CHAPTER OFFICERS 2009-2010

Catherine Magill, PhD - Acting President and Program Chair

Catherine Magill has worked as a freelance scientific/medical writer and editor for four years after more than 11 years in cell biology/pharmacology research in Bay Area biotech companies (one job, four companies). The desire for more flexibility in her work-life drove her to look into freelance opportunities in writing/editing for biotech, and during the course of that research she found AMWA and has been active in the Northern California Chapter since 2005. She recently completed the requirements for an AMWA certificate in Editing/Writing and is working on the Freelance one, and served this past year as President and the previous year as Vice-President and Acting Program Chair.

Catherine got her Bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley in Neurobiology and her PhD from Stanford in Neurosciences and then moved to Harvard to do post-doctoral training in Molecular Embryology. She quickly determined that she prefers Northern California life and after three years she returned to the Bay Area to work in biotech, where she focused predominantly on drug discovery in the areas of oncology and inflammation.

Other professional organizations in which Catherine participates are the Northern California Science Writer's Association, American Association of Cancer Research, Association for Women in Science, and American Society for Cell Biology.

Elizabeth Matovinovic - Immediate Past President

Elizabeth Matovinovic has been an AMWA member and a medical writer for 4 years. She obtained a Bachelor's degree in English Literature and a Master of Science in Molecular Embryology, both in Canada. As a scientist, Elizabeth has done research in several biomedical fields including respiratory illnesses, environmental epidemiology, and cardiovascular disease. A career in medical writing satisfies her broad scientific interests and fulfills her need for subject matter freshness.

In addition to medical writing, Elizabeth is active in publications planning and pharmaceutical industry related transparency issues regarding manuscript preparation and authorship. In the future, when old and wise, Elizabeth may publish some creative writing.

Here's the new-news: Elizabeth has left us to pursue her PhD research in Australia, and we are most grateful for her service.

CJ Holzhauer - Treasurer

CJ Holzhauer has been an AMWA member since 2003. She learned of the benefits of AMWA through her colleagues in an East Bay biotechnology company. She earned a Bachelors of Science Degree from Cook College at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a Masters of Science from Washington State University. She has written Standard Operating Procedures and audited scientific documentation. Christine is presently active in education as a math teacher. Christine applies her Food Science and Nutrition education in the community by promoting good nutrition and health to women and children. She enjoys communicating with friends abroad in French and Spanish.

Joan Brodovsky - Secretary

Joan Brodovsky's interest in medical writing led to posts in both an industrial and a medical dot com as writer and editor in the early 2000s.She was an independent consultant in Mexico City for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries for many years, specializing in market research for pharmaceutical and chemical firms. She returned to the United States to take a position as consultant at Frost and Sullivan, a market research and strategy management consulting firm, where she has become the ad hoc editor for the Healthcare and Life Science Consulting Group.

Joan has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and an MS in Physiology from Stanford University. Her curriculum includes work in the quality control laboratory of a pharmaceutical laboratory; an appointment as Associate Professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana, where she taught Chemistry; and a position as Director for Services to the Pharmaceutical Industry at the Mexican National Science and Technology Council.

She qualified for certification as Editor in the Life Sciences in 2004. She is fluent in Spanish, conversant in German, and readsFrench, Italian, and Portuguese. She has been an active member of the American Medical Writers Association, the American Chemical Society, the Mexican Pharmaceutical Association.

Catherine Magill, PhD - Programs Chair

See Acting President, above

Fred Gebhart - Newsletter Editor

Fred Gebhart has been a freelancer for two decades, starting in pharmaceuticals and expanding into oncology, cardiology, and other speciality areas. He stumbled across AMWA while working the daily newspaper at a medical convention several years ago. This is Fred's first foray into chapter activities.

He graduated from UC Santa Barbara and learned the quick and dirty basics of health care as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal. Fred is also a member of the International Society of Travel Medicine, the National Association of Science Writers, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Mimi Wessling, PhD ELS - Membership Liaison, Website Admin

Mimi Wessling is a relative newcomer to the field, having spent most of her professional life as an academic historian of science and medicine. She has been a technical and medical writer for 10 years, and a member of AMWA-Northern California for 4 years. She received graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (Physical Chemistry) and the University of Michigan (History of Science and Medicine). Her previous career in academia included positions at University of Michigan, Stanford University, and the University of Essex (U.K.)

Her professional interests are medical communication, medical ethics, translations of medical and scientific writing from German, scientific writing, and neuroscience. If scrolling this far down hasn't exhausted you, take a look at her Web site, Language Matters Santa Cruz. There you'll find a link to the preface of her recently published translation of a classic in the history of medical ethics.

Kristen Mayo, PhD PCC 2010 Conference Director

Kristen Mayo has worked as a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry for 10 years, in 4 companies in the San Francisco Bay Area.Prior to that, she was a technical writer/editor in a biotech company for 6 years. Kristen has been an active member of AMWA since 1998 and she completed the AMWA requirements for a Multidisciplinary certificate in 2002. Kristen has volunteered to serve as the 2010 Conference Director for the Northern California Chapter as a way to give back to AMWA. Her work with a core group of friends and colleagues helped make Asilomar 2010 as fun, rewarding, and memorable as we have come to expect from this time-honored tradition.

Kristen received her Bachelor's degree from UC Santa Barbara (with a double major in English and Anthropology) and a PhD in Biology from UCSB. She went on to do postdoctoral research in biochemistry/molecular biology at Stanford Medical Center, and then was a guest researcher at the Karolinska Medical Research Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. It was while living in Europe and on maternity leave that Kristen began her career as science writer and editor. When she re-entered the workforce in the US in 1992, she was able to make the switch completely from lab research to technical writing. The transition to medical writing happened in 1998, with the help of a friend and mentor (an AMWA member). Kristen's medical writing experience thus far has focused primarily in the therapeutic areas of cancer prevention, autoimmune diseases, and pain control.