Yarn and the Lonely Road

Robert Pomeroy, a history graduate from Stanford University, served two years active service in the U.S. military, studied at the graduate Arab Studies Program at the American University of Beirut, then began a career in finance. This took him from Lebanon, Brazil, and New York to Washington, DC where, after 22 years of service, he retired as an Advisor to the Inter-American Development Bank. In this capacity he introduced the use of personal computers, and the subsequent design and implementation of the first electronic financial analytic models for project analysis.

During the 1970s, in response to problems voiced by unemployed history PhDs, he organized a Business Group for the American Historical Association's National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History. Later, in 1980, he helped found the National Council on Public History, serving as a director, secretary, and treasurer as well as an editorial board member of its journal, The Public Historian.

Later, Pomeroy co-edited The Craft of Public History (Greenwood Press, 1983) with the Department of State's Historian, David Trask and, as a member of the Organization of American Historians' Committee on Public History, wrote Educating Historians for Business: A Guide for Departments of History. He also addressed students, teachers, and business people on topics concerning history and careers at U.S. colleges, two government-sponsored Brazilian business forums, and the first French symposium on enterprise-based history as well as contributing numerous articles to educational journals, and serving on five college advisory boards.

In 1986 Pomeroy founded The Serenus Press to help history and liberal arts students choose a college major, reinforce reasons for diligent study, and provide concrete career options. Colleges and schools find multiple uses for Serenus Press material: career advisors hand them out to students as unique examples of nonacademic opportunities, college administrators find them helpful in recruiting high school students, and parents consult them to reinforce the value of a liberal arts education for their children. By 2006, Pomeroy wrote, published, and distributed over 370,000 copies of twenty nine Serenus Press publications to nearly half the colleges throughout the United States, as well as to numerous schools, historical associations, and libraries. A number of these publications may now be freely downloaded on the Serenus Press website, www.serenuspress.com.

As a new venture, Pomeroy is now writing, illustrating, and publishing a series of children's stories stimulating imagination, curiosity, reflection, and good humor.