Zonta Club of Joliet Area honors Plainfield librarian for service

The Zonta Club of the Joliet Area awarded their annual ‘Woman of the Year’ honor to Lisa Pappas, director of the Plainfield Area Public Library and a Zonta member since 2017.

Pappas joined the Zonta Club “at the urging of library trustee, Dr. Patricia L. Miller, a founding member of the organization,” according to a news release from the club.

The timing was perfect. Pappas said she was looking for an organization she could “be involved with” when Miller offered the invitation.

“And so I attended a meeting and liked what I was seeing.”

‘The nicest person you ever want to meet’

Bonnie Winfrey, president of the Zonta Club of the Joliet Area, said she feels Pappas is deserving of the honor. Winfrey said the motto for Zonta of the Joliet Area is, “We believe in making the world a better place by empowering women.”

“And Lisa plays a big part in that,” she said.

Winfrey said every organization needs someone like Pappas, someone who takes on multiple responsibilities and is always dependable.

“She’s the kind of person you want to have on a winning team.”

Winfrey said Pappas “kept our social platform strong and focused.” Pappas redesigned the Joliet group’s website and keeps it updated and maintained. She is the host and producer of the organization’s new podcast, “Zonta on the Move.”

That’s in addition to Pappas’ roles serving as a director on the executive board since 2018. Pappas is the corresponding secretary, which means she creates a monthly newsletter and disseminates club correspondence, and alsoan active member on the public relations committee.

For the past four years, Pappas has also served on the LUNAFEST film festival event planning committee.

Pappas is “the nicest person you ever want to meet,” Winfrey said.

“You don’t meet a lot of people who have a heart of gold,” Winfrey said, “but Lisa is one of them.”

Pappas said other Zonta groups host LUNAFEST, but the Joliet organization “took a different spin on it” by partnering with Joliet Junior College.

“Zonta has an endowed scholarship at JJC, but it was difficult to grow that endowment,” Pappas said. “And so we saw an opportunity to connect these two, the college and the film festival.”

In addition to raising funds, the Zonta Club of the Joliet Area added an interactive discussion to LUNAFEST. She had having 300 people in a room discussing why they connected with a particular film is “very powerful.”

Pappas said the first one in 2020, because it was virtual, lacked some of that connection. Subsequent LUNAFESTs have made up for that.

“We wanted to make sure they were very much about connecting with our community,” Pappas said. “And they were very successful.”

‘I was always a reader and spent a lot of time in libraries’

Pappas said she came to the Plainfield Area Public Library 20 years ago as the head of adult services. As Plainfield grew, the library created an assistant director position (which she said it no longer has) and Pappas served in that position for nine years, eventually becoming executive director.

However, Pappas started off on a different career path altogether. Pappas was working on a master’s degree in humanities with a minor in French – while taking Italian classes – when she met someone studying for a master’s degree in library science and said she felt that was a “natural fit” for her.

“I was always a reader and spent a lot of time in libraries,” Pappas said. “When I took those career guidance quizzes in college, they came up ‘librarian’ quote often. So I looked into it, and it seemed like the direction I’d love to go.”

Pappas, who said she was living in Arizona at the time, moved back to her hometown of Naperville to earn her master’s degree in library and information science from Rosary College. She also has a Bachelor of Arts in humanities from Arizona State University and has worked in Chicago area public libraries for almost 30 years.

As it turned out, Pappas has a great aunt and second cousin who worked in the library science field, too. And with her love for language, she’s pleased the Plainfield Area Public Library is often the conduit to help non-English speaking people to become successful in their English language skills.

But Pappas also loves seeing young children getting excited over books and reading.

“They’re making connections with other kids and having so much joy at story time,” Pappas said. “You can’t beat that.”

For information on the Zonta club, visit jolietzonta.org and papl.info.