WSGS President Kathleen Sizer is pleased to announce the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award: Joe Brookshier from the Olympia Genealogical Society. The announcement was made at the WSGS Annual Meeting on 27 Aug 2026.
Created in 2015, the President’s Award for Outstanding Achievement is designed to single out that rare individual, society or organization who has demonstrated exemplary service above and beyond expectations. The award is not given every year as it is based on merit and accomplishments. As you’ll see from reading about Joe’s technological assistance, he is worthy of this recognition.
Joe Brookshier
It is hard to put into words the impact that Joe has had on a number of local societies as their technology needs have increased, particularly those that were transitioning from the EasyNetSites Classic (ENS-C) platform to ENS-R (Responsive).
Back in 2025, Joe offered his time, expertise and skills to a number of societies that were changing platforms. Initially, he brought numerous society webmasters together so they could be a community and support each other under his guidance.
According to Dave Storla, Kittitas County Genealogical Society, “As I began the process of building an updated website for KCGS, I emailed several webmasters for advice. Joe was quick to respond with aid. His help with my many questions, his technical assistance and most of all his encouragement made a daunting task bearable. He has helped me at times when I ‘couldn’t see the forest for the trees’ with patience and understanding, along with the needed solutions.”
LeAnne Koliha from the Stillaguamish Valley Genealogical Society adds “To many of us who have worked with Joe, he was more than just a mentor; he was willing to step in and take on the technical tasks that we found difficult. He took the time to listen and understand what was needed in our individual website. He even suggested additional items that will make our website a better experience for society members.”
Tacoma-Pierce County Genealogical Society‘s Tim Ward and Jane Nelson Irish received emails with tips and instructions that Joe had already shared with other societies and helped them via Zoom to step through the process and show them how to solve some of the problems they had with the conversion to the responsive version.
But no society has benefitted from Joe’s talents more than WSGS. Roxanne Lowe, WSGS webmaster, was quick to add, “It wasn’t long in the process before I realized I was stymied about how to get started – especially with a looming deadline approaching. Joe walked me (as webmaster) through the entire development process – from choosing a color palette and “playing” in the sandbox to entering data and finetuning each page.”
One particular issue stands out as critical to the development of the WSGS site. Joe, a retired principal software engineer at a major aerospace and defense corporation, was critical in trouble-shooting a tricky Pioneer Pursuit database of almost 4,500 names into the UDM (Unified Data Module). His ability to communicate with the Blue Crab CEO and interpret our desires was central to the new, improved database.
And as if helping societies with their ENS-R transition wasn’t enough, Joe has stepped in to help the Seattle Genealogical Society‘s IT team by agreeing to take on the oversight of the society’s Google Workspace account. This will entail working with SGS members who have sub-accounts on the main Google account to be used in the execution of their SGS jobs by helping them with Gmail and with finding their way around the shared SGS Google Drive. Joe has already identified things that SGS should change to improve their use of Google Workspace and is moving to make necessary changes.
More about the award
If you want to know more about the qualities needed for this prestigious award, click here. Previous recipients are listed here.