“You don’t have to give up one aspect of
your life to have the
other. I don’t have to be just a mom or just a good
consultant.”
—Kate Sherwood
“I love being 50. I don’t know why women
resist it. I find it
liberating.”
—Feroza Unvala
“It’s challenging, especially during the
teenager years, to be
both mom and dad. There’s no good cop and bad cop.”
—Julie Roberts
“Hug your child. Be truthful. Instill in
them ‘In God we
trust.’”
—Joan Lionberger
Advice for moms: “Be the best example that
you can be for your
kids.”
—Jessica Closson
Mother’s Day arrives this year on Sunday, May
12. That means the
residents of Noe Valley, like good citizens everywhere, will
be sending cards,
buying flowers, and taking Mom out to dinner.
For our observance of the holiday, the Voice offers
five
profiles of Noe Valley mothers. While their backgrounds,
experiences, and
choices vary widely, they all share a deep commitment to
family and community.
Here are their stories.
Kate
Sherwood cuts up for the camera with sons Rohan and Deven
(right).Photo by Beverly Tharp
Kate Sherwood
Menlo Park suburbanites Kate and Yogesh
Sherwood were
self-acknowledged DINKs—a double-income couple with no
kids—who wanted to enjoy
the pulse of life in San Francisco.
“We fell in love” with a condominium on Dolores
Street and moved
to Noe Valley eight years ago, says Kate Sherwood, who turns
39 this month, a
week after Mother’s Day. It was a lucky break, she says,
because “we didn’t
really understand or respect the value of Noe Valley when we
moved in.”
The couple soon discovered the farmer’s market
on 24th Street, a
few blocks from their home, and “it’s a major reason why we’re
still here,”
says Sherwood, now the mother of two boys, Deven, 6, and
Rohan, 4.
Sherwood has thrown herself into efforts to
preserve the
Saturday market—as well as to create more open space in the
neighborhood—through the establishment of a town square at
3861 24th St.,
currently a parking lot owned by the Noe Valley Ministry.
“It is the last open space within half a mile
of here—open space
for my kids to run, and open recreational space for our entire
community,” says
Sherwood, who is on the board of Residents for Noe Valley Town
Square, a group
lobbying the city to buy the lot and turn it into a park.
Sherwood also is active at Thomas Edison
Charter Academy on 22nd
Street, where “my little one is a kindergartner.” She started
the school’s
first baseball team and works on the school’s site council and
fundraising
committee.
An umpire for a women’s lacrosse league in the
spring, Sherwood
describes herself as a “high-energy person.” It’s a good
thing, since she has a
demanding job as managing director of Executive Strategy, a
renewable energy
consulting firm she founded a year ago. She previously worked
for Accenture, a
national management consulting company, and for a small solar
energy firm in
Berkeley.
She says being her own boss allows her to
juggle parenting and
career, without “the pain of being away from my family and
driving to Mountain
View every day…
“It has its benefits, like you can’t fire
yourself, and its
challenges, like you can’t fire yourself,” she quips.
Working from home lets her walk the kids to
school and take them
to taekwondo classes on 24th Street—tasks she trades with her
41-year-old
husband, a tech entrepreneur. Another plus is being able to
practice reading
and play math bingo with Rohan and Deven, one of their
favorite pastimes.
“You don’t have to give up one aspect of your
life to have the
other,” Sherwood says. “I don’t have to be just a mom or just
a good
consultant.”
Feroza
Unvala stands before one of her paintings, which draw on
her compassion for Afghani women and children.Photo by Beverly Tharp
Feroza Unvala
In 2009, Feroza Unvala was invited to a
fundraiser that really
touched her heart.
The event was for an organization that provided
scholarships for
girls in Ghazni, Afghanistan, one of “the most dangerous
provinces where the
Taliban have vowed to not allow the girls to be educated,”
Unvala says.
Inspired by the cause, she joined the group,
Afghan Friends
Network, and used her expertise as a corporate design
specialist to redo AFN’s
identity and logo. Later, she became treasurer and currently
is president of
the all-volunteer San Francisco–based nonprofit.
Today, there are 17 young women attending
universities “on our
scholarships,” she says, and “we’re helping six boys also.”
Unvala, 50, and husband, Yezdi Unvala, 58, a
financial planner,
reside in the Eureka Street home they purchased 21 years ago
this April. The
couple have a daughter, Lyla, 23, who graduated from San
Francisco State
University last December, and a son, Cyrus, 15, who’s a
ninth-grader at
International High School. Lyla, who works for Yelp, lives in
the family’s
in-law apartment.
For two decades or more, Feroza Unvala designed
marketing
messages for a series of high-powered firms, including Oracle,
Adobe Systems,
Johnson & Johnson, and Charles Schwab.
Balancing career and children was at times a
struggle, says
Unvala, who was born in Bombay, now Mumbai, India.
“It all happened very fast,” she remembers. “At
25 I was in
India, at 26 I was in New York, at 27 I was a mother in San
Francisco with a
[first] baby. That was the most overwhelming time of my life.”
In the early years, “I definitely wanted to
have it all. ‘Gee, I
ought to be this terrific mother and the rising creative
director,’” she says.
“Now I say it’s okay if you don’t have it all.”
Two months ago, Unvala opted out of the hectic
corporate world
and transitioned into a new calling as a real estate agent
with Brown & Co.
on 24th Street.
Meanwhile, her career as a mom continues to
fulfill. “We like
sitting round the dining table and discussing various world
events. I really,
really enjoy watching how the kids have grown into young
adults. I just love
that. I look at them and say, ‘Wow, these are my kids.’”
And when she feels like relaxing, she sets up
an easel to work
on her oil paintings—figurative works that are intensely
emotional with bold
colors. She sold six of her canvasses last month—at an April
fundraiser for her
Afghani cause.
Julie
Roberts and daughter Glenna recently took a break from
school and career to travel in Australia.
Photo courtesy Julie Roberts
Julie Roberts
As a 50th birthday present, Julie Roberts, a
former vice
president with Blue Shield of California, treated herself to a
month-long
vacation in Australia. Accompanying her on the April trip was
her 16-year-old
daughter Glenna.
Mother and daughter had a “fabulous time” in
Sydney, where they
climbed the iconic Harbor Bridge, swam at Coogee Beach,
attended a couple of
Australian football games, and “had some adventures and laughs
figuring out
public transportation,” relates Roberts.
She says some of their best moments together
have come during
visits to other countries.
“It just being the two of us makes us close,”
says Roberts, a
single mom.
“Single mom” is a role that Roberts has played
since Glenna’s
father, Michael Byrnes, died five years ago after a long
illness. Glenna is
currently a junior at Lick-Wilmerding High School, where she
excels at
academics as well as on the track team.
“She’s amazingly focused and disciplined in her
studying, which
makes my job much easier. No nagging needed,” says Roberts. “I
feel very
blessed. She’s a wonderful young woman.”
Still, raising an adolescent is not all peaches
and cream.
“It’s challenging, especially during the
teenager years, to be
both mom and dad,” says Roberts, a 27th Street resident who
has lived in Noe
Valley since 2002. “There’s no good cop and bad cop.”
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the
holder of an M.B.A.
from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern
University, Roberts has
relied on the leadership skills she acquired during five years
as a naval
officer and 20 years in the business world—the last eight at
Blue Shield.
In March, Roberts took “a career break” from
the company so she
could travel and spend more time with her daughter.
She also plans to volunteer more at La Casa de
las Madres, a
local shelter for survivors of domestic violence. (She’s
already on La Casa’s
board.)
Another goal is exercise. “Number one for me is
staying
healthy,’’ says Roberts. To that end she’ll be doing Pilates
and training for a
sprint triathlon.
“I’m officially 50, single, and unemployed—and
I’m totally
psyched,” says Roberts. “I’m very excited about what this next
decade has to
bring.”
Joan
Lionberger, founder of Ladybug Gardeners at Upper Noe Rec
Center, explores the woods with Marlee, a former show
poodle from Seattle.Photo by Beverly Tharp
Joan Lionberger
Joan Lionberger, a fourth-generation San
Franciscan, is no
stranger to hard work. At 14, she started a weekend
dog-grooming business to
help pay her tuition at St. Paul’s, a private high school in
Noe Valley.
After graduation, she took college courses at
night for 16 years
to earn an accounting degree, all the while working full-time
to support
herself and her parents after her father was seriously hurt in
an automobile
accident.
“That’s taught me one thing—work ethics,” says
Lionberger, 67.
It’s an ethos she has imparted to her three
sons—twins Troy and
Scott, 32, and Ryan, 28. As youngsters, the boys had to help
out—“no ifs, ands,
or buts”—on everything from working on the family’s rental
apartments to
hauling bricks from a chimney that tumbled in the 1989 Loma
Prieta Earthquake
and using them to lay a new backyard patio.
“They get really upset with people who slough
off,” says
Lionberger, who shares a house on Sanchez Street with her
husband, Mike
Lionberger, 64, and two miniature poodles, Marlee and Lady.
Joan Lionberger has worked 45 years as an
accountant, originally
as a cost accountant for U.S. Steel. In 1981, she began
working on her own as a
bookkeeper and tax accountant. She’s mostly retired now, but
keeps busy as a
volunteer at Upper Noe Recreation Center a block from her
home. She does
weeding at the park—with grade school kids and Ladybug
Gardeners—and
replenishes the birdfeeders that her husband makes for the rec
center.
Over the years, Lionberger has derived much
pleasure from seeing
the accomplishments of her children, as they grew to become
“good men” and
“true workaholics.”
“I’m fulfilled because I did a good job,” she
says about rearing
Troy, a research biologist at U.C. Berkeley; Scott, a sous
chef at Vic’s
Restaurant; and Ryan, a production manager at Kinko’s.
Lionberger thinks many of today’s parents have
unrealistic
expectations for themselves and their children.
“They have the kids into too much,” she says.
“Kids should have
a cardboard box to be able to play…to use their imagination.
They have too much
structure in their life. And what it does is put a lot of
stress on the
mothers.”
Her simple advice to moms is, “Hug your child.
Be truthful.
Instill in them ‘In God we trust.’”
Lionberger may be receiving more hugs herself
these days. In
January, she became a grandmother for the first time, and now
she’s helping to
provide daycare for her granddaughter’s working parents.
23rd
Street resident Jessica Closson is shown here with
9-year-old son Luke.
Photo by Beverly Tharp
Jessica Closson
It takes a special person to arrange the ice
cream social for
new kindergartners, rope busy parents into serving on
committees, and pore over
financial spreadsheets to come up with a set of budgetary
goals.
At Noe Valley’s Alvarado Elementary School,
that treasure is
23rd Street resident Jessica Closson.
Closson, 42 this month, is serving her second
annual term as
president of the Alvarado Parent Teacher Association. Her
9-year-old son, Luke,
attends fourth grade at the school.
“It’s like a full-time job because our PTA is
extremely robust,”
says Closson, who moved with Luke and her husband Morgan to
Noe Valley from New
Zealand three years ago.
During her watch, the association has raised
about $700,000 for
student programs—in art and science and math—and for extra
staffing at the
Douglass Street school. The PTA’s coffer is among the two or
three largest in
the San Francisco school system.
“It’s almost like managing a small nonprofit,”
Closson says, a
former manager for an e-commerce startup that later was sold
to Joann.com, an
online arts and craft business.
Closson got involved in the PTA after “an
eye-opening” but
ultimately successful go-round with the school district over
getting Luke a
spot in the school, which is a four-block walk from their
home.
“We’ve been happy and Luke’s been happy,” says
his mom. He’s a
“very strong student” who likes basketball and
baseball—pitching and playing
first base for the San Francisco Grizzlies.
Closson discovered her talent for community
affairs after
Morgan, a telecommunications executive, accepted a yearlong
job in New Zealand
in 2005. The “fabulous” year turned into five, and the couple
even purchased a
home in Wellington, the capital.
While there, Closson became president of the
local residents
association and found herself speaking out on issues before
the city council
and the national parliament. She really gained notoriety after
organizing a
protest against a legal brothel in the neighborhood, which had
nearly a dozen
women working day and night.
The association fought what was a zoning issue
up to the
country’s highest court, and “I stacked that courtroom with
moms” on hearing
day. The court ordered the brothel to comply with “work from
home” regulations,
which permitted only two people to live and work on the
premises.
“[The brothel] didn’t stop business, which is
fine. But they
went down to only two girls. You can’t work 24 hours a day
with two girls,”
says Closson. “So there was no problem after that.”
Closson says she has few problems meeting the
demands of her
volunteer activities and family life. For one, she and her
husband made a
“conscious decision” to have only one child. In addition, they
enjoy working as
a parenting team.
“Morgan changed diapers as much as I did…and
got up in the
middle of the night and fed Luke a bottle so many times.” As
she does, her
husband works from home and stops between 5 and 5:30 p.m., so
the family can
enjoy dinner together.
