Staff

Ellyn Toscano

Ellyn Toscano is the Executive Director of Hawthornden Foundation, a U.S. foundation supporting contemporary writers and literary arts, through international residency programs in the historic Hawthornden Castle in Scotland,  a second historic property on Lake Como in Italy and, beginning in the fall of 2024, a house in Brooklyn, New York.   Under her direction, the foundation additionally provides grant funding to literary arts organizations throughout the world. 

Prior to joining Hawthornden, Toscano worked for eighteen years for New York University, first as Executive Director of New York University Florence where she directed Villa La Pietra, a 15th century villa with a 6000-object art collection;  founded and produced The Season, a summer cultural festival in the Villa’s Renaissance revival gardens; and founded and directed La Pietra Dialogues, a year-long series of conferences, talks and exhibitions on a wide array of cultural and political topics. Subsequently, she served as Senior Director for Programming, Partnerships and Community Engagement in Brooklyn, where she fostered programming partnerships at the intersection of technology, new media and the arts.  She is the co-editor of Women and Migration:  Responses in Art and History, a two-volume series that resulted from a conference on Women and Migrations, organized in Florence in 2016.

Before arriving at New York University Florence, Ms. Toscano served as Chief of Staff and Counsel to Congressman Jose Serrano of New York for two decades and directed his work on the Appropriations Committee. Ms. Toscano also served as Counsel to the New York State Assembly Committee on Education for nine years.

Toscano currently serves as a member of the board of Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the advisory board of the John Brademas Center.  She previously served as a member of the board of Federal Hall (National Parks of Harbor Conservancy of NY), a Trustee of the Brooklyn Book Festival, Friends of FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano), Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (as the representative of the Brooklyn Borough President), and served as a commissioner of the New York City’s Commission on Gender Equity.

A lawyer by training, Ms. Toscano earned an LLM in International Law from New York University School of Law.