Sarah’s library story began when she was growing up in a small Tennessee town with the stacks of the Carnegie library that opened up new worlds and horizons.

In 1998, she retired from the US State Department’s Foreign assistance agency, where she had served at DC Headquarters and in West Africa and Haiti.

Brought to the west coast by the Packard Foundation for a second career, Sarah led their global and domestic program for reproductive health, one of the three flagship programs of the foundation. In 2006, she retired from Packard Foundation and moved to Santa Cruz from Silicon Valley, where she began a third career working remotely for a DC private consulting firm on global public health issues. After retiring "for good" in 2016 (Sarah is still consulting part-time), Sarah joined the Board of Ecology Action, of which she is the current chair. She volunteered at Gault School, and first joined the Friends to help with the 2021 capital campaign for the Branciforte and Garfield Park branches.

Deepening her involvement with the Friends, Sarah joined a campaign communications team and was voted onto the Board of Directors at the September meeting. Sarah is knowledgeable about governance structure and development, and the Friends are grateful for her experience and service.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and were able to be with family, friends, and loved ones. I also hope you had time to reflect on all of the things in life for which you are thankful. 

Thanks to all your help, the Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries has been able to accomplish so much this year! We took on the task of raising $1 million for our Realizing the Promise campaign to complete the projects at Branciforte, Garfield Park and Aptos, significantly more than we have ever done before. And the end is clearly in sight! But that’s not all. We also raised funds for a new ceiling for the Live Oak branch, for National Library Week, and for the annual Summer Reading Program that so many of you love.

We are fortunate to have you all behind us: donors, volunteers, and supporters. It takes a lot to run an organization like the Friends at this level, including ongoing costs like wages, rent, technology, and equipment, printing, postage, and marketing.

You have all been so generous this year, and we are grateful. And, I’d like to ask you to consider an end of year gift for general support of the Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries. Gifts where needed most, help pay for all of our expenses, as well as have discretionary funds available for SCPL requests. These gifts allow us to do the work we do, which we believe benefits all of us. Thank you.  I promise you we will use it wisely. To make a gift where needed most, please visit fscpl.org/donate

Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to welcome our new Library Director, Yolande Wilburn (pictured above), to her new home in Santa Cruz! I had the opportunity to meet with Yolande and I know that she will be a strong leader for the SCPL team. Yolande brings extensive library management experience, in Chicago, Nevada County, and the Los Angeles area, to her new role. I’d also like to thank Interim Director Eric Howard for the terrific job he has done over the past few months. We are all pleased to know that we will be continuing to work with Eric in his role as Assistant Director. 

For more information about donor recognition, please email rebekah@fscpl.org or call 831.427.7716

Want to find out what's going on with our chapters? Learn about Aptos, Capitola, Felton, La Selva Beach, and Scotts Valley, all on our news page!