Roberta’s Resume

Roberta Estes founded DNAeXplain in 2004, following a successful 25 year career as President of Information Access Strategies, Inc.

Roberta's core competency that sets her apart is her ability to explain difficult technical subjects in a simple and understandable fashion to a nontechnical audience. Her background of dealing with complex technical subjects provides the perfect foundation for analyzing the various types of genealogy DNA results for clients, including Y-line, mitochondrial and autosomal.

Roberta is a professional scientist and business owner (BS Computer Science, MBA, graduate work in Geographic Information Systems), and has been an obsessed genealogist since 1978. Her genealogy specialty is southern colonial records, focused primarily in Virginia, Tennessee and NC. Minority records, which reflect her own mixed heritage are of particular interest, specifically Native Americans, African Americans, and other indentured individuals.

Roberta’s own “colorful” family history has allowed her to participate in every aspect of DNA testing for genealogy, revealing unexpected surprises. It’s an amazing journey to discover that a single individual is descended from European royalty, slave owners, slaves, Native Americans, French Huguenots, German Pietist refugees, moonshiners and poor dirt farmers within a few hundred years. Now she guides others as they undertake their own personal journey.

In 2000, the infant scientific field of DNA for genealogy emerged, allowing DNA to be used to trace different individuals to common ancestors. With traditional genealogical records already researched to no avail, and several brick walls needing to fall, Roberta was one of the early DNA surname administrators and pioneer adopters of DNA analysis for genealogy.

Roberta manages over 20 surname projects including the large regional Cumberland Gap Y-line and mtDNA projects with over 1000 participants each. The Cumberland Gap mitochondrial DNA project is the largest mitochondrial DNA project worldwide. Roberta founded the Lost Colony Genealogy and DNA Research group in 2007 which includes the Lost Colony DNA projects.

She also performs a significant amount of both genealogical and DNA research and analysis pertaining to both surname projects and individual clients’ test results.

Roberta has attended the first five International DNA Conferences as both an attendee and an invited speaker. In 2009 at the 5th conference, she was the featured ISOGG (International Society for Genetic Genealogy) speaker. Additionally, Roberta is the Midwest Regional Coordinator for ISOGG.

In 2009, DNAeXplain and Family Tree DNA teamed to jointly offer personalized DNA analysis for customers and custom analysis for surname projects.
Roberta speaks and writes widely about DNA and genealogy for local groups and national conferences.

Recently Roberta recorded 7 individual segments about DNA and genealogy for cable television. Click here to view.

 
 

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