IAS Annual Humanitarian Award 2025
IAS honors Elaine Petrocelli,
founder and owner of Book Passage
IAS celebrated its 20th Annual Inspiration Dinner on October 17th, 2025, honoring the unique vision, contribution and commitment of Elaine Petrocelli, founder and owner of Marin County’s most popular bookstore, Book Passage. This year IAS chose to honor Elaine for her inspiring example of how to be deeply immersed in the business of life in a way that cultivates community from a pure and grateful heart. It was a beautiful evening held at the Spinnaker restaurant in Sausalito, California – a location that has hosted a great number of Marin County leaders, educators and activists in its beautiful waterfront ballroom. It was a beautiful night, with a gorgeous sunset view graced by sailboats and seabirds.
The evening began with a welcome from the IAS President, Safa Ali Michael Newman, followed by an opening prayer by Sheikh Jamal Granick. The Dinner program followed with Luisa Smith, Book Passage’s Buying Director as the Mistress of Ceremonies, and Luisa also offered an affectionate tribute to her friend and manager of many years, bearing witness to Elaine’s remarkable creativity and courage. Luisa then introduced Dr. Denise Lucy, Executive Director of the Institute of Leadership Studies at Dominican University, who spoke about her experience creating an author lecture series that brought hundreds of prominent thought leaders to Marin County. She described how the program grew into one of Dominican University’s proudest and most widely enjoyed resources. Denise ended her tribute with a poem to Elaine.
The 2025 Annual Inspiration Dinner closed with the presentation of IAS’s 2025 Humanitarian Award to Elaine, together with a Certificate of Recognition from the U. S. Congressman Jared Huffman, by the co-director of IAS, Dr. Nahid Angha. Elaine then graced the audience with reflections on the remarkable journey that started as an idea for a book club in the late 1960s and evolved into the two-store phenomenon that Book Passage is today. Elaine spoke movingly about her appreciation for each of her employees present at the dinner, deep gratitude and love for each family member, and to those in the book club that started it all, as well as thanks to the entire Bay Area community that has supported her stores for so many years.
IAS Humanitarian Award Honorees
Learn more about the history and founders of the IAS Humanitarian Award and Annual Dinner, and read about all past award honorees.