Warner Library Board

The Warner Library board is appointed by the Village Boards of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. The seven member board meets on the third Thursday of the month to discuss library business. Agendas and minutes of prior board meetings for the current year are found below. The board year runs January – December. If you would like to request board minutes from past years please email the director at director@warnerlibrary.org

Board Members

Alex Chambers

Alexander Chambers has lived in either Tarrytown or Sleepy Hollow since 2024. Alex originally hails from Louisville, Kentucky. While in high school, he was nominated as a representative to Kentucky’s Governor’s Council on Library Services in 1978, serving the greater metropolitan Louisville area at the statewide conference. 

After graduating high school, he enlisted in the US Navy, where he deployed four times to the Persian Gulf. After receiving an honor discharge in 1994, he went to New York University, earning a BS In communion and a minor in print journalism. He spent the next 25 years in digital marketing and communications, working on the agency side, serving several Fortune 100 companies, including McGraw Hill’s BusinessWeek and Standard and Poors, IBM, Computer Associates, and Dell business-to-business marketing and media. Additionally, he worked as a consultant for numerous startups, including Flashpepper.com, Celsius (energy drink), and Kowa Healthcare America.

Since 2008, he has volunteered in several organizations, including coaching youth soccer organizations including AYSO recreational soccer, and he is currently a board member and Registrar with Sleepy Hollow Football Club. Alex also volunteered in 2019-2019 for the Comprehensive Planning Steering Committee for the Village of Sleepy Hollow and as a committee member with the Tarrytown Union Free School District Technology Study Committee in 2019-2020. He has served as a trustee of Warner Library since 2022 and as chairperson since June 2024.

Mary Drake

Mary Drake works at Morgan Stanley, a financial services company, assessing the firm’s credit portfolio since 2009. Mary holds a Series 7 license and earned a CFE (certified fraud examination) certificate. Prior to living in New York, she worked in Hong Kong and Singapore for 11 1/2 years, and one year in Florida. Mary and her husband Jeff and son Maxim moved to Sleepy Hollow in 2005 and then Tarrytown in 2011. They have been members of the Warner Library since 2005.

Dean Gallea

Dean Gallea worked as an engineer and project leader for electronic product testing at Consumer Reports for over four decades. At the same time, he developed a personal interest in environmental sustainability issues, especially reducing our carbon footprint. He is co-chair of the Tarrytown Environmental Advisory Council, serves on the Scenic Hudson Trails Committee, as a Community Board member and volunteer for the Tarrytown Music Hall, on the Board of the Hudson Valley News Corporation, is Vice-President of the Board of GRACE Cares (an organization funding humanitarian projects) and joined the Warner Library Board in 2018. He is a Lifetime member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), is active in many environmental organizations, is a citizen water sampler for Riverkeeper, and helps organize and judge regional science fairs yearly. He has lived in Tarrytown literally a stone’s throw from the Library, since 1990. (He refrains from throwing stones, however!)

Diane Tasca

Diane Tasca was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. After graduating from Temple University in 1968, Diane entered the graduate program at the University of Illinois, obtaining her doctorate in English Literature in 1976. She married Norm Beamer, who became a partner in the New York patent law firm Fish and Neave.  She and Norm lived in Philipse Manor from 1984 to 1992, and she worked as a textbook editor for Macmillan Publishing and then as a freelance writer and editor. While in Philipse Manor, Diane was involved in the initial efforts by the Hudson Valley Writers Center to acquire the train station building for its headquarters.  In 1992  Diane, Norm, and their son, John, moved to Palo Alto, California, where she founded the Pear Avenue Theatre (now The Pear Theatre) in 2002. At the Pear, Diane served as Artistic Director for 15 years, acting in many plays, as well as occasionally writing and directing. Norm retired from the law firm and now works as an administrative law judge for the US Patent and Trademark Office. Diane, Norm, and John moved back to Sleepy Hollow in 2021 and are very happy to be back in the beautiful, historic Hudson Valley. 

Tina Valenti

Tina Valenti has worked in her family’s restaurant business for the most of her professional career until it was sold. As a result of that experience she knows what it means to work hard and understands the value of providing outstanding service. She is currently a Real Estate agent with William Raveis Legends Realty group on Main St. in Tarrytown. She currently lives in Westchester with her husband and 2 children. Tina is an active member of the community as a fund raiser for the local schools and various sports organizations and is a member of the EPTA. In addition, she is a proud “Sugar Angel” with a non-profit organization, Icing Smiles, an organization that makes 100% donation cakes for terminally ill children.

Barbara Nackman

Barbara Nackman is a retired journalist. She and her husband Mark moved to Sleepy Hollow in 1982 and have always appreciated our beautiful and friendly library. Barbara began her career as a writer/editor for Library Journal and School Library Journal magazines, and then as a publication editor for the American Booksellers Association until taking time off to raise the Nackman’s two sons. She returned to her writing in the 1990s as a news reporter for The Journal News/Gannett newspapers. During her nearly 20-year news career she covered local communities, government, real estate, and library/literary topics. Most recently she worked for several years as a school communications specialist for Putnam/ Northern Westchester BOCES.

Oliver Staley

Oliver Staley is a freelance news reporter and editor. Over his career he worked at daily newspapers in Idaho, Montana, Washington and Tennessee, covering everything from local politics to college basketball, and spent a decade at Bloomberg News as a business writer in New York and London. He has also worked as a reporter and editor at Quartz, the Observer, Time and Fortune. His bylines have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

Born and raised in New York City, Oliver has lived in Tarrytown since 2015 with his wife, Effie Phillips-Staley, their two teenage children, a dog and a cockatiel. He has volunteered as an AYSO soccer coach, and serves as secretary/treasurer of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW).