Instructors

We are so grateful to each of our instructors who volunteer their time and present at the Jamboree. Our 2025 instructors include:

Michael Garrambone is a retired Army Officer and Military Operations Research Analyst for DCS Corporation in Dayton, Ohio.  He graduated from the University of Florida in Engineering Science and Mechanics and earned master degrees in operations research, business, and education.  Mike is a librarian at the FamilySearch Center in Fairborn, Ohio with interests in Italian genealogy, historical research, computer graphics, and teaching.  His research includes tracking Italians, African Americans, Irish immigrants, and Native Americans.  He is a web browser, database keeper, map user, and ardent mentor.  He enjoys scanning and editing images and researching sources at all levels.  He garners information from field trips and national archive visits.  He shares interesting stories and unusual events from his own research.  He presents interesting and useful techniques that researchers can apply to their own genealogical discoveries.

 

Karynne Moses graduated from Brigham Young University in 2018 with a bachelor’s in Family History/Genealogy. Her love of languages led her to focus on German and Portuguese research. While studying at BYU, she worked on the German Immigrants in American Church Records project, where she extracted the names and origins of German immigrants from German-language church records found in the US. Karynne has made several trips to Germany and Switzerland since 2012, including trips to gather records for her clients. She also spent 15 months living in Brazil, where she gained excellent command of the language. For the past five years, she has performed client research for those with German and Portuguese roots and loves running her business while growing her little family.

Dana Palmer, CG®, CGL(SM) specializes in lineage society applications, publishing family books, and Midwestern research – specifically Ohio. She also has experience researching in the U.K, Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania. In addition to her client work, she reviews military repatriation cases for Eagle Investigative Services, Inc., is part of the Silver Books team for the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, and lectures at RootsTech, the National Genealogical Society (NGS), and the Ohio Genealogical Society (OGS) conferences. She became a certified genealogist (CG) in 2009 and a certified genealogical lecturer (CGL) in 2019. She has been a genealogy instructor at Sinclair Community College since 2010. She belongs to several lineage societies including ISDUP, NSDAR, USD 1812, and Colonial Dames. She has received numerous awards for her books and volunteer efforts. She loves problem solving and tracking down those elusive ancestors!

Jim Phillabaum was born and raised in the Miami Valley. He served in the United States Marine
Corps from 1963 to 1972. He is a retired Firefighter/Paramedic and is also retired from First
Financial Bank. Jim has been involved in Family History for the better part of 6 decades. He has been in demand as a speaker and instructor in multiple genealogical subjects.

Andy Rohrbach has been working on his family history for at least 30 years.  He started out working with his mom, and now has all her collections of photographs, books, and original documents.  In the past three years Andy has compiled three books about family members, and is working on a fourth.  While having no formal training in family history, Andy’s love of finding and documenting his ancestors has given him experience and knowledge.  Compiling a book about your family can be as easy or as hard as you’d like it to be. 

Anne Wachs has been a reference librarian with the Washington-Centerville Public Library for over a decade. During her tenure, she has helped numerous patrons with genealogy research. Under her direction, WCPL offers monthly genealogy interest groups, genealogy workshops concentrating on Ancestry Library Edition, and several programs from outside speakers on a variety of genealogical topics.