Board of Directors
Executive Committee
Beth Sample
President
Beth Sample works in Communications for Texas Parks and Wildlife. She holds a Journalism B.A. from Texas State and is a PMI-certified Project Manager who has helped raise thousands of dollars for the Bess Whitehead Scott Scholarship Fund. A co-founder of Pen & Fork, an Austin critique group in its seventh year, Beth is also a past President of Sisters in Crime and of Writers & Friends. She formerly managed production for best-selling educational products at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Sheila Allee
Vice President
Sheila Allee has been a speechwriter for almost 20 years and has produced speeches for a wide variety of speakers. Sheila spent 12 years as a journalist and has extensive experience writing for and editing magazines. She has written for Reader's Digest, Business Week, Texas Business, and USA Today and others. Her book, Texas Mutiny, a Texas crime novel, is now in its third printing. She has also written Seven Steps to the Podium, A Handbook for Speakers and Speechwriters.
Roxanne Evans
Secretary
Roxanne Evans is a graduate of Drake University and worked for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Des Moines Register and Tribune, where she won an Iowa Associated Press Managing Editors’ First-Place Investigative Reporting award. She has been a member of the Editorial Board and served as Chief Editorial Writer at the Austin American-Statesman. She has been a communications person for the DC school system and AISD.
David Smith
Treasurer
David Smith is a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law. His legal career has been spent in both government service and private practice. Mr. Smith also worked as an attorney in the Washington State House of Representatives and taught at the University of Texas School of Business. He retired as the City Attorney of Austin, and currently maintains a consulting practice from his home near beautiful Buda, Texas. Among his avocations is a love of history, and he is currently writing an unvarnished account of Austin’s City Attorneys since the days of the Texas Republic.
Board Members
Eric Behrens
Eric Behrens is an Austin attorney with Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody. Eric obtained his law degree from the University of Texas School of Law, where he was the Managing Editor of the Texas Law Review, and his undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas, where he was the Editor for the campus yearbook (the Jayhawker).
Eric is currently also serving on the Board for the Austin Public Library Foundation, just coming off a term as its President, and Ballet Austin. Eric has been re-elected to serve on the 2010 WLT Board.
Laura Castro
Laura Castro is a writer and media relations expert with more than 25 years of professional experience in journalism, strategic communications and public relations. She currently works for The University of Texas at Austin as director of media relations for the School of Law and as an adjunct professor in the School of Journalism.
A native of Austin, Castro worked across the country as a journalist at national news organizations including The Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday and CNN for more than a decade before earning a law degree from The University of Texas in 1997. She is a founding and current member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Since 2004, Castro has also been an independent media consultant and literary publicist advising and promoting various authors including Pulitzer-prize winner David Oshinsky, historian H.W. Brands, and former national journalist William Cope Moyers.
David Furlow
David Furlow is senior partner of Thompson & Knight LLP in Houston. "I would like to serve on the WLT's Board of Directors for several reasons. First, I can provide marketing, a commitment to increasing WLT's profile in Houston, and a large law firm's sponsorship he says. "Second, I can share my experience as Chair of the A.B.A. Tort, Trial & Insurance Practice Section's Media, Defamation, and Privacy Law Committee and as Vice-Chair of the Section's Intellectual Property Committee. I have litigated many First Amendment, defamation, and privacy issues. Third, I have unique experience in publishing nonfiction. I served as a script consultant and interviewee on the History Channel's 2005 documentary Warrior Queen Boudica. I have presented many papers and PowerPoint programs about American history, constitutional law, Native American issues, and early American archaeology in Texas, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New
York. But my interest is not limited to nonfiction; I have taken five novel writing courses at Rice University's Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. Finally, my college sophomore daughter is an aspiring writer. I appreciate the enthusiasm of students who aspire to write their first novel."
Marijean Leipold, CFP
Mick Normington
Mick Normington is a business specialist for the Texas Workforce Commission. He co-authored Working Texas Style, the first book published about the Texas economy, which includes interviews with CEOs and company human resources directors, business consultants and professors ,and gives a comprehensive look at the changing economy and workforce of Texas. He has been a freelance writer for the Austin Business Journal and the San Antonio Express-News, and a business reporter for newspapers in several states. He holds a bachelors degree in journalism, and masters degrees in Business Administration, and Economic and Workforce Development.
Larry Norwood
Larry Norwood is a retired corporate communications specialist. He spent 28 years in media relations, philanthropy, government affairs, advertising and video production. Larry was publications editor at Tulane University, a Navy journalist aboard an aircraft carrier during two tours in the Gulf of Tonkin, a public relations manager at Baylor College of Medicine, a petroleum industry trade journals editor in Houston and Dallas, and a daily newspaper reporter in Corsicana. He earned a bachelor's degree in English at Baylor University and a master's at Tulane University.
Program Manager
Jennifer Ziegler
Advisory Board
Sally J. Baker
Mary Margaret Farrabee
Robert Flynn
Karleen Koen
Ann McCutchan
Barbara Minton
Kathleen Davis Niendorff
John G. Pipkin
Angela P. Smith
Board of Directors Monthly Meeting
3rd Wednesday each month, 6:30 PM
All members are welcome.