Leslie is the founder and principal of Connected Dots Media. Her thirty-year career spans book publishing, creative services, and media business development, as well as writing and agenting.
Since launching her own company in 2009, Leslie has built a reputation for creating high-quality books and virtual media that deliver on the bottom line. She consults for brands across several categories, from arts organizations and museums to chefs, floral designers, artists, and makers. Some of her most impactful projects began as books and evolved into multiplatform brands. Her acclaimed Feed Your People project, which started as a book via Kickstarter, turned into a video, became a partnership with a nonprofit, and culminated in a series of live events, including community dinners with landmark panel discussions. Other ventures include book-packaging for such publishers as Ten Speed Press, Chronicle Books, Storey Publishing, and Andrews McMeel Universal. Leslie has also produced and published her own lines of books, including the Go to Sleep series for kids and The Little Local Cookbook series.
From 1991 to 2009, Leslie was an integral part of the editorial and development team at Chronicle Books. For part of her tenure, she was the Creative Director for Chronicle’s Custom Publishing division, managing name-brand clients that include babyGap, Starbucks Coffee Company, Anthropologie, and the San Francisco Ballet. Leslie is the author of numerous books, including Feed Your People, Foraged Art, Postmark Paris (winner of the Book Builder’s Gold Award), and Bee & Me, which sold over 150,000 copies and was on Publishers Weekly and the New York Times bestseller lists.
Leslie holds a bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College of Vermont. She has lived in France and on both US coasts and now makes her home in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family and a teeny-tiny fire truck.
