February 2019 brought us two great new members;  Nina Brox and Donna Sohan!  They were oriented together by myself and Aletha Nelligan.  They were inducted at the March Business Meeting.

Nina Brox

Nina’s return to Lake Tahoe brings her full circle.  She grew up in the Bay Area, spending weekends at the lake. Nina studied international political science and modern languages at Trinity College in Connecticut before completing a Masters in French literature and theory at University College London, where she met her husband, before changing course and qualifying as an attorney in England and Wales with global top-ten firm, Hogan Lovells.  Nina spent ten years working London and Paris in the corporate finance department, specializing in debt capital markets.  An exciting time overseas behind her, she now focuses on her family, while developing her law practice at Feldman Thiel LLP.  She has the California bar under her belt and is now working on the Nevada bar and expanding her expertise from corporate work to include estate planning.

She also has two elementary school age daughters.  We look forward to meeting the whole family!

Donna Sohan

Donna was born in Upland, California, but raised on the East Coast in Mystic, Connecticut.  She graduated from the University of Connecticut before heading off to Boston, Massachusetts where she worked in a variety of analytical chemistry positions.  She eventually resumed her education at Texas A&M University where she studied molecular and environmental stress plant physiology; receiving both a M.S. and Ph.D.  However, upon graduation she relocated to Colorado Springs, Colorado for family reasons.  Professionally, it was a set-back as agricultural biotechnology positions were not available within commuting distance.  Applying her analytical skills, she created a new career in program development and assessment.  During this time, she also completed a M.S. degree in Negotiation and Dispute Resolution from Creighton University.   Fast-forwarding a decade (or two), this summer she accepted the Director of Institutional Effectiveness position at Lake Tahoe Community College in South Lake Tahoe, California.  She considers her greatest achievement to be caring for her ailing mother during the last years of her life while also being a full-time working, single parent of a young child.  Her son, Ian, is currently a freshman at the University of Virginia where he is studying Systems Engineering.

I thank both Cathy diCamillo and Roberta Mason for bringing us two such incredibly talented women!

Mary Lou Whitcomb

Recruitment and Retention