Through her work as a book packager, Ellen Rolfes has redefined the community cookbook into a “storybook” documenting how the meal table is the cultural setting where they pass on their values, beliefs and traditions to the next generation.  Her primary market is “arm chair books,” who buy her signature titles steadily to read about how people in a certain time and place live together through their food ways, making “An Ellen Rolfes Book” a standard backlist with publishers such as Putnam, Doubleday and Simon & Schuster.  Several titles, including THE JUNIOR LEAGUE COOKBOOK series (International Association of Junior Leagues) and THE BLACK FAMILY REUNION COOKBOOK series (National Council of Negro Women) have sold well over a quarter of a million copies.  A GRACIOUS PLENTY, for the Center for the Study of Southern Culture (Putnam, 1999) at the University of Mississippi, was nominated for the prestigious James Beard Award.  She also developed A BREAD OF LIFE (Morehouse, 1999) for the National Episcopal Church Women.  Her most recent title, CHURCH LADIES DIVINE DESSERTS by Brenda Rhodes Miller (Putnam, 2001), with a sequel soon to follow, and THE JUNIOR LEAGUE AT HOME (Putnam, 2003) shall be out in the following months.  As the sole person who took this obscure book form into New York trade publishing, she is now recognized for helping to establish a new trade book genre with proceeds benefiting non-profit organizations across the country. 

     Since Ellen Rolfes also speaks of the community cookbook as an authentic voice of women’s philanthropy, it was quite natural for her to take this message to the University of Mississippi where she serves now as a major gifts officer.  She is the principal architect of the Ole Miss Women’s Council for Philanthropy, an endowed scholarship initiative, which is now nationally recognized as an entrepreneurial model in fundraising.  She is currently working on the development of their Leadership-Mentorship Program for the Council Scholars, which will become a university-wide program.  She is also the director of Ole Miss First, the University’s newest scholarship initiative, where she is developing a $100 million endowment through focusing on the value of family philanthropy, a natural extension of her message.  She serves on the Business Advisory Board of the School of Business Administration at Ole Miss. 

     She is the former Director of the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis.  There she served on the team to publish PROFILES: A report on the Women and Girls of Greater Memphis.  She has been past president of the Junior League, and is a member of Leadership Memphis and the Leadership Academy.  Ellen was voted one of “50 Women Who Make a Difference” in Women’s News of the Mid-South.  She has served as a Trustee of the Hutchison School and as a founding member and first woman president of the Society of Entrepreneurs.