Board of Advisors

Barbara is an African American mother of two and grandmother of five.  She grew up in racially segregated Williamsburg, Virginia. Her community consisted of only two groups of people — African Americans and Anglo-Americans. In 1954, she entered Wheaton College, a women’s college in New England, where she was the only African-American graduate in the class of 1958.

After finishing college, Barbara worked as a social worker in the Department of Social Service (DSS) in Boston. Being unable to help clients realize the goal of the DSS – creating financially independent families – Barbara decided to pursue a Master’s Degree in Social Work at Howard University.

After completing her Master’s degree, she worked with racially and culturally diverse families in New York City and Philadelphia.  From her experiences with these families and with immigrants from around the world, she learned that race was not the source of differences. It was culture.

Barbara and her family settled in Altadena, California. She wanted to ensure her children had access to learn about culturally diverse peoples and the differences between race and culture.  She found the Children’s School at Pacific Oaks College, a children’s pre-school at the Quaker-founded Graduate college, where her children attended from ages three until six.

While her children progressed through primary school, Barbara joined the faculty at Pacific Oaks College, where she directed and taught courses in the Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling (MFCC) degree program.  Simultaneously, she earned her Ph.D. in Education at Claremont University Center in Pomona, CA, with the dissertation topic, Parenting Black Children in a Racist Society.

As a mother, social worker, and educator, Barbara saw the need for children of all cultures to see themselves reflected in the books they read. Today, Barbara enjoys diverse picture books, raising orchids, traveling, and the company of her children’s families.

 

Tamara Shiloh

Tamara is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. She is rewriting and updating her
children’s book series. The seven-book series Just Imagine…What If There Were
No Black People in the World? about African American inventors, scientists, and
other notable African Americans in history. The first two books in the series Jaxon’s Magical Adventure with Black Inventors and Scientists and Jaxon and Kevin’s Black History Trip Downtown are published. She has also created companion books which include a coloring book, activity book, and Jaxon’s Journal to accompany the first book
in the series. She’s written a picture book, Cameron Teaches Black History, for Scholastic that will be available in June 2022.

The other books in the series are (3) Women Inventors and Scientists (4) Jaxon Meets Black Cowboys from the Old West and (5) Jaxon’s Black History Trip to NASA (6) African American Artists, Sculptures and Other Arts, and (7) African American Composers, Classical and Concert Musicians and Opera Singers are forthcoming.

She presently writes the weekly Black History column for the Post Newspaper; she’s written articles for the Richmond Pulse and recorded 2-minute Black History vignettes for the gospel station KDYA. She also writes a weekly eblast of regarding multicultural books and historical information. Her podcast Once Upon a Time in Black History will launch in April 2022.

Tamara speaks on the importance of teaching Black History all year, including engagements as the keynote speaker for the Las Vegas NAACP, Chevron’s Black History Month program, the Tuskegee Airmen Corporation’s 32nd Annual dinner in Denver; and speaking engagements with the El Cerrito NAACP, various Rotary groups, Richmond Kiwanis Clubs, Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, and various other organizations and schools.

She teaches a Professional Development Class on how to incorporate Black History into lesson plans and curriculum all year – providing educators with information, examples, samples, and lesson plans.

She is the owner of the Multicultural Children’s Bookstore in Richmond, CA. The bookstore focuses on books from many cultures and genres including African American, Latino, Asian/South Asian, Native American as well as Biracial, Disability, Diversity and LGBTQI, Social Justice, STEM Teen/Adult, Babies, Graphic Novels, and Black History books.

Affiliations: Bay Area Girls Club (Advisory board), Youth Service Bureau (Board), Rotary (member previous board member), Kiwanis (member), Richmond Chamber (Board), BAIPA (member previous board), EduGlobal Las Vegas (Board), Friends of Richmond Library (Board). Learn more from her website, bookstore website, and find her on Facebook, Twitter @ tamarashiloh102, and Instagram @mcb_bookstore.

 

Jessica Tranchino

Jessica Tranchino is edtech leader with expertise across operations management, implementation and customer success, and product strategy. She spent 10+ years at Curriculum Associates, a leading publisher of K-12 blended learning programs, building the services organization to drive impact for 11 million students nationwide. As a biracial mother of two, Jessica seeks diversity in children’s books that reflect her core values of equity, inclusion, and belonging.

Jessica received her MBA and MA in Education from Stanford University and AB in Mathematics from Dartmouth College.

 

Nancy Tupper Ling

Nancy Tupper Ling is a children’s author, poet, bookseller, and librarian. Basically, she surrounds herself with books! Occasionally, she creates a few books of her own, including: 

My Sister, Alicia May; The Story I’ll Tell; Double Happiness; The Yin-Yang Sisters and her latest, For Every Little Thing, with co-author, June Cotner.  To learn more, check out her website and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.

 

Dr. Valerie Williams-Sanchez

Valerie Williams-Sanchez, Ph.D. is an author/illustrator of the self-published children’s book series called the Cocoa Kids Collection®. She is a passionate advocate for multicultural literature, “OWN voices” self-publishing, and empowered literacy for readers of all ages. A fully employed brand and marketing executive, Dr. Valerie’s involvement with MCBD is a part-time endeavor that is an extension of the advocacy and interests she has cultivated through academia and her professional life.

Specifically, Dr. Valerie earned her doctoral degree in literacy through St. John’s University, New York; a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, New York, and a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Further, Dr. Valerie studied Spanish art, history, language, and culture at the Universidad de Salamanca, in Spain, as an undergraduate.

Dr. Valerie is a former journalist in the U.S. and Spain, who has written and contributed to articles and essays in publications like the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, Miami Herald, Orange County Business Journal, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Injuve Magazine (Spain), and More Magazine, online.

A Black-woman-owned business founder, Dr. Valerie is mom to her biracial daughter Lorena, 26, Auntie to her biracial nephew Isaiah, 15, and educator to countless at-risk and special needs children.

To learn more, visit her website, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.