Nancy Traversy

Nancy Traversy is the CEO and Co-founder of Barefoot Books. Nancy grew up in army bases across Canada, earned a business degree from Queen’s University and became an accountant at Price Waterhouse in Toronto. She transferred to PW’s London, UK offices in 1985 and, when a male partner sent her home from work for wearing trousers, she decided that a life in corporate finance might not be for her.

Nancy discovered her love of color and design in her mid 20’s and spent several years learning the ropes in London's entrepreneurial design world. In 1992, when her eldest daughter was 3-weeks old, she co-founded Barefoot Books, an independent publisher committed to creating beautiful books that celebrate the formative role of art and storytelling in children’s lives. 

Creating high quality books that nurture children’s imaginations and creativity, and also promote global awareness and diversity, has not always been easy in a rapidly changing publishing industry. Nancy has had to think-out-of-the-box to survive and thrive, while staying true to the core values on which her business was founded. 

Today, after 30 years of passion and perseverance, Barefoot has achieved some incredible milestones. With a mission to share stories, connect families and inspire children, Barefoot has created more than 1000 books, spoken word stories, music, animations, characters, puzzles and games that open children’s hearts and minds to our wonderfully diverse world. 

Their first app, Barefoot World Atlas, originally launched in 2012, which was named by Apple as one of their top 10 apps of all time and has had over 4 million downloads. We’re also known for our animated singalongs on YouTube that have garnered nearly half a billion views. A big part of Barefoot’s work is to support literacy initiatives across the globe and in 2019, in partnership with Books for Africa, they shipped 300K books to HIV / AIDS orphans and their caregivers in Mozambique.  

Over the years, Barefoot Books has won numerous awards for both its books and its publishing program. In 2017, it was named by Forbes as one of the 25 Best Small Companies in America who described Barefoot as “the standard for excellence in children’s books”.

In 2001, Nancy and her family moved to Concord, MA, relocating Barefoot’s US offices from New York to Cambridge, MA. In addition to running and growing Barefoot, Nancy is involved in Concord’s vibrant arts and historical communities.

However, her proudest accomplishment is to have put more than 30 million books into the hands of children around the globe...and to have raised four beautiful, open-hearted and open-minded Barefoot children who are all making their own special marks in the world.