Occupation: I am the grant coordinator for Newtown Prevention Council, with my office at Newtown Youth & Family Services.

Family: My husband, Brian, who works at Family and Children’s Aid in Danbury. We’re both very invested in family and children nonprofits. Not having children of our own, we like to say we have hundreds of children — they just don’t live with us.

Pets: We have a chocolate lab who is 4½ years old. Her name is Libby. And we have a 12-week-old Doberman puppy named Max. Plus, we got an English bulldog puppy on October 31. He came from a breeder in Danbury.

How long have you been in Newtown? We live in Danbury and I’ve worked in Newtown for the past eight months.

What do you like to do in your free time? Basically, I spend time playing with my dogs. I like to do “artsy” things, too, like stained glass and painting. I mostly paint with acrylics. And I love to read.

What is your favorite book? My all-time favorite book is A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving. It’s like an old friend. I read it whenever I feel like I need inspiration or to be reminded that we have a purpose. I also like fluff-stuff, like the Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum series and, of course, this summer I had to read the new Harry Potter.

Do you have a favorite travel destination? Alaska. I’ve been to every state but Hawaii, and Alaska is my favorite. I was a roadie doing production with bands for years, so I did get to travel a lot. Alaska was actually a vacation, though. Getting off of the plane in Anchorage was like opening a brand-new box of Crayons. It was marvelous.

What is the best thing about Newtown? The sense of community. It feels like a community that is in it for the kids, that the community wants to provide a quality environment for the kids.

If you could meet anyone you have never met, who would you choose? I’m going to have to go with the geek in me and say I’d like to meet Steve Jobs [cofounder of Apple and Pixar]. Everything he has done is so out of the box and I’d like to know how do you take things out of the box and make them mainstream? How does he get others to buy into his ideas?

Do you have a personal philosophy? It’s a quote from Longfellow: “The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.” That’s been my favorite since 1980 when I was a sophomore in high school in a little town in Michigan. I found it in a magazine and cut it out. As long as you work for it, you can do anything you want to.

What is the most important lesson you have learned? Pay it forward. As an adult, I can look back and see the kindnesses people showed me and I can show that kindness to the kids I work with and hope that they will someday do the same.