Born in Chicago, Baum attended Whittier College, studying history under Professor Paul Smith, who once called Willa his second-best student ever, after Richard Nixon.
Berkeley, Baum learned of Hubert Howe Bancroft's interviews conducted in the 1860s and 1870s.
Recognizing the historical value of these accounts, Baum and fellow graduate student Corinne Lathrop Gilb set up an Oral History program at U.C.
Under Baum's directorship, ROHO amassed over 1,600 oral histories, filled with first-hand accounts of the participants in significant historical events in California and the West.
ROHO's largest projects document California government from the Earl Warren Era to the present.