In 2014, Gabriela Romanow’s then 20-year-old son was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called neuromyelitis optica, or NMO.  She refocused her professional endeavors on this potentially crippling disease and now works as the Administrator for Community Relations and Clinical Research Coordinator with The NMO Clinic and Research Laboratory.

Throughout her career, Gabriela has focused on raising awareness of, and money for issues which are important to her.  

After getting a Master’s Degree at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, she spent a dozen years at ACCION International, a non-profit organization providing small loans to the self-employed poor throughout the Americas, where Gabriela worked in Communications and Development.

Gabriela was the president of the Brookline Library Foundation which raised over $4 million to restore and renovate Brookline’s main public library, and served for a decade as trustee of Brookline’s library system.    

After her time with the library, Gabriela worked on environmental issues:  as fundraiser for the public radio program ‘Living on Earth’, and as a partner in Double Exposure, Photographing Climate Change, which produced a museum exhibit that traveled the country for four years.

Gabriela is currently an executive board member of The Sumaira Foundation for NMO.

She lives in Cambridge with her husband Bob, and is the proud mother of Jake and Max Romanow.