Penguin Speakers Bureau

Wendy Reid Crisp is the author of five 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 best-selling 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).

Wendy 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, and articles published in More, Family Circle, and Woman’s Day. In the 1980s, Wendy was the editor in chief of Savvy, the magazine for executive women. And in the late 1980s–1990s, she was the national director of NAFE, the National Association for Female Executives.

Embarking on a post-60 career of documentary filmmaking, Wendy’s sixth, and most recent film, Letters Home, tells the story of the men and women from a tiny farm town in northern California who served in World War II. It was an especially poignant effort for Wendy, whose father, Marine Lt. John D. Robertson, Jr., was killed on Okinawa in the last days of the war while evacuating his troops (for which he was awarded a posthumous Silver Star). In addition to her filmmaking, Wendy currently writes the news aggregate blog California’s Children, and the weekly column From the Back Pew. She also manages website content for several clients in a variety of industries.

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. And for almost a decade, Wendy has served on the board of directors of Human Services Management Corporation in San Francisco. She is also a member of the board of directors for the Institute for Family Development in San Francisco and the Ferndale Cemetery Association, a California historical landmark. In 1997, Wendy was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Middlebury College in Vermont for her writing and speaking “on behalf of women and children.”

Wendy 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.