Alan Earnshaw, his wife Rebecca, and their four children in August 2010.

Alan's Biography Alan was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. His father was a route salesman, supervisor, and sales manager in the bread industry, and his mother was an elementary school teacher. Alan is the oldest of three children; his brother lives in Utah, and his parents and sister live in Oregon. He received a Bachelor's degree in Marketing from Brigham Young University in 1990. He married his college sweetheart, Rebecca Thompson, and they made their home in Utah for over 10 years, while Alan ran a small computer software company. In 1999, Alan took a job with another small software company in Dearborn, Michigan, and they lived in suburban Detroit for almost two years. In the meantime, Rebecca's father retired from the U.S. Army and settled in Lower Macungie Township. While visiting their extended family, Alan and Rebecca fell in love with the Lehigh Valley. Alan secured a job with Air Products and Chemicals, and they relocated here in September 2000, purchasing a home in the Borough of Macungie. Since joining Air Products, Alan has held several positions of increasing responsibility, managing projects, programs, and people. He currently works in the Performance Materials Division, with global responsibilities for business reporting, data analysis, and process improvement for the sales and marketing functions. When they arrived, Ann Thompson, Alan's mother-in-law, was serving on the East Penn School Board. In January 2001, she asked him to consider running for a seat on the board. After attending two meetings, he agreed to run. With only four candidates for the four open seats, he did not do any campaigning, but he did attend nearly every board meeting that year to ensure he was familiar with the issues facing the district and the board's operating procedures. He was elected to the board in November 2001, and sworn into office in December. In 2005, Alan was re-elected to the board, winning one of four seats in a field of eight candidates. In 2009, he was again re-elected to the board, this time from a field of 11 candidates. Alan served as Vice President of the board from December 2004 - December 2008, President from December 2008 - December 2010, and was again elected Vice President in December 2011. While on the board, he has also served as Chair of the Policy and Superintendent Evaluation Committees, and he led the search for a new Superintendent in 2007. In December 2007, he was appointed to serve as one of East Penn's four representatives on the Joint Operating Committee (JOC) of Lehigh Career and Technical Institute (LCTI). At LCTI, he was a member of the Policy and Marketing/Public Relations Committees from December 2007 - December 2011, serving as the Chair of the latter committee from December 2008 - December 2011. He served as Vice Chair of the JOC from December 2009 - December 2011 and was elected Chair of the JOC in December 2011. (As Chair, he is an ex officio member of all committees, so he stepped down from his previous committee assignments.) Alan and Rebecca married in 1988 and have four children: Kathy (11th grade at Emmaus High School), Jared (10th grade at Emmaus High School), Sarah (8th grade at Eyer Middle School), and Hannah (6th grade autistic support class at Eyer Middle School).

[Campaign Finance Reports from the 2009 re-election campaign are available on the Campaign Finance Reports page.]