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A native of Santa Clara Valley, Marilyn Geary has seen vast stretches of fruit orchards disappear to make way for the burgeoning Silicon Valley. This enormous loss fostered in her a deep awareness of transience and a passion for recording memories before they vanish.

Marilyn is a writer, educator, instructional designer, personal historian and owner of Circle of Life Stories, a personal history service providing history recording and preservation services for individuals, families, organizations, and communities. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Marilyn holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Literature and a Master’s Degree in Education with a concentration in Instructional Technologies from San Francisco State University.

Prior to forming her personal history company, Marilyn built a 25-year corporate career in information and instructional technologies that included managing ATM software development for Bank of America, managing Technology Education Services for Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company and developing web-based instructional programs for Silicon Valley Bank. For New Media Learning, she created Preventing Sexual Harassment, an award-winning e-learning program that has been completed by over one million users worldwide.

Marilyn conducted her first oral histories with Sicilian fishermen on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. Her work in educational multimedia includes co-development of The Newcomers, an interactive program introducing foreign-born, newly-arrived high school students to their peers in the United States, and co-development of The Muse, an interactive program that teaches children about poetry.

Marilyn is author of Marin City Memories, a compilation of excerpts from oral history interviews with African-Americans who migrated from the South to work in the Sausalito shipyards during World War II. Her writings have appeared many places, including in the Turning Memories into Memoirs: A Handbook for Writing Lifestories, the Oral History Review, and the West Marin Review.

From her home in the pastoral San Geronimo Valley surrounded by the golden hills of West Marin County, California, Marilyn makes frequent journeys to more remote regions of the world to explore her passionate interest in tribal textiles and cultures.

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