Nancy Strom

Nancy Strom (nee Stocker) was born in Oakland, Ca., attended high school in Bellevue, Wa., and received a BA in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. She spent her professional career in Personnel Management (today's HR) in both the academic and private sectors. One of the highlights during this period was when she worked at the Lawrence Hall of Science on the Berkeley campus, and wrote a procedure for the advancement of Instructors, non-professor-series academics, which was incorporated into the campus Academic Personnel Guidelines. Toward the end of her 40 year professional career she worked with her husband in a small business they owned. Here Nancy received a grant to start an English as a Second Language (ESL) program for their many Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian employees. She devised something she called The Buddy System as an adjunct to the ESL program, where native-English-speaking employees acted as tutors for the Southeast Asian employee students. She received an award from the Association of Washington Businesses for her Buddy System for its innovative approach to employee relations. After retirement Nancy decided to try her hand at writing a children's book. She had often, over the years, written new lyrics to existing melodies for birthday parties, anniversaries, and the like. She decided to put that enjoyment of rhyming to work in her book. She created a story, written in rhyme, where loveable animals go on an adventure - Scooter and Friends Take a Vacation.