Nancy Richter Brzeski was born in New York City and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her M.A. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Shortly after graduation she met and married Christian Bay, a visiting Norwegian political scientist. They moved to Oslo, Norway, where they lived for four years.
Nancy returned to the US in 1957 and moved to California. She worked for three years at UC Berkeley as Departmental Secretary and Librarian for the Scandinavian Department. There she met and married her second husband, Andrzej Brzeski, a Ford Foundation Fellow in Economics from Warsaw, Poland. After one year in Detroit they moved back to California, where Dr. Brzeski joined the Economics Department at UC Davis. There they raised two children, Eva and Jan. Their family also included Andrzej’s Polish daughter Agnieszka and her husband and children. Andrzej belonged to three international organizations. He and Nancy traveled extensively throughout the world, attending conferences and visiting friends abroad. They lived in Davis together for 54 years, making frequent trips to San Francisco to attend the opera and enjoy city life. Andrzej passed away in August 2019. They had been together for almost 60 years.
In addition to her work as wife and mother, which always came first, Nancy was a parent volunteer in the Davis schools, teaching art and creative writing. She also studied concurrently in the UC Davis Art Department, taking classes with Wayne Theibaud, Bob Arneson, Cornelia Schulz and others for 30 years. She has presented her work at many juried art shows of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, beginning in 1987, and has given ongoing grants for the Best Dream Art of the Year. She has also had many one-woman shows and participated in a group show in San Francisco.
Nancy has been an avid tennis player, gardener, gourmet cook and dancer. A devoted mother, stepmother and grandmother, she is very proud of her wonderful family. She has practiced daily Yoga and Buddhist Meditation for many decades, and in 2020 she began writing her memoirs.