Laura Kovarik has been involved in genealogy for more than thirty years. Her experience includes leadership, educational, and committee positions with societies at the national, state, and local levels. Laura has been providing educational opportunities for genealogists for almost twenty years. As the education chair for the Illinois State Genealogical Society, she crafted annual programming, including scheduling speakers for the webinar series and developing new small group educational programs.

At an early age, photos sparked Laura’s interest in her own family’s history, which quickly expanded to 3-D artifacts. After questioning her grandmother about certain items, Laura would record the information by writing on the back of photos or the underside of furniture. This curiosity led her to design her undergraduate degree in Historic Preservation at the University of Illinois. As her own family archive grew, Laura continued researching how to care for items such as Christmas ornaments, clothing, tools, and furniture. To enhance her preservation skills, she completed Denise May Levenick’s course, Family Archiving: Heirlooms in the Digital Age, at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh in 2018.