CAFG is pleased to announce its newest Junior Member, Janice M. Sellers. She grew up hearing stories about her family from her mother and grandmother; she already knew quite a bit about her relatives while she was very young. She started doing research when she was just 13! Her interest was sparked by what at the time was a fairly standard assignment in junior high school — do your family tree back four generations. Janice still has the purple mimeographed handout and her original notes from interviewing several family members. That assignment got her hooked on genealogy. Since then Janice has researched all branches of her family, including collateral lines (she definitely believes in whole-family research!).
When Janice became interested in doing research professionally, she took the advice of several people and volunteered to do research for a few people. She ended up working on the family history of her half-sister, aunt, several friends and everyone in her office! Her previous professional experience turned out to be a good background for going into this work. She has worked as an editor for more than 20 years, is an indexer and a translator. Her college degree was in foreign languages (French major, Spanish and Russian minors). Janice hung out her shingle in 2005, and her very first ad led to a client. Through all of this, she now has experience with general American, black American, English, German, Greek, East Indian, Irish, Jewish, Portuguese, Russian and Scottish ethnic research. She has done research for an Army contractor for MIA cases and for the Unclaimed Persons forum. She has given presentations at the international, national, regional, state and local levels. Her specialties are Jewish and newspaper research.
Janice does quite a bit of volunteer work. She has been on the staff of the Oakland Regional Family History Center for more than eleven years. She is the publicity director, programming person, and journal editor for the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society; and the editor of The Galitzianer, a quarterly journal for Jewish genealogical research in the former Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. She has been the treasurer of the California State Genealogical Alliance and the representative of the Northern California chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Janice has worked on several transcription projects, several of which were posted on RootsWeb. This spring she is beginning work as a site coordinator with a project that brings family history to youth groups in Alameda County.
CAFG welcomes Janice and looks forward to getting to know her better.