Start Date: December 2016

Role at Book Harvest: As Director of Strategic Partnerships, Isabel helps to identify opportunities for increasing the organization’s impact, scale, and policy influence. She works to connect key Book Harvest Directors, team leaders, board members, and staff with external stakeholders and influencers, identifying and pursuing existing and new high-value opportunities and collaborations across programmatic, financial, and operational domains.

Favorite Children’s Book: Amos and Boris by William Steig. Even though these two beloved characters are different in so many ways, they discover a friendship that supports one another through life’s many challenges.

Likes and Loves: Isabel is a wife, mother, and community activist. She is committed to being a foot soldier in the fight for equal rights, universal access, and economic equity. She finds joy and rejuvenation in cooking big meals for lots of people and intimate meals for close friends and family; the more challenging people’s food preferences/requirements, the more excited she is to prepare food for them. She loves being in nature, getting her hands into the dirt in her funky yard, and hiking/walking on new and unknown mountain sides and trails.

Community Involvement: She is a founding Board member of Boomerang Youth where she has served for more than a decade. She is a Co-Chapter Leader at Neighbors on Call.

Education: Isabel is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from SUNY Stony Brook with a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Secondary School Teaching and Reading. She has a Masters in Social Work from UNC Chapel Hill with a focus on community organizing.

Experience: She spent more than 20 years as an executive at a major New York City book publishing house (now a division of Penguin Random House) where she worked closely with authors, agents, and corporate leadership to optimize publishing opportunities, reader reach, and financial outcomes. In the past 20 years, she has worked in counseling and in academic and non-profit management roles to develop and implement programming, marketing, and fund raising.

What Isabel is Hopeful For: Peace on earth, good will toward women, men, and children, and a robust and enduring democracy that celebrates the active, engaged role of every individual.