Ebell of LA’s Annual Women’s History Symposium: In 2024 and 2025, I had the honor of presenting at the Ebell’s inspiring Women’s History Symposium. In 2024, I spoke about Simona Martinez Bradbury and in 2025, I spoke about the 1929 Women’s Air Derby that flew out of Santa Monica Airport.
Since 2023, I’ve been on the Executive Committee for L.A. as Subject (LAAS). As part of my work on the committee, I’ve organized a few tours of local archives, including one of the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles’ headquarters (here’s my recap of the tour). The LAAS Archives Bazaar is one of my favorite annual events and for the 2023gathering, I photographed every booth and compiled them into this montage to document all the amazing folks who share their rich archival resources.
Arboretum Library Instagram & Newsletter: To promote the lovely library at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, I managed the Arboretum Library’s Instagram page from 2016 to 2023. Folks are often surprised that the LA County Arboretum has a library, which is an incredible botanical resource for our region. I also published the Arboretum Library’s monthly newsletter until 2023.
Los Angeles Public Library Presentation about Mary Foy: On the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, I gave a virtual talk for the Los Angeles Public Library about Mary Foy. Known as the first women to City Librarian, Mary Foy was a prominent organizer in Los Angeles’ suffrage campaign.
For the Los Angeles Public Library, I played the role of librarian Tessa Kelso for its Historical Portraits Project. Six people volunteered to portray historic Angelenos in videos that would be shown on the Central Library Video Wall. While I didn’t really resemble the sixth City Librarian, I was honored to play the role of this “maverick leader who oversaw dramatic expansion of the library’s collections and advocated for then-radical ideas like open collections and abolishing membership fees.”
Los Angeles Walks’s #LA4Corners: For this pedestrian advocacy organization, I co-coordinated a series of walks that followed the 1850 boundary of Los Angeles. I was part of the core team that developed the project we dubbed #LA4Corners (see tweets with this hashtag on Twitter) over several years. Each person took on one leg of the four walking tours and I organized and co-led the 6.5-mile walk down the eastern boundary with James Rojas. More information on my blog: https://victoriabernal.me/2020/01/21/los-angeles-squared/.
Wildsam: California Field Guide: For the California edition of Wildsam, a pocket-size travel guide, I interviewed five prominent Californians (including Dolores Huerta) and crafted several lists documenting unique aspects of California history.
Victoria Bernal 