Meet the Team
An Immigrant History of Edmonds was made possible by a Community Advisory Team who designed the oral history project and exhibit.
Marjie Bowker
Marjie Bowker teaches English at Scriber Lake High School and writes about all the local international food she loves on her blog, EAT99: Taste the Highway. She comes from Welsh and British people, but considers herself an adopted child of Vietnam.
Larry Fuell
Larry served in the Foreign Agricultural Service at U.S. embassies in Guatemala, China, and Peru. Larry taught Political Science at Shoreline Community College and was the Founding Director of the Global Affairs Center. His father’s parents migrated from Germany in the earlier 1920s.
Richard Chung
Richard has lived in Edmonds since 2020 and recently became enthralled with our local history. He emigrated from Canada in 2004 and his parents were originally from Hong Kong. Richard is the 2025 Chair of the Edmonds Arts Commission.
Nancy Leson
Nancy Leson, an Edmonds-based journalist, spent nearly two decades as food columnist and restaurant critic for the Seattle Times and as food commentator for NPR member-station KNKX. Her grandparents and their families were Russian Jews who fled religious persecution, immigrating to the United States in the early 1900s. Visit Nancy’s website.
Polly Yorioka
Exhibit Curator
Polly has a MA in International Studies and a MA in Museology. She has spent her career working with international communities. Polly’s family comes from England and Japan, with the English side of her family arriving in the United States in the 1600s and the Japanese side of the family in the early 20th century to Seattle. Her father was born in Camp Minidoka during the WWII Japanese incarceration.
Contact us
Interested in working together? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!