I wasn’t there at the beginning.

I wasn’t there at the beginning. What I know I’ve learned from the Network’s founders and early leaders, especially Barbara Seaman, Belita Cowan, Alice Wolfson, and JoAnne Fischer, all of whom remained close to the Network and to me, personally. The Network staff and I created this very short description of a few key events that led to the Network’s founding. An important note – this version of the Network’s beginning is missing the crucial work on DES led by Belita Cowan in the early 1970s. Her Wikipedia page has a very good account of that work. Belita became the Network’s co-founder and first Executive Director. She’s the one next to the pointy post-it in the photo above. The Network used that photo as a holiday card, likely in the early 1980s. The images below are from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, captured on June 6, 2023. Be patient if it loads slowly.