Educated at Smith and Columbia, Elsie V. Aidinoff has lived in Paris, Brussels, Hong Kong, London, and New York. She has been involved in education most of her life, starting in 1965 as a tutor in a junior high school with the New York City School Volunteer Program (now Learning Leaders). Since 1980, she has worked at the Children's Storefront School, a tuition-free independent school in Harlem, as a teacher, administrator, and trustee. The mother of four grown children, she lives in New York City with her husband, a lawyer.