The Penguin Speakers Bureau

Wendy Reid Crisp is the author of four books: WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE 60 (Penguin/Perigee, 2006), FROM THE BACK PEW: Life and Love in the Last Small Town in America (2003), DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DID: Perfect Advice from an Imperfect Mother(Penguin/Perigee, 1997), OLD FAVORITES FROM FERNDALE KITCHENS: The Museum Cookbook (1994), and the bestselling 100 THINGS I’M NOT GOING TO DO NOW THAT I’M OVER 50 (Penguin/Perigee revised edition, 2006). She also holds the compilation copyright on A DISTANT THUNDER: Intimate Recollections of the Kaiser’s Court, by Anne Topham (New Chapter Press, 1992).

She has appeared on hundreds of local and national television programs, including Oprah!, CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Morning News, and more. She has had editorials published in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Oregonian; she has had articles published in More, Family Circle, and Woman’s Day. In the 1980s, she was the editor-in-chief of Savvy, the magazine for executive women. In the late 1980s–1990s, she was the national director of NAFE, the National Association for Female Executives. In February 2008, Crisp was named editor-in-chief of GRAND magazine, a three-year-old national magazine for grandparents.

For thirty years, she has been a keynote speaker at conferences for businesswomen, computer users, child care and social work professionals, management seminars, chambers of commerce and churches.

For the past seven years, Crisp has served on the board of directors of Human Services Management Corporation in San Francisco. She is also a member of the boards of directors of the Institute for Family Development in San Francisco and the Ferndale Cemetery Association, a California historical landmark.

In 1997, Crisp was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Middlebury College in Vermont for her writing and speaking “on behalf of women and children.”

She is married to John Lestina and has one son, Max Crisp, and two grandsons, Cooper and Carson Crisp. She is also “Nana” to John’s two sons and five grandchildren. The Lestinas live on their family farm on northern California’s Lost Coast.

Check out Crisp’s web page at www.iwanttobe60.com.