed Matter's New York Art Book Fair and also, the Los Angeles Art Book Fair called the Classroom. To date, the Classroom has involved over 500 talks, readings and performances. Senior also organizes the program of events at the San Francisco Art Book Fair.
Ellen Sheffield is an artist, poet and educator based in Point Richmond, CA with 28 years of experience in academia in various roles including college art gallery director, summer writing program coordinator for the literary journal The Kenyon Review and most recently instructor emeritus, retiring after teaching book arts and related courses in Kenyon College’s Art Department. She continues to teach workshops for SFCB and other institutions around the country. In her studio practice, Unit IV Arts, she focuses on creating artists’ books that play with text and image interactions to create unexpected readings. Her books can be found in numerous library special collections including Beinecke Library, Yale Collection of American Literature and Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.