Meet Robyn DesHotel, ABA’s Chief Financial Officer

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Robyn DesHotel joined the American Booksellers Association as the organization’s new chief financial officer in March. DesHotel came to ABA from PEN American Center, Inc., where she served as the director of finance and administration since 2010.

Two months into her work at ABA, DesHotel said she is very happy to be here. “The fit is great because of the familiarity of the subject matter and the operations, but, at the same time, there are plenty of challenges that whet my appetite. And that’s a great way to start a new position,” she said.

“I provide support to the program staff — financial, operational, or otherwise — and want be a partner to them. That means anything from reviewing accounting processes, to bringing a new eye to ABA events, to providing whatever budget information is necessary to operate a program efficiently. I just look for areas that need attention and try to be helpful.”

Before she officially joined the ABA staff, DesHotel was able to spend a day at this year’s Winter Institute in Asheville and found the “experience was overwhelmingly welcoming,” she said. “I was eager to be part of ABA because of its business orientation to books, but I was surprised by how warm the booksellers were. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense because they’re business people, so we speak the same language, but they’re hand-sellers with one-on-one interaction with their customers, so they are also warm and welcoming people.”

DesHotel currently lives with her husband and seven-year-old son in Hoboken, New Jersey. WORD in Jersey City has been a valuable resource for the family, especially for birthday gifts, since its opening in fall 2013, and DesHotel said she is looking forward to visiting the newly opened Hoboken bookstore Little City Books.

When she was growing up in San Antonio, Texas, as the fourth of five sisters, DesHotel’s family had a playroom wall filled floor-to-ceiling with books. “That was my childhood bookstore,” she said, and it came complete with textbooks, encyclopedias, novels, and anything else her sisters left on the shelves.

Inspired in part by her high school economics teacher, DesHotel attended Rice University to study business, and later received her M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 2008, after positions with companies such as McKinsey & Company, Enron, and J.P. Morgan, the tumult in the banking industry led DesHotel to reassess her career goals. After leaving the corporate world, “I refashioned myself into a small business CFO,” she said.

Five years into her work at PEN American Center, DesHotel learned that ABA was seeking a new chief financial officer, and, she explained, the opportunity was especially appealing because of the complexity of ABA’s operations, including its for-profit businesses and its captive insurance company, LIBRIS. And each day brings something new, she said.

As an avid reader, DesHotel has found camaraderie among her fellow ABA employees and appreciates the wide range of genres, from children’s books to popular fiction, of interest to them. One of DesHotel’s recent favorites is Isabel Allende’s Island Beneath the Sea (Harper), and she’s now making her way through many of the titles she brought home from Winter Institute’s Galley Room. “The sight of a room full of books makes my heart flutter,” she said.

Robyn DesHotel can be reached at (800) 637-0037, ext. 7515, or via e-mail at [email protected]. Booksellers will also be able to meet DesHotel at BookExpo America.

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