Speaking
Book Victoria Carlos to speak.
I research Black American and Caribbean ancestry, and I grade every conclusion I reach from A to F so a family always knows the difference between what is proven and what is simply remembered. That habit is what I speak about. Audiences leave knowing how to tell those two things apart in their own research.
Where I have spoken
- Embassy of Côte d'Ivoire, Washington DC
- American University
- The Constituency for Africa, Washington DC
- Arts on the Block, Silver Spring MD
- Frederick County Public Libraries
Alongside a number of churches and private family gatherings.
Talks
Grade Your Evidence: How to Know What You Actually Know
The single most useful hour a researcher can spend. I walk an audience through the A to F system I use on every client report, show them real records being graded in front of them, and send them home able to audit their own tree. Most people discover that a third of what they believe about their family rests on somebody else’s guess.
Past 1870: Where the Records Go, and How to Follow Them
The hardest wall in American genealogy, approached honestly. Why an ancestor who appears in 1870 usually appears in no census before it, and how to rebuild the household from the outside using land, probate, estate and tax records, the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Freedman’s Savings Bank. Includes what the odds really are, which nobody enjoys hearing and everybody needs.
The Caribbean Arrived in One City
What to do when the trail leaves the United States. Haitian civil registers, Puerto Rican parish books, the Dutch and Danish islands, and the migrations that put a Puerto Rican shoemaker, a Dutch subject and a Haitian schoolteacher on the same few streets of Port-au-Prince. Drawn from a recent engagement that reached 1808.
Turning Research Into a Story Your Family Will Sit Still For
For societies and family reunions. How to take a hundred pages of documented findings and build something a room of forty relatives will actually listen to, including the ones who only came for the food. Structure, pacing, and how to handle the uncomfortable discoveries in front of an audience.
Where We Come From — a session for employee resource groups
A practical Black History Month or Juneteenth session. No lecture: attendees leave with the first three records to look for, a starter worksheet, and a realistic sense of what they can find on their own. Built for people who have always meant to start and never known where.
Who these are for
- Public library systems
- Genealogical and historical societies
- AAHGS chapters
- Museums and cultural centres
- Embassies and cultural missions
- Church history and anniversary committees
- Family reunions
- Corporate employee resource groups
Format
- Length. 45 to 60 minutes plus questions. Can be cut to 30.
- Delivery. Virtual or in person.
- Included. Slides, and a one-page handout for attendees.
- Recording. Permitted by arrangement.
Fees
- Virtual engagements — from $1,000
- In person in the DC, Maryland and Virginia area — from $1,500 plus travel
- Conference keynotes and engagements outside the region — from $10,000 plus full travel, room and board
I also take a small number of unpaid community slots each year. If your organisation has a fixed programming budget, tell me what it allows and I will tell you honestly whether it works.
About Victoria
I run Osisi & Co., a research practice specialising in Black American and Caribbean ancestry. My client reports run to seventy pages and reproduce the original records, so a family reads the evidence rather than my conclusions about it. Every finding carries a grade, and what I searched and did not find is delivered alongside what I did.
I am the author of 101 Things to Do After You Take a DNA Test, How to Find Your Roots Without Losing Yourself and PROVE IT: 132 Questions to Test What You Really Know About Your Family History, and I present findings directly to the families who commission them — which is where these talks were first tested.