Meet the New Members of the HVLA Board (2017-2019)

Gili Warsett, our new Vice President, joined Brooklyn Friends School as a Pre and Lower School Librarian in the fall of 2016. Prior to BFS, she worked as a school librarian in a New York City public school, and in a Montessori school, and as an academic librarian in Brooklyn. Before becoming a librarian, Gili taught Creative Writing and English to students ranging from the middle school to graduate school levels. She has served on the board of Friends of the Brooklyn Public Library for the past four years. Her writing has been published in various publications including Bookslut, The Rumpus, and The New York Times, and she sporadically blogs at juniorshelfie.com. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MS in Library and Information Science. She maintains an ever-growing list of children’s book ideas with every intention to get those words on the page someday soon. Gili lives with her partner, children, and basset hound in Manhattan. When she’s not in the stacks, she is frequently swimming at the Y, where she imagines she’s training to become the next Gertrude Ederle, “Queen of the Waves.” She has found that being a librarian is the best outlet for her information insatiability.

Celia Dillon will be our new Communications Coordinator. She is the lower school librarian at The Brearley School, a K-12th grade independent school for girls. She began her career in education as a first grade teacher. As a teacher she saw the importance of having librarians that instilled a love of reading in students and admired the way school librarians were able to collaborate with classroom teachers to create and share effective instruction. She decided to pursue a degree in Library and Information Science from Queens College in a part-time program as she continued to teach first grade. She graduated from Queens College in 2014 and began her school librarian career as a K-8th grade librarian at a DOE school in Brooklyn. She came to Brearley and has happily been there for the past two years. She is also a reviewer for School Library Journal. Outside of working as a librarian, she loves hiking, running, bike riding and eating.

Dacel Casey, our new Membership Coordinator, is an Upper School Library Media Specialist and the Upper School Community Service Director at Trevor Day School. In her role as the Upper School Library Media Specialist, Dacel collaborates with a number of teachers on implementing research activities and projects into their curriculum as well as helping English teachers incorporate and promote independent reading into their courses. When she isn't working on those tasks, she's coordinating and running the High School Community Service Program, which involves advising a student community service committee, planning and executing school-wide community service days, as well as organizing (and leading) service trips to places such as Washington, DC, Arizona, Ghana, India, China, and Haiti. Dacel has a strong love of reading (especially Young Adult Literature), traveling, and community service.