Co Founder, Chief Product and Technology officer of Winnie Anne Halsall

On Peer Talk, Software engineer Anne Halsall is the co-founder and Chief Product & Technology Officer of Winnie, an online directory for quality local child care services in metropolitan areas across the country. Since childhood, when her father bought an Apple II computer, Anne has been fascinated with the world of technology. After college, however, she noticed a disconcerting lack of women at the tech companies where she worked. The gender gap in tech motivated Anne to hire women employees when she co-founded Winnie. In her own words:

“  I deliberately chose to go work for organizations that had women in leadership, that had women in engineering, and that weren't just, like, teams of all men. My company is majority women and is also majority engineering. So that, to me, says when you walk in a room and it's all men, that was actually a choice.”

For this episode of Peer Talk, we brought in Mx. Oskar Soderberg’s 6th grade English class, the youngest group that we’ve worked with so far. The students had just read Hidden Figures for class, and were eager to learn more about the experiences of a woman in STEM. Anne and the students connected right away, thanks to both the students’ curiosity and Anne’s warm yet candid answers to their questions. We hope you’ll enjoy listening to their spirited conversation!

On Peer Talk, we can't think of a better way to celebrate the week of the 4th of July than with an episode on America's favorite pastime: baseball! Naturally, we're fans of the San Francisco Giants — and so, we were thrilled to score an interview with the Giants' current president and CEO, Larry Baer!

Mr. Baer's professional history with the team dates back to the 1980s. His personal history with the team goes even further back, to his childhood growing up in San Francisco. In 1992, after some time away from the Bay Area, Mr. Baer returned to San Francisco and co-founded an ownership group which kept the Giants from relocating to Miami. This group also helped move the team from Candlestick Park to Pacific Bell Park (now Oracle Park), where it still resides today. Since then, Mr. Baer has been as much of a fixture of San Francisco as the Giants have.

The eighth-grade students of Mr. O.'s Peer Resources class had plenty of questions about the inner workings of a Major League team, and they hit this interview out of the park! Enjoy — and GO GIANTS!

From 1986 until her retirement in 2018, Carolyn Tyler was a household name in the Bay Area, as news anchor and reporter for KGO-TV/ABC7. During her tenure, Carolyn covered numerous breaking stories and hosted two Emmy-nominated series — including a series on the Civil Rights Movement and the impact that it had on Bay Area high school students. For covering the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Carolyn and her ABC7 news team received the Peabody Award. Currently, Carolyn serves on the San Francisco Film Commission, the Board of Governors for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences representing Northern California, and the board of the Alonzo King Lines Ballet.

The school year is ending as summer begins, but not to worry — Peer Talk will continue through the next few months until school starts back up again!

Our guest for this episode is Osagie Ero, currently a software engineer at Amazon Music. Originally from Los Angeles, Osagie moved to San Francisco after graduating the University of Southern California. He began his professional career at Workday, where he helped to create a proprietary programming language for the company's Workday Student product. After a stint as a founding engineer at the blockchain startup Claim, Osagie later joined Astranis Space Technologies, where he undertook one of his most ambitious projects: developing a scheduling algorithm for Astranis's satellites to automatically communicate with Earth, which used to be a manual process. Now, at Amazon Music, Osagie combines his love of technology and engineering with his lifelong love of music.

The 2026 Bay Area Book Festival heads to Downtown Berkeley from Friday, May 29 to Sunday, May 31, hosting over a hundred panels and special guests. It's an event where readers and writers of all sorts come together to hold meaningful conversations on both local and global interests. The Festival's rebellious, community-focused spirit is in part thanks to its current Executive Director, J. K. Fowler.

"Since 1907, the Fairmont Hotel — located in the upscale neighborhood of Nob Hill — has been one of San Francisco's most esteemed and elegant institutions. For over 50 years, the first person to greet Fairmont guests upon their arrival has been the doorman, C

Ms. Vanessa Paiz’s Eighth Grade English Language Class Interviewed Mr. William Shakespeare who traveled from England 400 Years ago to San Francisco 2026 The Students interviewed him at the Willie Brown Middle School.

Kevin Patterson is the Son of Phyliss and Ron Patterson who are the Founders of the Original Rennisan Faire and Dickins Fair in 1970.

Joe Schmitz‍ ‍( William Shakespeare)is a Bay Area stage actor, voice actor, and drama teacherHis current emphasis is the Hunter Heartbeat Method, a kinesthetic approach to Shakespeare that makes theatre more accessible to people with autism.