Getting to Know Ojai's Mayor, Betsy Stix

Betsy Stix decided to run for Mayor after reading Gay Hendrick's bestselling book, "The Big Leap." The book talks about the finding and living with your purpose. Imagine her surprise when she met Hendricks and his wife Katie while doing door-to-door campaigning. She won the election handily and was sworn into office Dec. 15th, ready to tackle Ojai's toughest issues - high risk of catastrophic wildlife, tricky water management issues, the lack of affordable housing and many others. Stix attended Williams College, usually ranked the No. 1 school in the country, then to Stanford, from whence she entered teaching as a career. She's taught French, English and yoga in Japan, Santa Fe, Rancho Mirage and has lived in Ojai since 2001. Growing up in Cincinnati, where her parents were actively involved in the community, she is a lifelong fan of the Cincinnati Reds, having been around such greats as Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan.  We talked about our favorite part of Ojai life - the creative and entrepreneurial energies, the astounding natural beauty - as well as the difficult challenges of managing a pandemic, the traffic and demographic changes, the threats to the ecology, and economy. Stix says "People really, really love our town. How do we preserve that? We also have an economy that needs to stay afloat and a world that's shifting. There's an opportunity, at this moment, to really move forward in a positive way." Betsy also said she expects a cultural flourishing in Ojai and the world coming out of the pandemic. "After the Black Plague came the Renaissance," she said. We did not get around to talking about Samuel Johnson's encyclopedia project, the iron-forging innovations of the Hittites or the Mayan Calendar. You can read more about her at — https://www.facebook.com/betsy.stix