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I just remembered that I never answered this, although God knows I've spilled enough of my life story (and my guts) all over this site that of the people interested enough to read this, most will already know a lot of it.I was born in Baltimore, Maryland to American-born Greek-American parents. My mother's people were from Sparta and my father's people from the islands. Three of my grandparents were born in Greece; my mother's mother was born in Pittsburgh to a Greek-born father and a Polish-born mother.[There's a legend in my family (I hope it's true) that my mother's mother's mother left Poland as a teenager because she was running away from anarranged marriage to a coal miner twice her age. Whatever happened, shemade her way to Reading, Pennsylvania, where she got a job in a Greekrestaurant and met my great-grandfather, who was an itinerant puppeteer and looked like Cary Grant (seriously). They got married and embarked on a lifestyle that involved her staying at home for weeks or months while he went out on the road, touring from one Greek coffeehouse to another with hismarionettes. He would return home long enough to knock her up and thengo out on the road again.]My mother died in January 2013, just a few weeks before her 83rd birthday. Here she is on her 82nd birthday.My dad is 90. If Mom had survived another few months they would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in June 2013.My dad is a retired electrician who owned a small appliance store when I was a little girl, then foresaw the dominance of the big box stores (realizing he could not compete with a local store called Luskin's) and got a job as a troubleshooter at the big Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point, Maryland. He retired in 1984. My mom was the office manager at an insurance agency until I was born, then stayed home for about ten years, then took a part-time job, but basically dedicated herself to my brother and me.My brother is four years younger than I am. I despised him when he was born but for many years he has been very dear to me, and his 13 year old daughter Christina is one of the joys of my life. Unfortunately I live in Oregon and pretty much my whole family live in Maryland, so I don't see them more than three or four times a year, which can be hard sometimes. This is my brother and me, taken by Christina, on his birthday a few years ago. (She and I made the cake.)I'm very happily married to a guy I went to college with, Mike Radway. We were together as a committed couple for 26 years before we got married, and knew each other as friends for six years before that. During the time before we got married we got asked a lot of questions about how long we'd been together and I always used to enjoy responding, "Since the Carter Administration, although we met during the Nixon Administration."Stephanie V's answer to Do long-distance relationships work?Here is our wedding photo. We were married at the Multnomah County Courthouse. I'm glad no one ever called my mother's attention that I wore black (she's seen the photos of course, but in her relief that I was finally married she didn't pay much attention to the details).Not only did I manage to find an excellent life partner, he has a great family who have always welcomed me warmly into whatever events or activities I happened to be doing with them. I know many people can't say the same about their own in-laws and I feel very fortunate.When I was an adolescent I always assumed that I'd never get married, partly because I couldn't imagine ever wanting to marry anyone, and partly because I didn't feel like wife material. I am a slob and an terrible housekeeper. I'm not much of a cook (although I'm improving). I knew I didn't want to have children. I knew I would never want to change my name. Etc. However, the one time I tried to discuss these feelings with my mother I only succeeded in freaking her out because when I spoke the words, "I'm just not the kind of girl boys marry," she ran with that in a whole different direction. I figured it out later.Because I am a firstborn my mother had no idea I was a little weirdo when I started reading at about age 2.5. She just assumed this was how it went. We didn't have public kindergarten, so when she took me (just turned 6) to sign up for first grade they told her I had to take a reading readiness test. When she told them I'd been reading for years they didn't believe her until I started reading all the forms they had printed out for the parents, at which point I got to meet the principal, got sent for testing to the Baltimore County Board of Education, and got skipped into the second grade. So I was always a year younger than my classmates, all through school.I was never much good at sports but I was really good at pretty much everything in school, and I especially loved math, at least until I ran into second year algebra (the only D I ever got) and got scared off. I took five years of French and a lot of English and social studies classes instead. I got involved in student government, became the VP of my junior class and then the president of the student council. I was most likely to succeed and all that. My mother wanted me to stay in Baltimore and go to Goucher College (which was all female in those days). I wanted to go away, and I knew that if I was going to get my parents to accept it I needed to get into a major brand name school. I got into Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Goucher, and two other schools. Most first generation Greek-American fathers in 1973 would never have supported the idea of a daughter going to Yale. I had some financial aid and a bursary job but my parents came through with the money for me to go.Yale was a transformative experience for me.Stephanie V's answer to How has higher education changed your life?Stephanie V's answer to What does it feel like to attend a world-renowned university?For my senior essay in American Studies I decided to write about the Black Sox scandal. I called up the most notorious baseball fan on the Yale faculty, A. Bartlett Giamatti, and asked him to advise it. He agreed. A few months later he was elected President of Yale, but he insisted on keeping his commitment. Working on it with him was a great experience.After Yale I managed to land my dream job as an executive trainee with MLB (business).Stephanie V's answer to Is it really possible to make your own luck?While I worked as Manager of Waivers and Player Records for the American League, I went to law school in the evenings at Fordham. I graduated from Fordham in 1985 and lucked into something great. There was a new Commissioner, Peter Ueberroth. Peter didn't like lawyers but he did like professional women, and he created a new Assistant General Counsel position for me in the Commissioner's Office, so I could stay on. This was a huge break for me, and I'll always be grateful to him for it.In 1988-89 when it started to seem that moving on from MLB might be a good idea, Bart (who by then was National League President and would soon be Commissioner) introduced me to his Yale classmate Donald Dell. Donald was a former US Davis Cup captain and had started the first sports agency specializing in representing tennis players, ProServ. His first two clients were Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith. By the late 80s ProServ had branched out into other sports and represented hundreds of athletes including Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Greg LeMond, Boomer Esiason, James Worthy, Dominique Wilkins, and tennis players like John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Stefan Edberg, and Gabriela Sabatini. I worked for Donald for eight years. A major highlight of that time was in 1990 when ProServ was hired to represent the merchandising rights to Nelson Mandela's first US visit, after his release from Robben Island. (When Mandela was released from prison, Arthur Ashe was the first person he asked to meet, and Arthur helped us get a meeting to pitch the business.) A colleague and I ran the merchandising program. It was thrilling.The licensee in the Bay Area was Winterland Productions. I flew out to San Francisco and appeared on local TV with the head of artist licensing at Winterland to urge people to buy only the officially licensed t-shirts, etc.In 1995 I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Sports Lawyers Association, and still serve as a director, and now as a member of the Executive Committee.I was recruited to Nike (company) in 1997 and worked there for almost 14 years. I was originally recruited to do sports marketing deals but lucked into an opportunity to start building Nike's global product safety team and infrastructure in a serious way in about 1999, and ran with it.In that job I built a global multidisciplinary virtual team that only saw each other perhaps twice a year, but which met weekly to deal with existing issues and plan out the mechanisms by which we hoped to prevent future issues. We traveled to Asia and Europe to give and receive trainings. We visited the European Parliament and the Chinese product safety authorities in Shanghai. We managed the occasional product recall and worked with product designers and developers to avoid future recalls. I served on the ethics committee of the Nike Sport Research Lab and my team and I worked with the NSRL and the product engines to decide how much we were willing to promise by way of product performance claims based on their work. I worked with amazingly smart people -- chemists, materials scientists, manufacturing gurus, social compliance experts, ESH specialists. My team and I sat through days of toxicology lectures to elevate our understanding of consumer allergies, sensitivities, and other chemical safety issues. I took a special two-week training course called "PS72 Shoe School" in 2000 and learned how to brief, design, spec/develop, cost out, and build an athletic shoe. Those two weeks (one in Oregon, one in Korea and China) will always be a highlight of my life. I can't ever remember learning so much in such a short time.Between 1997 and 2009, in partnership with the staff on the business side, I also papered and negotiated literally billions of dollars in sports marketing deals. My principal sports of concentration were tennis, golf, baseball, and some Olympic sports. I worked on every piece of Nike sports marketing business related to Lance Armstrong for 12 years, including setting up the "LiveStrong" wristband promotion and getting it legally qualified in the 20 states that regulate that kind of fundraising. Last I heard more than 70 million yellow wristbands had been sold. I'm sure it's closer to 100 million now. I worked on Nike's product supply and sponsorship agreements with Ohio State, University of Washington, University of North Carolina System, and other schools. I worked on Nike's deals with scores of athletes. I've been called a bitch by at least two agents representing athletes you've heard of. I also have had very warm relationships with people who represented athletes under contract to Nike.http://www.quora.com/Stephanie-Vardavas/My-Posts/I-just-learned-that-my-friend-Keven-Davis-died-on-Friday-nightIn 2009 Nike had major layoffs after which I was repurposed as a trademark lawyer, a specialty I had last practiced 20 years earlier, at MLB (although at MLB we did licensing and at Nike we did clearance and prosecution [registration] of trademarks). After a few more departmental reorgs I found myself involuntarily retired. I won't say I had no idea about what to do next. Rather, I had too many ideas about what to do next. I started working on a couple of patents, which I'm still working on, but I thought I wanted to get a new job. At first I thought I'd try to get a job in the technology field, which has fascinated me since the first time my friend Jim HendlerWho is James Hendler?first showed me the World Wide Web in 1995.Stephanie V's answer to What was the first website you built, and in what year did you build it?I applied for jobs at [tech startup A], [tech startup B], [tech pioneer], and [tech survivor], got a couple of phone interviews, and that was it. I realized as I scanned the various job listings that nobody wanted to hire a lawyer with my amount of experience. So I knew I was going to have to take charge of my own path from then on. I remembered that ten years earlier I had thought about becoming a mediator after I retired. Now was my chance.I took almost 100 hours of training as a mediator and embarked on a new career. I've also done some consulting in product safety, the work I loved most when I worked for Nike. But none of it felt exactly right. Finally the light bulb went on for me when I hit a million miles on United Airlines and realized I had never owned a carry-on bag that I really liked. I connected with a former Nike colleague who is an expert in materials and a new company, row99.com, was born.In 2011 the Governor of Oregon appointed me to the Oregon Commission for Women, and I was elected Chair in 2012. My service on the Commission has been a great experience so far. My fellow Commissioners are really smart, capable women, and the work we do is important.I'm politically activeStephanie V's answer to What is it like to host a political fundraising dinner at your house?Stephanie V's answer to What is it like to be a delegate at an American presidential nominating convention?and cut my teeth in local politics as a library advocate, with six years on the board of directors and two years as President of the Friends of Multnomah County Library. I was also one of the founding board members of EMERGE Oregon (a 501c4 that trains Democratic women to run for office). I spent Election Day 2008 as a voter protection volunteer at a polling place in Albuquerque. I have absolutely zero ambition to hold elective office myself, and happily neither does Mike. We don't want that kind of life. (That's us with the late Elizabeth Edwards. We spent a day driving her around in June 2007 when she came to Portland to campaign for her husband. I'll always be grateful for the time we spent with her, but if I'd known what a dick he was I would never have supported him, so I guess I'm glad I didn't know, or I would never have met her.)And here we are with Congressman John Lewis, a real honest-to-God hero.Like seemingly 95% of Quorans, I have an idea for a startup. I don't have the technical skills to execute on it but the service would have immediate value to some very big ecommerce companies so I keep telling myself I need to figure out how to find someone to work on it with me and make it happen; I'll be really sad if someone else gets to it before I do. I've been researching prior art at the USPTO to decide whether I should try to get a business process patent to give me some protection while I try to implement it. I'm not a natural born entrepreneur but I've been in the business world for more than 30 years and learned a few things along the way.Random miscellaneous crap about me:I love Jane Austen (author), Star Wars, Leonard Cohen, Elton John, The Beatles (band), and lots of other music, including Baroque Music and Opera. I love Musicals. I am both an Anglophile and a Francophile, although some believe those two things to be mutually exclusive. I love Star Wars (creative franchise). My favorite animal is the Sheep, but I was born in the Year of the Monkey. I love Monty Python and I know I should love Firesign Theatre, but I never got into it.Going to law school at night broke my TV habit. Today I watch very little television, and the only thing I watch live is sports and awards shows like the Oscars, or other kinds of breaking news. On Tivo I watch all three US major network news shows, The Big Bang Theory (TV series), The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. On DVD I recently finished a 19 hour Downton Abbey (TV series) marathon and have dived into the Q&A here.I love Architecture and would have considered becoming an architect if it weren't for all the math. %^>I love the Baltimore Orioles, and have since I was a very little girl. I care about the Yale Bulldogs and have learned to love the Baltimore Ravens almost as much as my father and brother do. In the National League I've always liked the Philadelphia Phillies and the San Francisco Giants.The National Basketball Association (NBA) has never interested me all that much but I do love college hoops (I was raised a fan of the Maryland Terrapins; one of the biggest thrills I had working for ProServ was the opportunity to spend a little time with John Lucas, whom I really loved as a player, who later had terrible drug problems, and who got clean and is now very successful).I have no artistic talent to speak of, but I can take pretty good photos, and I used to be good at sewing. I could make professional looking coats and suits. My sewing skills are now long atrophied. I bought a fancy new electronic sewing machine six years ago and have never used it. I can still hem things by hand and sew on buttons, and I enjoy doing that kind of thing for my husband; it helps me delude myself into feeling domestic.I read widely, often nonfiction, especially Biographies and Memoirs. I do reread Austen (luckily she only wrote six books) at least once every couple of years. I recently did deep dives into Henry James (author) and Edith Wharton, who unaccountably has no Quora topic of her own. I'm reading Anna Karenina (1877 book) now for the first time (shocking, I know, but better late than never).I've been to Christmas luncheon at Manchester United. It felt as if I had stepped into outtakes from Love Actually (2003 movie)In 1975 I borrowed Brooks Robinson's uniform for Halloween. That's a whole other story.There's a chapter about me in the book Baseball Lives, by Mike Bryan, and the part relating to Brooks' uniform was excerpted in Sports Illustrated in April 1989 (the issue that had Tony Mandarich on the cover, I forget the date). George Vecsey also wrote a column about the uniform story the weekend Brooks was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.I've stood 50 meters from the finish line of the Tour de France on the Champs Elysées and cried like a baby when they played the Star Spangled Banner for Lance Armstrong as he mounted the podium.In 1990 I went on morning TV in New York City along with Arthur Ashe to talk about the Mandela merchandising program. It was a huge thrill for me.Stephanie V's answer to What are some of the unique (likely hasn’t been done by another Quora member) experiences of Quora community members?I've sat in the Commissioner's box at the World Series, in the owner's (singular) box at Yankee Stadium, in the owners' (plural) box at Fenway Park, and in the Directors' box at Old Trafford. I sat in front of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and one seat over from Harry Belafonte in the House gallery when Mandela addressed a joint session of Congress in 1990.In October 2011 I traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, where I attended in the same week both the World Championships of the International Gay Rodeo Association and the Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America. I am quite certain I am the only person in the world who did this.I've also got three unfinished novels in my hard drive. Perhaps I will finish one of them someday. I hope I'll pick a good one.