"Craft Cider Rocks the Gravenstein Apple Fair"

Dana Glei is a home cidermaker, Cider Club Coordinator for Tilted Shed Ciderworks, and co-founder of the GRAVS (Gold Ridge Apple Vintners’ Society), a group of Sonoma County home cider makers. As a volunteer, she chairs the Craft Cider Tent at the Gravenstein Apple Fair and helps with orchard restoration work at Jack London State Historic Park.

Apples are in her blood. Her family has been growing apples in Michigan for 105 years. She spent a lot of her childhood playing in the orchards and working at the farm.

Dana is also a native plants enthusiast and has a keen interest in birds. She volunteers at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, where she leads hikes focused on birds (e.g., Beginning Birding, Corvids, Woodpeckers, Owls). During 2012-2020, she volunteered at the Bird Rescue Center, where she led a raptor team in the rehabilitation hospital. She also conducted a training workshop for volunteers working with a particularly difficult group of songbirds: Towhees. She co-authored a book chapter on Towhees for the 2020 edition of the textbook, Hand-Rearing Birds (Gage & Duerr, editors).

In her day job, Dana works as a research demographer for Georgetown University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology with a specialization in social demography from Princeton University. Most of her publications focus on the relationship between social and economic factors, health behaviors, and health outcomes (e.g., mortality, physical function, cognition, pain, mental health). For a publications list, see Google Scholar.