Meet the Book Ladies
Jaime Buck is a licensed social worker with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Loyola University, a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of New Orleans and a master’s degree in Social Work from Tulane University. Her career began as a researcher at Tulane studying homelessness and addictions in New Orleans. After having her two children, her focus shifted to working with children and families. Since that time, Jaime has spent many years as a Parent Educator at the Parenting Center at Children’s Hospital and at Early Learning Focus (a local non-profit) teaching social emotional and literacy skills to children in New Orleans public charter schools as well as tutoring young children in reading.
Maggie Tufail is a certified teacher with a bachelor’s degree in Communication Disorders and a master’s degree in Special Education, both from Louisiana State University. Throughout her career, she has taught Pre-K and Kindergarten students with autism and developmental delays and served as a middle school special education support teacher. She has also worked as a hospital-bound teacher, assisted in teacher training programs, tutored second and third graders in reading, and worked with Early Learning Focus teaching social emotional and literacy skills to children in New Orleans schools.
Our Board
Sarah Olivier
Sarah has worked in the planning field in New Orleans for 20 years, mainly for non-profits focused on access to green space, climate planning, and affordable housing.
She is currently Senior Planner at CSRS, a planning firm. Her current projects include assisting Louisiana Housing Corporation with their HOME program processes, the Baton Rouge Lakes project, and the City of Mandeville’s resilience plan. Before this, she was Director of Planning for City Park, where she directed Master and Strategic Planning for the 1,300-acre historic park. Before City Park, she was the New Orleans Program Director of The Trust for Public Land, a national park and conservation nonprofit. In addition, Sarah has extensive affordable housing experience with Low Income Housing Tax Credit developments and affordable homeownership programs.
Sarah was a Rockefeller Foundation Redevelopment Fellow in New Orleans through the University of Pennsylvania, from which she earned a Certificate in Urban Development. She also holds a master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of New Orleans and a BA from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
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Christy C. Harowski
Christy is the Value of Water Campaign Director for the US Water Alliance, a national nonprofit organization advancing policies and programs that build a sustainable water future for all. She leads a nationwide coalition that advocates for increased, sustainable water infrastructure funding.
Before joining the Alliance, Christy served as Chief of Staff for the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. As a utility executive team member, Christy focused on policy development and execution, government relations, strategic planning, and innovative funding efforts across the water, wastewater, and drainage enterprises. Prior to joining the water industry, Christy was Director of Special Projects for the Business Council of New Orleans, where she focused on government-centric public policy development and advocacy. Before shifting to policy work, Christy practiced law in private and public roles for ten years.
Christy graduated with honors from the University of Florida with a BS in journalism and received her JD, magna cum laude, from Tulane University. Christy is active in the New Orleans community, where she has held leadership roles on several local boards, is a member of the Louisiana Chapter of the International Women’s Forum and served as a member of Tulane Law School’s adjunct faculty. Christy lives with her husband and three sons in New Orleans, where they enjoy supporting local restaurants and bookstores.
Jenny Bond
Jenny Bond is a student at LSU pursuing her MD and MPH. She graduated from Tulane, earning her Bachelor of Science in Public Health and Bachelor of Science in Cellular and Molecular Biology. Jenny is the Program Operations Professional for emPOWER NOLA, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program addressing childhood trauma through the reach of New Orleans culture bearers and school health professionals. Here, Jenny writes grants and academic papers about childhood trauma and assists with qualitative and quantitative program evaluation. Additionally, she is a CASA volunteer who advocates for youth in foster care, and she spent several years working with Electric Girls, a nonprofit organization promoting girls in STEM.
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Lakischia Smith
A New Orleans native, Lakischia Smith established WHO DAT Barbershop Inc in 2009. Receiving a formal education as a Registered Nurse from Delgado Community College and Charity School of Nursing, Smith had no prior experience in barbering or cosmetology. Her passion for serving others and giving back to the community led her to incorporate philanthropy into the core business values. Her business success expanded online with an Amazon Store called WHO DAT Deals. She then started a non-profit called WHO DAT Cares Foundation, which focuses on providing reading books to school-age children. After receiving honors and awards for business community outreach, Lakischia remains dedicated to increasing her community footprint in New Orleans. She also sits on the board of Fund 17, an organization that helps entrepreneurs.
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Mai Dinh
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Our History
Streetside Library is a nonprofit mobile library service that supplements existing library resources in homeless shelters and low-performing public schools in the greater New Orleans area by bringing targeted, exciting, diverse, and expansive book collections to young people.
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We work with shelters serving families, women and children, and youth living on their own, by designing, organizing, and curating libraries. We transform unused and under-utilized spaces into libraries with expansive book collections by supplementing existing libraries with books from our collection and providing weekly maintenance. We also take requests for desired books, introduce book reviews, and give recommendations to residents. And for the younger readers, we will provide literacy-based, age-appropriate activities that encourage conversation and higher-order thinking.
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We provide residents assistance with developing a home library when leaving the shelter through donations from our community and organization. Having books at home creates a space where there can be a culture of reading, and it encourages family time to read together or in parallel, as well as encourages rereading books. Rereading is important to young children's literacy development, and having books at home that they love and that interest them makes it easy.
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Streetside Library also works with teachers, especially those just starting out, in classrooms to collaborate on high-quality book selections that align with their student’s interests and the current themes and lessons in the classroom. We work closely with teachers to select authors whose books resonate with students, reflect classroom diversity, and meet curriculum needs. We use checklists and guidelines from well-researched literature to help develop classroom libraries with loans from our collection and recommendations for teachers to provide students with a literacy-rich environment in which to learn.
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Our library contains vibrant and diverse book collections specially curated to meet the needs of children and families in their community. A core collection promotes emergent literacy development and social and emotional learning. The book collections are age-appropriate and high-interest, and they contain titles that are recently released, classic, and award-winning and align with curricula and recommended reading lists.