I'm a retired corporate market researcher (Caterpillar, Cole-Parmer, McGraw-Hill/Standard & Poor's, American Academy of Pediatrics) with a detective streak; I love tracking data and following clues to learn more about family histories. Currently I serve as the volunteer cemetery coordinator for St Joseph Church. I've spent the last two years digitizing and reconciling our cemetery records (dating back to the 1860s), waking up at 2am on a regular basis to ponder potential family connections, utilizing and transcribing multiple hand-written sets of records. and supplementing the discovery process with on-site cemetery visits. I live for tying up loose ends and am grateful that I have never worked a day in my life as I am passionately committed to everything that I do.

I want to give HUGE shoutouts to @kb1096, who captured some 1500 photos and data captures beginning as early as 2010; as well as to Pat and Sue. To Harvard Diggins Library - I am TOTALLY gobsmacked and speechless. Who doesn't love ready access to obits with stories of those who came and went before us from the Harvard Herald, and Harvard Independent? Priceless!

I am also enhancing the cemetery dataset internally by adding more data points (when available) such as occupation, cause of death, etc. with the hope that this can be repurposed for our local library and historical society in the future.

RESEARCH BONA FIDES: I've spent the bulk of my career capturing global customer insights, building/finetuning databases, and providing competitive intelligence for M&A activities at Caterpillar, Cole-Parmer (a former Thermo Fisher Scientific entity), McGraw-Hill Higher Education Publishing/Standard & Poor's, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.