Vanessa + Raina/Valkyries, Say Less, Part 1 (S9E2)

When Vanessa Hutchinson-Szekely and Raina Mast aren't going bananas about the Golden State Valkyries, they're teaching kids in San Francisco.

In this episode, meet and get to know Vanessa and Raina, cohosts of the Valkyries, Say Less podcast.

We begin with Vanessa. Her parents met in San Francisco in 1970. Her mom came here the year before from her home country, France. In her mom's first month in The City, she met the man who became Vanessa's dad. She had just finished photography school back home, and planned to return to France. But fate wanted a word with her.

Vanessa's dad grew up on the East Coast. Before he settled on creating stain-glass works, getting to know his own artistic bent, he came to San Francisco to explore that side of himself. He met Vanessa's mom. They were young artists, they were in love, and the rest is history.

About a decade later, in 1979, they had a kid—Vanessa, their only child. She talks about being on the cusp between Gen X and Millennial, but considers herself mostly Californian/French. With her parents, Vanessa spent (and still often spends) summers in the French Alps.

Both being artists, Vanessa's mom realized that between herself and her husband, one of them needed a job that offered health insurance. And so she went to a temp agency. That allowed her dad to pursue his stained-glass art. He later designed the stained glass in the Mrs. Doubtfire house. A lot of his glass art still exists around North Beach.

Vanessa grew up amid all that art here in SF. But at the time, she might not have appreciated it like she does today. Eventually, she moved to New York City for college. She was drawn in by the romantic version of NYC depicted in movies and shows.

After her time at Columbia University, Vanessa moved to LA to teach. She always knew she would come home, but wasn't sure when. After 11 years away (four in New York and seven in Los Angeles), she came back. She was 30 and had met the man she would later marry. It was time.

Riffing off her seven years of teaching middle school in LA, which she started when she was 22, Vanessa came back and found work with the SFUSD, where she's been since 2008.

We go on a sidebar about raising kids in San Francisco, something I didn't do but Vanessa did and wants more people to do.

She and her Valkyries, Say Less cohost, Raina, met through a mutual friend. Vanessa's version of their meeting 10 years ago is that they were both invited to a party at that mutual friend's house. Vanessa