Installed as Honorary Consul in December 2015. Re-appointed in 2020. Under the jurisdiction of the Consulate of the Czech Republic in Chicago with Jaroslav Kantůrek, Consul General.

Highlights include hosting Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka in 2016. Producing statewide events in 2018 to celebrate the Centennial of the creation of Czechoslovakia as a nation after World War I resulted in the formation of the Czech and Slovak Roundtable in Minnesota, at which the many and varied ethnic Czech and Slovak organizations regularly meet to discuss and share events, programs, and goals.

Attended the 2014 Consular Corps College Symposium as an Honorary Consul Designate at the suggestion of the last Donald Pafko, Slovak Honorary Consul/Minnesota and Consular Corps College Chancellor. CCC member since 2014.

Reside in Saint Paul, Minnesota; grew up and still maintain a home on her grandfather’s 1902 homestead near the Canadian border in International Falls. Her grandfather, J. J. Kucera, born in 1880 in New Prague, Minnesota, to immigrants from near Tabor in Bohemia (now Czech Republic) who emigrated to USA in the early 1870s. Two of my four grandparents were immigrants. Awareness of immigrants’ issues, their ties to homelands, and their contributions to these United States of America have helped to make me a more effective honorary consul.

Studied at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism, B.A. 1968. Edited and designed magazines in Minnesota, Virginia, and Maryland. Since 1980, a business career as a textile artist and surface design instructor. My hand-dyed fabrics are used by quilters all over the world, since 1985. Served on the boards of Textile Council, Minneapolis Institute of Art; Friends of the Goldstein Gallery, University of Minnesota. Since 2000, involved with Czech and Slovak organizations in Minnesota as a board member and volunteer, including as managing editor of the Czech and Slovak Sokol Minnesota Slovo newsletter, 2010-2018

Last but not least, the 4-H training and leadership opportunities in my youth deserve credit for my ability to meet challenges and accept responsibility to serve and help my sending country, the Czech Republic. In the same manner, it is an honor to be part of the Consular Corps College leadership.