MARY OLIVELLA has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past couple of decades. One of the first things she did when moving to her new home was to plant a cutting from a precious Black Mission fig tree that had grown at her old house. This cutting is now a fourteen-foot centerpiece in the front yard. When able to leave the garden and go indoors, Mary has been one of the founding members of MomsRising.org, an online grassroots movement advocating for a more family-friendly America through legislation and social change. Previously, Mary was the director of health promotion at UC Berkeley's health services, where she conducted research and published articles on emergent public health issues. Writing as Mary O'Donnell, she was the lead author for Lesbian Health Matters, a groundbreaking title published by the Santa Cruz Women's Health Collective, and is the author of several peer-reviewed articles in public health journals.
