Maria Elena Raymond is a TV news and print journalist of over twenty years, now retired. She is co-editor of the recently published American Women Speak: Voices of American Women in Public Life(1996). Maria Elena studied at UC Davis as a women's studies and comp. lit major, with special emphasis on the westward movement of women post civil-war and women in California history. She is a past-Governor of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (San Francisco) and a past-Trustee of the National Academy in New York. Maria Elena does free-lance writing, genealogy research, research for thesis and dissertations, and has recently contributed articles to The Feminist Writers Encyclopedia; Oxford Press' American National Biography; The World History of Slavery; and Garland Press' Encyclopedia of African-American Associations. She is involved in the first-ever electronic mentoring program, mentoring a high school student via the Internet. Maria Elena assists Webmistress Melanie Shell in keeping the H-Women web site up-to-date.