After serving as a Health Volunteer for the Peace Corps in Honduras, I am back in Arcata. I work for Northcoast Children's Services as a Bilingual Family Service Specialist serving high-needs families with children enrolled in Head Start.

My Journalism Degree served me well in business. I worked in telecommunications for 20 years after graduation. I was a re-entry student graduating in 1990 with the tools that enabled me to succeed. The writing and presentation skills,learned in the journalism dept. along with speaking skills, gave me the impetus to compete and win jobs for my company. I am currently retired and now volunteer in the Community Relations Department at Mercy Medical Center Redding. Here I am contributing to the hospital newsletter and serving in public events hosted by the hospital.

currently working at Kinoshita Circus in Japan

Retired from teaching in LAUSD. Currently working at Madrona Marsh and Preserve in Torrance, Ca. doing restoration.

As I approach my 60th birthday, I'm thrilled my older daughter, Nicole, an engineer with CalTrans, will be married in September to Tim Farrell,a CDF firefighter and also a HSU alum. Nicole and Tim live on Kneeland and are planning a "hoe down" on their mountain property (with two bands!) as their wedding reception. I'm also happy to be "on the mend" from recent neck surgery and am looking forward to my next trip to Kauai in October to celebrate my 60th!

After 11 years in the private sector, I recently started my own environmental consulting firm, Sophia Mitchell & Associates. The firm focus is on CEQA/NEPA documentation and project management.

Currently birthing a native landscape business after 12 years research forestry, 5 years environmental restoration, 5 years arborist work, and 10 years of service in the Food industry catering and working in fine dining restaurants. Blend this all with a passion for personal healing work; physically, emotionally, and spiritually. What has come of this is a project that my wife and I are creating: Truckee River Sanctuary where we grow food, raise poultry, and have built a Kiva to share with our community to build relations amongst people that want to grow and create new ways of living within our decaying social systems of life. It's really a place to connect and grow. I've been busy.

MA in English, University of Wyoming 2001
MFA Creative Writing, University of Wyoming 2008

After graduating from HSU in 1991, Dr. Rivers-Norton, taught both full time and part time at several public and private institutions of higher learning including the University of New Mexico, SUNY Alfred State College, DeVry Institute, and National University from 1991 -2011. In 2005, Dr. Rivers-Norton received a Story Fund Grant from the California Council for the Humanities to conduct and publish an oral history project entitled Told From the Heart: Stories of California's Native Women. She most recently served as the Associate Dean of Instruction at The Art Center Design College in Tucson, Arizona. Several of her academic publications can be found at Common Ground Publishing, Melbourne, Australia from 2004 - 2007. Dr. Rivers-Norton currently resides with her husband Jack in Rio Rico, Arizona and Medford, Oregon where she is working on a book of creative non-fiction entitled Memories of the Flesh.

I left J.P. Morgan in April 2011 to join the management team at Virgin Galactic, the world's first commercial spaceline, founded by Sir Richard Branson. I have since relocated to Las Cruces, New Mexico as my office will be located at Spaceport America once construction is completed.