About Me

My name is Isabelle Graves and am driven by the need to create relationships between organizations and the communities living around them. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in hospitality and tourism management in 2019 at West Virginia University. This degree gave me many opportunities to work on marketing programs and events for the Morgantown Parks Department, local restaurants, and the West Virginia Tourism Bureau. These experiences gave me my first taste of telling community members all that my city had to offer and finding out that communication was an important role in making sure these programs and opportunities were utilized by the public.

After graduation, I moved to Florida to start my professional internship at Walt Disney World. There I worked concierge at the Port Orleans Riverside Resort and again oversaw communications of all the amenities my employer had to offer. While I still loved communicating with our guests and handing out secret tips on the best time to get on rides quickly, or where to buy the best snacks at the right price, I also noticed the discrepancies between the people I was serving and who was serving them.

My coworkers were the most kindhearted people I had ever met, but most couldn’t afford to live in Orlando, and were living paycheck to paycheck. I soon realized I wanted to be a part of a system that would give access to information and resources to the people who were my neighbors. In 2020 Covid 19 hit, and all staff were terminated as the parks and resorts were all shut down. While I was sad to leave my work family, I saw this as an opportunity to work in a profession that combined my love of community and providing people with accessible information.

Fall of 2021, I moved to Columbia, Missouri and began my master’s degree in Library and Information Science at the University of Missouri. I quickly found communities that welcomed me in and have had the honor of creating a new cataloging system for the vinyl record collection of the local KOPN radio station. As well as created a volunteer program to start getting the collection recorded in a digital database. I have also become a volunteer at the nonprofit shop called The Peace Nook, where I have been writing reader’s advisory posts for their amazing bookstore selection. My latest position was at the State Historical Society of Missouri Research Center as an information specialist. This position has enabled me to help patrons find information on their long-lost ancestors and other historical information through our manuscript, microfilm, and reference collections. Digging through these original documents to find out dates of birth and secret marriages has made this job exciting and rewarding when a search is successful!

After graduation in May of 2022, I hope to find a place that enables me to bridge the relationships between the organizations I have been working for and the community I live with. I am excited at all the possibilities these relationships can hold, and the people I am going to be able to reach.