“My parents, at least my mother, was a huge reader. When I started reading she took us to the library every week and we were allowed to get out five books. Ever since I was younger it has been something I have looked forward to. We just had a tradition of reading in our house. I am a pretty imaginative person, so reading just fuels my imagination and gives it wings. I just love being able to immerse myself in stories about dragons, a story about climbing Mount Everest, someone with challenges in the workplace, or some really scary story. I tend to read a lot of different things. The library was my safe space, my creative space, and my second home. Today, I still go to the public library like two to three times a week.
“My first job was when I was fifteen years old, I worked as a pager, a person that shelfs the book. It did it for ten hours a week. I would ride my bike and go to the library. I never read more than when I was doing the job. I also worked at the same library one of the summers I came back from college. We were converting the paper catalogs into the computer.
“I worked at Canton Public Library for a couple of years. Then the pandemic hit, and I worked for Canton Intermediate School. But when the position opened up for the high school, I took it. I’m not a librarian. My master’s degree is actually in public policy and management. I am currently a library aid. However, I was a music major in undergraduate school.
“I had a previous career before this and before I became a mother. I worked for one of the big consulting firms, Deloitte. I designed and implemented big computer systems for state and local governments. For instance, if you wanted food stamps. The systems that facilitated you going to get any type of public assistance. My clients were the state of California, the county of Los Angeles, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. At the height of my career, as senior manager, I had three different projects in two states. So, I would travel around and I was in charge of multi-million dollar projects for governments. I really enjoyed that job, but I traveled five days a week. I got married late and we wanted to start a family. In that industry, there wasn’t a lot of flexibility for women who wanted to take time off or to have a family. So, when I decided to go back to work I didn’t know if I wanted to get back into IT. I really didn’t like the hours. So my husband said ‘you love books, why don’t you do something with books?’
“Michelle Obama [is one of my inspriations]. I think that she had a lot of challenges in her role that she overcame with such grace and beauty and intelligence. I really connect with her as a mother. She has two girls and I have two girls. I couldn’t even imagine what she went through trying to raise these pre-teens and teens in the White House. I admired her policy, what she stood for, and what her goals were in terms of her position. I just think that she was a beautiful person. I would have loved to live in the White House even just for one week. Just to hear what was going on and walk the halls.”
