Virtual Chapter Upcoming Webinar

Linda Yip (葉秀映) was born in Vancouver, BC. She is a proud fourth-generation Canadian. Her family's historic home - the Wing Sang Company - is today the site of Canada's national Chinese Canadian Museum. Linda is an Accredited Genealogist® professional in the region of Canada Western Provinces, encompassing BC, AB, SK, and MB. As a professional, Linda has traced families in Canada, China, the U.K., and the U.S., with a speciality in the records created by Canada's Chinese Immigration Act (1885-1947). She has worked on many documentaries, the most recent being “Exclusion: Beyond the Silence,” (2024), with Keira Loughran. Linda is a member of the Ancestry® Canada Advisory Board of Genealogists. Linda specializes in researching families whose histories are difficult to trace because of migration, language barriers, or gaps in traditional records. Her work recognizes that historical records were created within social systems that sometimes overlooked or misrepresented certain communities, and she uses a wide range of sources and methods to build accurate, well-documented family histories. By combining archival research, spatial and social context, and careful source analysis, she helps clients recover stories that might otherwise remain hidden. Linda is a speaker and author. Her book, Getting Started in Chinese Genealogy - a Family Historian's Guide Even if You Don't Speak or Read Chinese - has been purchased by archives and libraries in Canada and the United States. Linda has lived in BC, AB, NS, and spent a year in Massachusetts. She currently resides in Saskatoon with her husband.

Alice Childs is an Accredited Genealogist® professional specializing in U.S. Mid-Atlantic states research. She has presented at RootsTech, the APG PMC, the New York State Family History Conference, the UGA Summit of Excellence, and various local conferences. Alice has also volunteered as a mentor for aspiring professionals in the ICAPGen and ProGen study groups and served as the Communications Manager for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. Currently, she is the Assistant Director at the Brigham Young University Center for Family History and Genealogy, where she mentors students in genealogy research and facilitates the creation of quality online family history resources available to the public at no cost.

Ammon Smith is a genealogist specializing in Latin American research with a focus on Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Fluent in Spanish, he works directly with Spanish-language ecclesiastical, civil, and notarial sources and has advanced paleographic training in English and multiple Romance languages. His research focuses on colonial-era documentation, the Spanish Inquisition, Crypto-Jewish ancestry, Latinos in the United States, and the use of emerging technology in genealogical research.

Kate is a former professional investigator turned genealogist, specializing in Pennsylvania genealogical research. She also has experience with records from Ohio, West Virginia, and New York City, as well as expertise in immigration, naturalization, and court records. She holds the Certified Genealogist® credential as of February 2024. Kate owns Family History Investigations LLC. Kate has spoken at national and local genealogical societies, libraries, and conferences, including the National Genealogical Society Family History Conference, New England Regional Genealogical Consortium, Ohio Genealogical Society Conference, and RootsTe

Olivia Millunzi is the Reference Librarian at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Library in Washington, D.C. She holds a BA in History and Museum Studies with a French minor from Juniata College, and an MLIS focusing in Diversity & Inclusion from the University of Maryland’s iSchool. Before coming to the DAR, Olivia worked at local and county historical societies, historic homes, the National Park Service, and the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. She began working at the DAR as a Staff Genealogist in 2019, and in 2022 became the Reference Librarian for the DAR Library. Olivia lives in Frederick, MD with a cat and an unconscionably large number of books.

Rebecca Whitman Koford holds credentials as a Certified Genealogist® and as a Certified Genealogical Lecturer®. She focuses on research in Maryland, Upstate New York, Virginia, the District of Columbia, colonial records, military records from the Revolution through the Civil War, federal records at the National Archives (D.C.), and land records of all types. She has published articles in the NGS Magazine, APG Magazine, SAR Magazine, and the Maryland Genealogical Society Journal and is co-author of the NGS Research in the States series book on Maryland. She is a graduate and former mentor of the ProGen Study Group and served as its Administrator from 2015–2020. She speaks at national conferences and regularly teaches at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG), the Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research (IGHR). She served as Executive Director of the Board for Certification of Genealogists® from 2018–2024. In 2021, she was named as Director of the Genealogical Institute on Federal Records (Gen-Fed) in Washington, D.C. Rebecca was elected as the vice-president of the National Genealogical Society in October 2024. She takes clients and runs her business under the name Rebecca Whitman Koford Genealogical Research, LLC.

Kristina Kaufman is a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), where she is a Family History - Genealogy major. Originally from a small town in northern Wisconsin, her emphases are in German and Midwestern research, which she believes she can use to help support genealogical research in her home state and region.  She finds polemology fascinating and hopes to be able to incorporate military research into her professional work as a genealogist. She will graduate from BYU in April 2027. In the Fall 2024 Semester, Kristina had the privilege to intern at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oœwiêcim, Poland. During this internship, she worked specifically with prisoner transfer records in the Archives and a variety of artifacts in the Collections Department. After completing her internship, she returned to Poland in July 2025 to receive an award (“If not for those ten...”) for the work she completed on her internship. She has worked at the BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy for the last three years, helping supervise three of the Center's projects. They have provided her with meaningful learning experiences, and a highlight has been being able to conduct military research as the project supervisor of the Mormon Battalion Project.

Judy G. Russell, The Legal Genealogist®, is a genealogist with a law degree. She writes, teaches and lectures on a wide variety of genealogical topics, providing expert guidance through the murky territory where law and family history intersect. A Colorado native with roots deep in the American south on her mother’s side and entirely in Germany on her father’s side, she holds a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and a law degree from Rutgers School of Law-Newark. Before she retired, she worked as a newspaper reporter, trade association writer, legal investigator, defense attorney, federal prosecutor, law editor and, for more than 20 years, as an adjunct member of the faculty at Rutgers Law School. She is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, the National Genealogical Society and numerous state and regional genealogical societies. Named a Fellow of the Utah Genealogical Association in 2025, she received the 2015 UGA Silver Tray Award and the 2017 Award of Excellence from the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, where she now serves as a member of the NGSQ editorial board. An internationally-known lecturer and course coordinator and faculty member at numerous genealogical institutes, she holds credentials as a Certified Genealogist® and Certified Genealogical LecturerSM from the Board for Certification of Genealogists®. Her award-winning blog appears at The Legal Genealogist® website (https://www.legalgenealogist.com).

Brian Rhinehart is a professional genealogist and speaker and is the owner of CivilWarRecords.com. He is a graduate of Boston University’s Certificate of Genealogy Research and is a regular researcher for the television show Finding Your Roots. A direct descendant of eight Civil War soldiers, Brian specializes in research and record retrieval for Civil War and War of 1812 soldiers at the National Archives in Washington DC and has retrieved military files for hundreds of clients there.