Sally Roesch Wagner, the Executive Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, is one of the first women to receive a doctorate in this country for work in women's studies (UC Santa Cruz). She was also a founder of one of the earliest college women's studies programs (CSU Sacramento). Having taught women's studies for twenty years, she now tours the country as a writer, lecturer, and historical performer, bringing to life Matilda Joslyn Gage and her better-known woman's rights ally, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. A scholar in residence for the Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York, during Celebrate 98, Wagner was curator of two exhibits, developed a curriculum, and performed as both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage.

Most recently Wagner appeared as a "talking head" in the Ken Burns PBS documentary, "Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony," for which she wrote the accompanying faculty guide for PBS. She was also an historian in the PBS special "One Woman, One Vote" and has been interviewed several times on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and "Democracy Now." The Jeanette K. Watson Women's Studies Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University in Spring 1997 and currently adjunct faculty member in the women's studies program there, Wagner has been a consultant to the Publisher, the Writings of Mary Baker Eddy, and the National Women's History Project; she is a Research Affiliate of the Women's Resources and Research Center at the University of California, Davis.

The theme of Wagner’s work has been telling the untold stories. The exhibit and her monograph of the same name, "She Who Holds the Sky: Matilda Joslyn Gage," reveal a suffragist who was written out of history because of her stand against the Religious Right of a hundred years ago, while her traveling exhibit and Women's Rights National Historical Park curriculum, "Sisters in Spirit," documents the influence of Iroquois women on early women's rights activists. Wagner keynoted the opening session of the 1998 National Women's Studies Association convention with a lecture on this topic. She also briefed the First Lady, the White House Millennium Council, and the press during Hillary Rodham Clinton's historic sites tour.

Her recent essays have appeared in The Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion; Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1800-1925; Indian Roots of American Democracy; Iroquois Women: An Anthology; and Handbook of American Women's History. She has published articles in the National Women's Studies Association Journal, On the Issues, Northeast Indian Quarterly, Indian Country Today, Hartford Courant, Women's History Network News, National NOW Times, and Sacramento Bee.

Her recent books include She Who Holds the Sky: Matilda Joslyn Gage; a Modern Reader's Edition of Matilda Joslyn Gage's 1893 classic, Woman, Church and State; Daughters of Dakota (six-volume series); The Untold Story of the Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists; A Time of Protest: Suffragists Challenge the Republic, 1870-1887, and Celebrating Your Cultural Heritage by Telling the Untold Stories.