Currently accepting clients for...

• Family History Research
• Speaking / Presenting
• Other Speciality

Taneya Koonce is an enthusiastic genealogist with a long-standing passion for exploring family history and more than 25 years of professional expertise in information science, research, and information organization. Taneya volunteers extensively in the genealogy community, with current leadership roles in the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society (National Treasurer) and the USGenWeb Project (FLGenWeb, NCGenWeb, TNGenWeb). Over the past few years, Taneya has been a contributor to national stories on convict leasing, delivered presentations for RootsTech, the National Conference of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, and moderating/participating in virtual conversations for Finding Your Roots. She leads crowd sourced historical newspaper indexing projects leveraging the FromThePage platform (Tennessee and other historical newspapers), and is a WikiTree Ambassador - constantly spreading the joy of open and collaborative genealogy. 

Taneya additionally facilitates education and inspiration for family history through her online Facebook community, Academy of Legacy Leaders. Follow her on Substack for her most recent updates! 

Presentation topics include the following:

• Liberate Your Family History Research: Using an "Open Access" Preservation Model
• Got Books? Using and Organizing Your Digital Genealogy Book Collection
• Best Practices for Genealogy Research & Photo Organization
• Document Your Kin with RootsMagic 10
• The Internet Archive: A Genealogist's Dream Collection
• Using Notion to Genealogy Research and Organization
• Every Minute Counts: 4 Ways to Find Time to Organize Your Family History
• Research Tactics - Explorations in African American Genealogy Research
• Researching Black Family History, 1900-1950: Essential Foundations
• Navigating Historical Newspaper Collections
• One Name Studies: How to Use them for your Family History
• Health & Wellness: Intersections with Family History Resources
• Find it at FamilySearch: Keeping up with What's New 
• Collaborative Online Family Trees (FamilySearch Family Tree, Geni.com, WikiTree)
• Photo Metadata 101: Telling the Stories of Your Photos Like a Pro
• US Black Heritage Project: Collaborative Research for African American Genealogy 
• Indexing Initiatives - Crowdsourcing Indexes for Historical Newspapers 

Publications/Media

• "Manage Your Business with Notion" by Julie Cahill Tarr and Taneya Koonce. APG Quarterly, Volume 14, Number 1, March 2025. 

Lectures
I offer a variety of lectures on topics relating to genealogy, memory-keeping, and organization. 

Repositories
State Library of North Carolina
Tennessee State Library and Archives

Research Time Periods

• 21st Century
• 20th Century
• 19th Century

Languages
English

Affiliations

• Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society
• USGenWeb Project
• Guild of One-Name Studies
• Middle Tennessee Genealogical Society
• Pinellas Genealogy Society
• WikiTree Ambassador

Degrees

• BA (Religion)
• Emory University BS (Biology), MS (Religion)
• UNC-Chapel Hill MS (Library & Information Science),
• Vanderbilt University School of Medicine​ (Public Health)