Meet the Board

Laura Spencer likes to help others. She volunteers with a local chapter of Philanthropic Educational Organization (P.E.O.) and serves as its president. This national women’s organization helps women achieve their goals by providing them with scholarships.

During her 46-year career at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Laura supported the company’s pharmaceutical R&D efforts, supervising fundraising and team building efforts while leading global quality assurance and publishing teams.

Laura’s favorite authors are Agatha Christie and Mary Oliver. A long-time Chapel Hill resident, she moved to Hillsborough four years ago. She loves to hike, travel, play the piano, read and garden.

Nerys has called Orange County home for 36 years, arriving from Southern California in 1990 with her late husband, anthropologist Robert Levy, a fellow at the National Humanities Center. She soon became a devoted Friend of the Carrboro Library, a group instrumental in establishing the Carrboro Branch Library in 1995 and in the decades-long effort that led to the opening of the Southern Branch in February 2025. Her chapter earned two Friends Awards from the Friends of North Carolina Public Libraries, including recognition for the Library Arts program that Nerys chaired for 25 years.

Nerys looks forward to bringing the Carrboro Friends together with the Friends of Orange County Public Library.

Diane Decker still remembers a special story, fifty years or so later. Her second-grade teacher was young, beautiful, stylish, and very enthusiastic about reading. Diane’s mom decided it was time to start taking her children to the library, and Diane found it magical, all those books and twin spiral staircases to the balcony. She chose Hillsborough as her retirement home after spending her last sixteen years of employment at Duke Divinity School. A real selling point of her empty lot was that it was only six blocks to Orange County Public Library. To Diane, it is a privilege and a pleasure to give back to the community by serving on the board of the Friends.

Melora Fern recently moved from Texas to North Carolina to become herself. Growing up as the perpetual “new kid” she persevered by making up stories and recently has learned how to hone that skill into writing fiction. As a recovering CPA, she now counts seashells, colorful stones, or words discovered on her hikes. After eight years of perfecting her craft with writing classes, workshops, retreats, and an awe-inspiring critique group, Melora’s months of querying agents and small presses paid off. Her novel, Whistling Women and Crowing Hens (Sybilline Press) is out now.

Melissa Bourbon is a national bestselling mystery author. A former secondary English/Language Arts teacher and Creative Writing teacher with Southern Methodist University’s CAPE program and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institution with North Carolina State University, she has applied her love of teaching to the creation of WriterSpark Academy, an online school for aspiring and new writers seeking to hone their craft. Her love of books and reading led her to the Friends of the Library.

Meg Stouffer started working at her local public library on her 15th birthday, and received her MA in Library & Information Science ten years later. She enjoyed her work as a University Health Sciences librarian in Maryland and later as a high school librarian in Virginia. Meg has served on various task forces, boards of non-profits and spent a fair amount of time volunteering in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools. Her four children recall that Meg’s first and second grade classroom story times always began with a demonstration of where to find the copyright date of the book. More recently, Meg has been teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages with CWS in Durham.

Lisa Cawley graduated from Beaver College (later renamed Arcadia University) in PA with an MS in Early Childhood Education. Upon graduating, she taught preschool and Kindergarten for 8 years in private and public-school settings. In 1997 she was hired by the Parkland Community Library in Allentown, PA as a Reference Library Assistant, a fulfilling second career she held for 24 years, providing readers advisory and leading engaging book club discussions.

Lisa and her husband relocated to Hillsborough in late 2021, and she went on to work as a Circulation Clerk at the Orange County Public Library for two years before retiring. Lisa belongs to two book clubs and volunteers at The Orange Congregations in Mission Pantry and shelves books weekly at the Chapel Hill Public Library.