Allison Zinczenko

NCHS Grad Emilie Rubinfeld, Global President of Carolina Herrera, Coming to New Canaan Library on Thursday [Q&A]

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New Canaan Library will host its 2025 “Conversations with Business Leaders” event at 7 p.m. Thursday, welcoming 1992 New Canaan High School graduate Emilie Rubinfeld, global president of New York-based luxury fashion house Carolina Herrera (register here). In conversation with Bob Mitchell, co-CEO of Mitchells Stores, Rubinfeld will not only relate insights from helming of one of fashion’s most important legacy houses, but will also informally share looks from the current collection on stage. 

We sat down Monday with library CEO Ellen Crovatto, Exhibitions & Community Engagement Coordinator Miki Porta and Events & Marketing Consultant Allison Zinczenko, to get more details on the widely anticipated talk. Here’s a transcription of our conversation. ***

New Canaanite: What is the library’s ‘Conversations with Business Leaders’ series? Ellen Crovatto: ‘Conversations with Business Leaders’ was something that was begun with the help of Hazel Hobbs about 20 years ago.

Around Town

New Canaan Library Appoints CEO, Director

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One of New Canaan’s most important community organizations on Thursday announced a new leadership team and structure. New Canaan Library officials said in a press release that Ellen Sullivan Crovatto, formerly vice president of external affairs and philanthropy, has been appointed CEO, and that Cheryl Capitani, formerly vice president of operations, is now library director. 

Rob Lowe, chair of the library’s Board of Trustees, said in the release, “Both Ellen and Cheryl were intimately involved in the conception, building, funding and launch of our proud new home; together they helped make this dream a reality.”

He referred to the library’s hugely popular and heavily used new building and reimagined campus at Main and Cherry Streets, open since last February, including the green, which launched earlier this year. Sullivan Crovatto, a town resident for 23 years, led the library’s $40 million-plus capital campaign for the project. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College and went on to work in corporate finance as a managing director for several international investment banking firms, specializing in private equity fundraising for emerging markets. 

Capitani started at the library as its first full-time teen services librarian in 2013. She has more than 20 years working in libraries and “decades of operational and library knowledge to the position” of director, the press release said.

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New Canaan Library To Launch ‘Changemakers’ Installation at 1913 Building

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As New Canaan Library prepares to take on the final phase of its remade campus—identifying a function for the 1913 building—it is also using the historic structure for a new art installation. 

And it’s partnering with one of the town’s most important local nonprofit organizations to do it: The New Canaan Museum & Historical Society. 

NCM&HS this month is launching the new Jim and Dede Bartlett Center for New Canaan History. It’s built around a theme of “Making a Difference”—the people, businesses, and events that have shaped  the community. As part of the permanent exhibition, the Museum has an interactive console of 50 New Canaan residents who had a significant impact on the town. Officials from the library looked at the images and biographies and selected six to feature in the windows of the legacy building. “The New Canaan Museum was happy to be the library’s partner in celebrating the lives of transformative New Canaan residents,” said Nancy Geary, executive director of NCM&HS.

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‘We’re Really Excited’: New Canaan Library Opens ‘Green’ to the Public

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New Canaan Library’s widely anticipated green is now open to the public, officials say. Patrons of New Canaan Library can now approach and enter the new building from the corner of Main and Cherry Streets, and the green itself connects the campus to the downtown in a new way, said Vice President of Operations Cheryl Capitani. “We’re really excited about the green being open,” Capitani told NewCanaanite.com. “It’s a step that really, for a lot of us, makes us feel part of downtown in a way that we haven’t felt before. So that connection is exciting for us.

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‘It’s Been Overwhelming’: New Library Sees Huge Demand for Meeting Rooms

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The celebrated new New Canaan Library is seeing high use and traffic from residents of all ages, availing themselves of features such as quiet work spaces, programming, café, reading areas, rooftop terrace, business center, MakerLab, garden, community events and computer stations. With the creation of the green overlooking Main and Cherry Streets, a range of outdoor areas will soon join that list. Yet one of the most-used features of the new library has been its plentiful—and always booked-out—meeting rooms.

“It’s been overwhelming,” CEO Capital Campaign Major Gifts & Endowment Ellen Crovatto told NewCanaanite.com Monday morning on the library’s main floor, as patrons moved through the nearby stacks. “The response has been great and people are using the rooms at a very, very high rate.”

The library has had 7,000 room bookings in the new building since it opened in February. The meeting rooms—five smaller (four to eight people) in a row on the second floor, with a series of larger conference rooms nearby—are “in demand constantly,” Crovatto said.