Speakers Bureau

These CGS members can be hired to present classes at your next event:

Grant Din

Grant Din has been researching his and other families’ histories for over 35 years. He has given presentations virtually and in-person around the U.S. and in 2025 coordinated the first Chinese American course for the GRIP institute of the National Genealogical Society. Grant was part of the research team for the film The Six about the Chinese seamen who survived the wreck of Titanic, and his research has taken him to China, Japan, and throughout the U.S. He was co-curator of a permanent exhibit on Angel Island about the wartime detention of Japanese “enemy aliens” there, served on the board of the California Genealogical Society, and has developedcreative ways to share family histories with younger generations.

Lisa Gorrell

Lisa Gorrell is a Certified Genealogist®. She has served on several genealogical society boards and is currently the recording secretary with the Contra Costa County Historical Society, where she volunteers at their archives. She enjoys giving genealogy presentations and writing about her family on two blogs: “Mam-ma’s Southern Family” http://mam-massouthernfamily.blogspot.com/ and “My Trails into the Past” http://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/. She has written a three-generation family history about her husband’s Swedish ancestors.

* CG and Certified Genealogist are registered certification marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certificants after periodic competency evaluations, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.

Maureen Hanlon

Maureen Hanlon is a California Genealogical Society volunteer and former Board officer. She has been doing genealogy research since 2002, focusing on San Francisco, Irish, German and New England ancestors. She attended the Ulster Historical Foundation genealogy course in Belfast in 2015, the Celtic Connections conference in 2018 and completed the Boston University Genealogy Principles course in 2019. Her article Happy Ending for a Runaway Schleswig-Holstein Bride was published in The California Nugget in Spring 2021. She enjoys teaching and helping people with their Irish research. Maureen is retired after working in health care and lives in Berkeley

• Census Records
• Find My Past website
• Finding Women in Your Family
• 19th Century Irish Genealogy

Marisa Louie Lee

Marisa Louie Lee is a former archivist at the National Archives at San Francisco. She co-authored the article “The A-Files: Finding Your Immigrant Ancestors” published in the Spring 2013 issue of Prologue. Marisa has presented for the California Genealogical Society, Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, National Genealogical Society Family History Conference (2022), the GRIP Genealogy Institute, and for other local and regional genealogical societies. She enjoys exploring family history with her two children. Learn more about Marisa and her work on her website.

• 20th century immigration and naturalization, Alien Case Files (A-Files)
• Asian American genealogy in federal records
• Chinese American genealogy
• Family history activities with children
• Researching National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) Records Online

Jeannie Chooey Low

Jeannie Low is a lecturer, author and a fiber artist. Since 1993, she has presented “in person” as well as webinar programs for the National Genealogical Society, California Genealogical Society, National Archives and Records Administration, Historical Society of Philadelphia, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, Houston Public Library, New York University and various public libraries. She specializes in Chinese Americas Genealogy and A-Files: 20th century & immigration case files. She is a member of Save Our National Archives that successfully advocated that older “A-Files” be transferred from US Citizenship and Immigration Services to the National Archives at Kansas City and San Francisco as a historical collection. She is a native born and second generation Chinese American. She has some bilingual Chinese skills.

Linda Harms Okazaki

Linda Okazaki is a fourth-generation Californian who is passionate about teaching people of all ages to research, document, and share their family histories. Her areas of interest include the western U.S., upstate New York, England, Australia, Japanese Americans, and the use of DNA in genealogy. Ms. Okazaki is the past president of the California Genealogical Society and a charter member of the Nikkei Genealogical Society. She serves as a research consultant for both Ancestry’s Progenealogists and Densho.org. Her column, “Finding Your Nikkei Roots,” is published bimonthly in the Nichi Bei News. Ms. Okazaki is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, the Genealogical Speaker’s Guild, and the Daughtersof the American Revolution.

Ralph Severson

• FamilySearch Research
• Portuguese/Azorean Research

Craig Siulinski

Craig Siulinski is an experienced educator and writer, as well as an avid researcher and genealogist. He holds a Master of Science degree in Education from Cal State University East Bay (CSUEB), and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Southern Maine. Documenting family stories and researching genealogy have been Craig’s passions since 2007. In October 2009, he began writing for his first blog called August Legacy. Not long after, he led classes and workshops to encourage others to use blogs for sharing their own family histories. In 2014, he started Sharing Legacies as an effort to help other people write, share, and preserve their stories for generations to come. Since 2017, Craig has been teaching a theme-based life story writing course with sections offered both online and in-person.

Stewart Blandón Traiman

Genealogy has been an obsession for Stewart Blandón Traiman for 30 years. He began by interviewing parents, grandparents and other relations about his roots in Nicaragua. He is still hoping to prove the family legend of escaping the Spanish Inquisition. When he married Leland Traiman, 25 years ago, he took on the new adventure researching Ukrainian and Polish Jews. Stewart has also researched his children’s origins back to the colonial United States. Whenever a friend asks, Stewart is happy to trace their family stories and among his family tree collections, he now has eight trees in perpetual progress. Website

If you are a CGS member and would like to be added to our speakers bureau, please email [email protected], list the topics you would like to speak about, and provide a 100-or-so word bio and photograph. We will add you to our list once approved.