Elizabeth (Beth) Balkite worked as a certified genetic counselor for over 30 years. Once retired, she began to study her own family history and has continued to do so for the past five years. She taught a session in genetic genealogy at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) in 2017. She has been a genetic genealogy instructor at OLLI for the past four years.
Melanie Crain began pursuing her family’s genealogy in the late 1980s, and it is a passion she has followed ever since. She worked as a volunteer at the North Carolina state archives, was a registrar for her Daughters of the American Revolution chapter, and edited a family genealogy e-newsletter for 12 years. She also has taught courses for Mac users for OLLI for several years.