Our Club

The Carmel Valley Women's Club is a social, civic, and educational organization celebrating Friendship, Education, and Community. Through friendship, its members work to support the charitable and education purposes of the Carmel Valley Women's Club Foundation. Our monthly luncheons are the first Wednesday of the month from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm with the exception of our New Member Reception in September, our Holiday Extravaganza in December, and our spring fundraiser in April. We meet at various restaurants in the Carmel Valley area.
Membership is open to all. View our privacy policy here.

Read our most recent newsletterhere

***** RENEWALS CAN START FRIDAY MAY 26*****
To Renew Your Membership simply click on "Member Signup" on the left panel. (you must be logged out to see that option). If you are set-up to "automatically login", you will be sent directly to membership renewal. If not, you will have to login with your password first. If you have forgotten your password EMAIL Judy.

A Message from our President

Hello Ladies,

Spring has finally arrived here in Carmel Valley. We have so much to look forward to these next few months.

We have our June luncheon coming up, where we name and honor our scholarship winners. It is always so rewarding to see so many young ladies excited for their next adventure. We’ll also have a new board to swear in, adding new voices to our board of directors. As always ladies, we encourage your participation and point of view.

Stay tuned for more updates about new positions and board appointments along with our future events.

Your president,

Kathy K.

Save the Date - Wednesday, June 7 Luncheon - Celebrate our Scholars

Our Wednesday, June 7 Luncheon is our final event of the year. We will celebrate the 9 outstanding young women who have been selected to receive college scholarships from our Foundation. This is always one of our best luncheons and you won't want to miss it. As always it will be outside in the lovely garden at Los Laureles Lodge.

As in the past, we are asking interested members to volunteer to sponsor lunch for one of the scholars and their accompanying parent or guardian. If you are interested in sponsorship, please contact Cynthia Rivera by EMAIL or by calling at 831-624-3757.

Reservations may be made ONLINE or by calling Cynthia Rivera

In addition, at the meeting we will vote on our slate of candidates for Club Officers.

A Delightful Dance-ful Time - May Lunch

What a spectacular lunch we had in May at Blue Fox Cellars. Lillian Barbeito, founder of Carmel Dance Festival and their resident dance company Ballare Carmel, treated us to a delightful talk about her personal history in dance (including a 4 year scholarship to Julliard, being a Cultural Ambassador of the United States to 4 Countries, being a University Professor of Dance, co-founding two dance companies, and finding time to be a wife and mother as well). Then we were introduced to three visiting dancers, here in Monterey for some special Carmel Dance Festival performances: Katherine Lingle, Ariel Clarke and Anthony Pucci. We received a dance primer on the difference between classical ballet and contemporary dance from Katherine and Ariel, a wonderful solo performance by Anthony and then the trio performed an excerpt from "In Awe (of the Everday)". Finally, Lillian and the three dancers held a Q&A session for us on all aspects of contemporary dance and their lives dancing. It was such a wonderful event.
If you would like to experience more of Ballare Carmel's performances here are a few links to view:

2nd Annual Carmel Dance Festival

Ballare Carmel at Sunset Center

Carmel Dance Festival Fellowship

Our Scholarship Program in the Spotlight - April Lunch

Our April 5 Scholarship-themed luncheon at Woody's was a delight: good food, good camaraderie, and a great chance for us to review what our Club and Foundation are all about. Kathy Kaminski kicked off the program with introductions and a preview of the gorgeous flower arrangements to be awarded to top donors of the day who were in the room. Judy Tschirgi went through the history and purpose of the Club and the Foundation. That lead into a description of the partnership with the Community Foundation for Monterey County (CFMCO) to help manage some of the operational heavy lifting behind selecting candidates. Esther Figueroa, Scholarships and Community Impact Officer from CFMCO described a bit. more about their role and helped with a Q&A on the Scholarship details. While lunch was served Kathy and Nancy Endriz, Chair of the Scholarship Committee, read some thank you notes from 2022 Scholarship recipients. These beautiful notes really emphasized the huge impact our scholarships can have on the lives of these women. Finally, we were able to gratefully acknowledge our top donors of the day with beautiful flower arrangements: Pat Gray, Brenda Davis, Sally King, Gayle Paul, Renee Wagner, and then a special thanks to Harriet Busick as one of our longest standing donors. We are very grateful for all of our members' generosity in making these Scholarships possible.

Breaking records and empowering women - March Lunch

Two-time silver medalist in Softball, all time fastest softball pitcher (77 mph...whew!), ground-breaking career firsts, Monica Abbott has done it all, including learning Japanese while she lived and worked in Japan for 14 years. Our Club had a delightful lunch at Baja Cantina hearing about her exploits, but mostly about how she encouraged herself to stretch, lean forward, take risks and expand her horizons. This is the advice she gives now to countless people, including young female athletes who she supports through her own scholarships. If you didn't get a chance to meet this this charming and motivating leader, you can learn all about her in her new book about to be published: Rise and Shine: The Monica Abbott Story.

Ocean AI to the rescue - February Lunch

Friday's Luncheon featured Dr. Kakani Katija, bioengineer and lead researcher of the Bioinspiration Lab at MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute). Dr. Katija provided a fascinating overview of what artificial intelligence promises for scientists who study the deep ocean and provide data to inform policy about protecting the ocean environment. She explained how the "Blue Economy", an economy based on the sea, such a aquaculture, energy production, and sea-mining, is rapidly advancing and outstripping the ability of policymakers to guide its careful development relative to the environment. The few laboratories in the world who gather data through video of the deep ocean and the ocean floor are drowning in 100s of thousands hours of video production, with no alternative to humans slowly viewing it to process it. Dr. Kaktija's lab is working on Artificial Intelligence tools to automate these processes. She described 3 of these tools, including one, a game called Fathomverse, that will allow science buffs, school kids, video fans and the like to help identify cool sea creatures thereby helping train the AI algorithms. The other tools, fathomnet.org , an image database, and Oceanvision.org (not yet available), are tools for other scientists to share their data and processes.

And best of all, Dr. Katija has become a member of the CVWC, so we can easily track the progress of her work going forward. Please welcome Kakani to our club!

It's all in the Family - January Luncheon

Who minded the wind and rain on January 4 when we dined at Shearwater Tavern and listened in fascination to Dr. Daniel Luba. He described his work with the Monterey County medical establishment to put in place a consistent and well-executed process to screen patients for potential hereditary cancer syndromes. This allows patients to choose to do genetic testing and become educated and informed about their own and their family's likelihood of an inheritable cancer. When caught early most of these cancers can be prevented from developing into more serious cases. Dr. Luba was a great speaker and was bombarded with questions following his presentation. If you are interested in more information go to the Project DNA webpage. You will also find a link there to calculate your TYRER-CUZICK SCORE, a tool to calculate a person's likelihood of carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations.

2022 Holiday Extravaganza - What a wonderful time

December 7 saw the banquet room at Rancho La Cañada transformed into a sparkling marketplace. Side tables lined the walls with goodies to bid on, gorgeous centerpieces graced the dining tables, and 70 members and guests helped make our holiday fundraiser memorable Many, many thanks to Kathy Kaminski and Laura Warren for their leadership in organizing all aspects of our signature event, and to Kathy, especially, for her decorating prowess with all the auction items and the centerpieces. And a special thanks to Bill Kaminski for all his help in the background. Thanks to the many members who assisted with their donations, and our volunteers Renee Wagner (and Bruce Wagner too!), Gayle Paul, Susan McFarland, Pinkie Terry, and Marly Auerbach who assisted with pricing, transporting, arranging, and clean-up. Thanks to Les and PinkieTerry for their ever-ready support lending us space at Los Laureles Lodge for our set-up. Thanks to Cynthia Rivera, Connie Hong-Smith, Les Terry, Pinkie Terry, June Dawson and Judy Tschirgi for staffing the welcoming and sales tables. And thanks to Linda Arroz for arranging for Jenifer Solano and her parents to attend. Our apologies to anyone who was left out.

Thanks to all our Sponsors