Meet the Board of Directors

Felicity Fonesca, NMSLF Board Member
Felicity currently works for North Central New Mexico Economic Development District where she is the Community Development Planner for an eight-county region in North Central New Mexico. In this role, she works with communities to develop Economic Development Administration (EDA) projects and to identify funding for a wide range of community and economic development needs. She provides technical assistance such as funding research, grant review, and grant writing, and she responds to data requests related to funding opportunities. Felicity has over 17 years of experience in federal fundraising. Prior to her current role, she was Executive Director at Embudo Valley Library, a nationally recognized non-profit public library in Rio Arriba County, NM. She has also served as a fellow at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Evaluation Lab and the UNM Center for Regional Studies, gaining in-depth experience in community outreach, community engagement, and data research and analysis.

Alison Freese, NMSLF Vice-President
Alison received a PhD from UNM in American Studies with a specialization in Southwest Ethnohistory in 1990. She then worked as Information Specialist at UNM Native American Studies (NAS) for six years, where she began collaborating with tribal libraries in New Mexico as a part of NAS outreach efforts to tribal communities. From there she went to the New Mexico State Library as Tribal Libraries Consultant for five years and enjoyed working with New Mexico tribal libraries on a variety of state-funded programs to improve their collections and services. In 2003, she moved to Washington, DC, to become the Senior Program Officer for Native American Library Services at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, where she had the privilege of working with tribal libraries across the country. Alison retired in 2013 and moved back to New Mexico in 2018. She now volunteers her time with some of the local tribal libraries and continues her longtime volunteer hobby of photographing shelter cats to improve their chances of adoption.

Moira Gehring, NMSLF Treasurer
Moira has served as Treasurer of the Friends of the Santa Fe Public Library since 2012 and oversees budgeting, accounting and investments. She has also developed and produced a wide range of events on behalf of the Friends, including The Future of Reading and Publishing featuring James McGrath Morris, The Future of Libraries, a panel discussion, Making Friends, a state-wide conference for New Mexico Library Friends organizations, and The Happy Hour Author’s Book Club, a bi-monthly book club featuring both local and national authors. A Santa Fe resident since 2009, Moira is the founding principal of Moving Through, LLC, an estate disposition and downsizing firm and provides a full range of services, from inventories and appraisals to estate and Internet sales. A native New Yorker, Moira graduated from Brown University and has worked in corporate communications for a number of financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley Co., Inc., Chemical Bank and New York Life Insurance. She has also produced television programming for Time Warner Ventures, Inc., documentaries for Linda Ellerbee’s Lucky Duck Productions and has written for a range of publications, most notably Health and Vermont magazines.

Elizabeth Martinez, NMSLF Board Member
Born and raised in Southern California, Elizabeth has many firsts in her life being Chicano/Native and Mexican American; first AFS Mexican American high school exchange student (New Zealand), first director of Los Angeles Public Library, first Executive Director of the American Library Association where she secured $200 million from Bill Gates for Internet access and computers for libraries in the 21st century, and established the national Spectrum Scholarships. She has been on the Advisory Committee for Knowledge River at the University of Arizona since it started 15 years ago, the only graduate library program for Black, Latino/Spanish Speaking, Native American, and Asian/Pacific Islanders. In 2014, she returned from Monterey County to live in New Mexico again, and was appointed by the Governor to the NM State Library Commission.

Alana Anana McGrattan, NMSLF President
Alana has been working in Libraries and Indian Education for over 40 years as the Library Media Coordinator at the Albuquerque/Santa Fe Indian School with the All Indian Pueblo Council; Library Specialist opening the library at the CNM at the Rio Rancho Campus; Tribal Libraries Program Coordinator New Mexico State Library. She designed and implemented programs, wrote and managed grants, collaborated on programs providing outreach and extensive resources, represented school and public library programs to New Mexico Tribal leaders and program managers, and worked with the New Mexico State Legislature on school and public library legislation. Alana earned her BA in Education at St Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, her MA in Education at the University of Notre Dame, and her MLS in Library Science at Columbia University. She is Chair of the New Mexico Chapter of the National New Deal Preservation Association and Chair of the Ashgabat Committee for Albuquerque Sister Cities. Alana owns and operates a thirty-acre farm in Corrales New Mexico.

Lucinda Lucinda Surber, NMSLF Secretary
Lucinda became a full-time Santa Fean in 2007 when she and her husband, Stan Ulrich, moved to the City Different with two very cranky cats to the home they purchased in 1998. A native Californian, Lucinda graduated from Stanford University and taught elementary school and technology classes for teachers. Now retired from full-time teaching, Lucinda is still very much involved in education, traveling around the country (Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, and Texas recently) to provide professional development in mathematics for elementary and middle school teachers as a consultant for Math Solutions. A past Co-President of the Friends of the Santa Fe Public Library, Lucinda maintains the Friends website. Lucinda and Stan run Stop, You’re Killing Me!, an online resource for lovers of mystery, crime, thriller, spy, and suspense books. They serve on the board for Left Coast Crime, helping to organize the annual convention. Lucinda also created Bookworm For Kids, an online resource for all who are interested in encouraging children to love reading. In her spare time Lucinda loves attending operas, visiting art museums, and riding on trains.