Mr. Richard E. Ashby, Jr., is the director of the FOR Sto-Rox Public Library in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania; co-founder and director of LiteracyNation, and president of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. He became a librarian to make a difference in the lives of everyone that he meets.

Librarianship has helped him reach his goals and live his dreams. His amazing journey, however, did not begin as a librarian, although his mother told him that he would probably become one.

Mr. Ashby’s amazing story weaves through experience after experience and adventure after adventure on his arduous path to become the president of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Resiliency is a word that has been Mr. Ashby’s friend and helped him journey through life’s challenges. Due to the many peaks and valleys experienced in his own life, Mr. Ashby relates well with people from all walks of life. When asked how he can do this with such ease, his answer is always, ” because I have been there.” “Compassion has been the hallmark of my journey. My libraries are hubs of the community. Let me tell you how to reach the people you serve in more tangible ways.”

Mr. Ashby received a Bachelor of Science Degree from the New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, NY., and Master of Library Science Degree from Queens College, Flushing, NY.He was the BCALA 2014 Librarian of These Year

Library Journal Movers and Shakers award 2016

BCALA Librarian of the year, 2014

Contact: president@bcala.org

Alex Gil is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at Columbia University Libraries. He collaborates with faculty, students and library professionals leveraging computational and network technologies in humanities research, pedagogy and knowledge production. He is among the founders of several ongoing, warmly received initiatives where he currently plays leadership roles: Co-director of the Studio@Butler at Columbia University, a tech-light library innovation space focused on digital scholarship and pedagogy; co-founder and moderator of Columbia’s Group for Experimental Methods in the Humanities, a vibrant trans-disciplinary research cluster focused on experimental humanities; senior editor of sx archipelagos, a journal of Caribbean Digital Studies, and co-wrangler of The Caribbean Digital conference series.

Contact: agil@columbia.edu

Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen is an associate professor in the Master of Library and Information Science Program at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her research addresses transracially adopted Koreans in children’s literature. She co-founded and co-edits Research on Diversity in Youth Literature.

Contact: spark@stkate.edu

Jenny Lizarraga is the Founder and CEO of Cinco Books in Miami, a book distributor specialized in culturally relevant literature in Spanish language and the Chief editor of Green Seeds Publishing, an emerging house publishing specialized in bilingual books for children. She has been a speaker at FIL Guadalajara Book fair, Buenos Aires book fair and annual conferences in the United States such as La Cosecha, ALA Annual and NABE.

In addition to being an entrepreneur, Jenny is also a wellness advocate of healthy habits and healthy living by doing yoga and Pilates constantly. She lives in Miami with her husband and two cats.

Contact: jenny.lizarraga@cincobooks.com

Lisa Meléndez has been a public services and instructional librarian at Suffolk Community College for over 25 years. With formal training in yoga, she has been exploring how yoga practice and philosophy overlap with information literacy.

Soon after attending the Summer Institute on Contemplative Pedagogy at Smith College (2014), she began devising and incorporating mindfulness practices into her work. She presented on how this was done in the classroom, including student feedback, during Transforming Higher Education (2016), the annual conference sponsored by the Association for the Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (2016).

More recently, she published “Shifting the Pace: Contemplative Practices and the Research Process,” in Recipes for Mindfulness in your Library: Supporting Resilience and Community Engagement (2019), and presented “Making Space: Wellness between Service and Productivity, initiating LILRC’s “Workplace Wellness for Librarians” series (2020).

Contact: melendl@sunysuffolk.edu

Latanya N. Jenkins is an academic librarian and award-winning co-author of the book: Government Information Essentials. She was an American Library Association (ALA) Emerging Leader and is a past Association of Research Libraries (ARL) diversity scholar and mentor. She was a past participant in the Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians from Traditionally Underrepresented Groups. Latanya is a 2020 DART fellow.

Currently, she works as a reference librarian at Temple University’s Charles Library. Her areas of responsibilities include Africology and African American Studies and government information. Latanya is the liaison for Temple University’s esteemed Africology and African American Studies department.

Contact: latanya.jenkins@temple.edu

Vitalina A. Nova is the Education and Community Engagement Librarian at Temple University’s Charles Library in Philadelphia, PA. Prior to this she was part of the inaugural ACRL Diversity Alliance Residency cohort, serving as Preservation Projects Librarian at the University of Iowa. She serves on the limited English proficiency/immigrant complete count subcommittee and the higher education complete count subcommittee.

Contact: vitalina.nova@temple.edu

Ana Campos is the senior librarian at the International Languages Department at Central Library where she oversees a collection in 30 different languages. She has worked for Los Angeles Public library for over 20 years. She has also worked as a middle school teacher. She is currently the Secretary for REFORMA National.

Contact: acampos@lapl.org

Anna Avalos is the Multilingual Collections manager at the Los Angeles Public Library. She has been serving the Latino communities of Los Angeles for almost 20 years. From translating, selecting high-quality materials and promoting Spanish-language collections to assisting other library departments and branches with collections and initiatives, she strives to provide services, information and resources to the diverse communitites of Los Angeles, in particular the Spanish speaking communities. She was named a 2020 Library Journal Mover & Shaker–Community Builder.

Contact: aavalos@lapl.org

Madeline Peña is the Digital Content Manager at the Los Angeles Public Library. She comes from a background in graphic design, marketing, and TV production and has worked in public libraries for over 13 years. She served as 2018-2019 REFORMA President, and is a former President of the Los Angeles Chapter. She was the recipient of the 2015 REFORMA Dr. Arnulfo D. Trejo Librarian of the Year (LOTY) Award.

Contact: mpena@lapl.org

Moderating this panel is Miriam Tuliao. She is a Library Marketing Manager at Penguin Random House. A New York Public Library veteran, she is an adjunct LIS instructor at Queens College and Indiana University, as well as, an active member of the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, REFORMA's Northeast Chapter, and the Association for Library and Information Science Education.

Contact: mtuliao@penguinrandomhouse.com

Julissa Arce is a CNBC and Crooked media contributor, writer, speaker, and social justice advocate. She is the cofounder and chairman of the Ascend Educational Fund, a college scholarship and mentorship program that assists immigrant students, regardless of their immigration status, ethnicity, or national origin. Julissa is also a board member for the National Immigration Law Center and for College Spring. Prior to becoming an advocate, she built a successful career on Wall Street, working at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.

Author of Alguien como yo: La lucha de una niña por alcanzar el sueño americano

Melissa Rivero was born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Brooklyn. Undocumented for most of her childhood, Rivero became a US citizen in her early twenties. Her writing has taken her to the VONA/Voices Workshops, Bread Loaf, and the Norman Mailer Writers Colony. In 2015, Melissa was an Emerging Writers Fellow at the Center for Fiction. She is a graduate of NYU and Brooklyn Law School, and currently works on the legal team of a startup. She still lives in Brooklyn, with her husband, two sons, and their rescue dog.

Author of Los Falcon

Roberto Lovato is a teacher, journalist & writer based at The Writers Grotto in San Francisco, California. The author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas (Harper Collins), Lovato is also recipient of a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center. Until 2015, Lovato was a fellow at U.C. Berkeley’s Latinx Research Center and recently finished a teaching stint at UCLA. His essays and reports from around the world have appeared in numerous publications including Guernica Magazine, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy magazine, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times,Der Spiegel, La Opinion, and other national and international publications.

Author of Unforgetting:A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas

Susie Yang was born in China and came to the United States as a child. After receiving her doctorate of pharmacy from Rutgers, she launched a tech startup in San Francisco that has taught 20,000 people how to code. She has studied creative writing at Tin House and Sackett Street. She has lived across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and now resides in the UK. White Ivy is her first novel.

Author of White Ivy