A graduate of the Radcliffe Publishing Course, Joanna Pulcini-Ascaso attended college at Catholic University and graduate school at Boston College, focusing on the origins of women’s novels in the Restoration and 18th Century periods. During her school years, she held internships on Capital Hill, working on Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Reform Initiative, and at the Smithsonian Institute, as one of the Museum Summer Residents, as well as worked throughout her undergrad years in the library at the Environmental Law Institute. In her first full time position, she was the assistant to the editor-in-chief of Vintage Books. She was then an agent at Linda Chester and Associates for six years, representing such dream clients as Rosemary Clooney, Nick Clooney, “Vows” columnist Lois Smith Brady, Yolanda Young, and Mark Sullivan. She established her own agency in 2001 with a small list of authors including Jennifer Weiner, John Searles, and Megan McCafferty, each of whom she would help usher on to become bestsellers. At JPLM, the books she represented and worked on editorially spent over 290 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers lists. She was the publishing consultant on the first season of the television series Younger, and the videos she started creating at her husband’s bakery, Le Marais Bakery, on weekends as a lark have now gone on to be viewed over 100 million times. She lives with her husband, daughter, and three Havanese pups in San Francisco.