Sonia Alcántara-Antoine
Sonia Alcántara-Antoine has served as the executive director of Baltimore County Public Library since February 2021. Prior to joining Baltimore County Public Library, she was director or Newport News Public Library for 3 years and held leadership positions at Virginia Beach Public Library and Enoch Pratt Free Library. She is an American Library Association Spectrum Scholar. She is active in a number of professional association groups including the Urban Libraries Council, where she serves on the Race and Social Equity and Digital Equity action teams. Sonia holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and is currently working towards a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Old Dominion University.
Tamika Barnes
Tamika Barnes currently works for the University Library as the Associate Dean for Perimeter Library Services at Georgia State University. This position coordinates the work of five Perimeter College library facilities in the metro Atlanta area. Prior to consolidation she was the Library Director for the Dunwoody campus at Georgia Perimeter College. Before her time in Georgia, Tamika went to school and began her library career in North Carolina and worked in public, academic, and special libraries. Tamika stays active in the profession by working as a part-time instructor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and serving on the Executive Board, councilor for the Georgia Library Association (GLA) and the chair of GLA's Black Caucus Interest Group.
Rebecca Hankins
Rebecca Hankins is the Wendler Endowed Professor and certified archivist/librarian at Texas A&M University. She was elected as an SAA Fellow in 2016 and in December of 2016, U. S. President Barack H. Obama appointed her to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) where she served from 2016 to August 2020. Her work has appeared in The International Review of African American Art, Critical Muslim, Foundation, American Archivist, RUSQ, and a co-edited a monograph with Miguel Juarez, Ph.D. (UTEP) titled Where Are All the Librarians of Color? The Experiences of People of Color in Academia (Library Juice Press, January 2016). Her latest publication, co-authored with Balthazar Beckett, Ph.D. is titled “Joseph Cinque: Reframing and Reclaiming the Muslim Presence in the Amistad Revolt," in The Muslim World, a special issue titled Black Muslim Portraiture in the Modern Atlantic edited by Temple University Professor Zain Abdullah, Ph.D., November 15, 2020.
Dr. Ana Ndumu
Ana Ndumu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland College Park’s College of Information Studies who primarily researches and teaches on library services to immigrants—particularly, Black diasporic immigrants—along with methods for promoting racial representation and inclusion in LIS. A former HBCU librarian, she is interested in the cross between Black identity, library and information services, and social inclusion. Dr. Ndumu serves on numerous library organization executive boards and directs several grant-funded diversity-related projects.
Dr. Moises Orozco Villicana
Over the past decade, Dr. Moises Orozco Villicana has successfully held progressively responsible administrative roles in both student and academic affairs at public four-year and two-year institutions of higher education. He is an accomplished administrator that welcomes the opportunity to provide prospective students with the information and resources they need to successfully navigate the college application process at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Dr. Orozco Villicana's work also demonstrates a deep passion and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. He currently serves as the Director of Enrollment Management for the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He also holds numerous leadership roles at regional and national associations.
Dr. Rebecca Davis
Rebecca Davis, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Simmon University in Boston, MA. She primarily teaches user services courses. Her research falls under the umbrella of diversity, equity, and inclusion and focuses on underrepresented groups and their use of academic libraries and first-generation graduate students and their information-seeking behaviors. She has worked in health sciences and academic libraries. She received her BA in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MS in Library Science from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in Communication and Information from The University of Tennessee. She is a native of North Carolina.
Dr. Pauletta Brown Bracy
Pauletta Brown Bracy is professor in the School of Library and Information Sciences at North Carolina Central University where she also serves as Director of the Office of University Accreditation. She began her library career in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Public Schools as a middle school librarian. Her areas of teaching and research are school library media librarianship and children’s and young adult literature and services with foci on ethnic perspectives in literature and meeting the needs of African American children and adolescents in school and public libraries. Her most recent book is Libraries, Literacy, and African American Youth (Libraries Unlimited, 2017) which she co-edited with Sandra Hughes-Hassell and Casey H. Rawson. In 2019 she was awarded the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Library Association.
Dr. Jason Alston
Jason K. Alston is an assistant teaching professor for the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies (SISLT) at the University of Missouri. Alston holds a Ph.D. in library and information science from the University of South Carolina, a master's in library science from North Carolina Central University, and a BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Prior to becoming a full time LIS instructor, Alston worked as a librarian at several libraries in the Carolinas.
Shannon Jones
Shannon Jones is the Director of Libraries for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Prior to her arrival at MUSC, Shannon worked as the Associate Director for Research and Education for Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Shannon focuses her research on staff recruitment and retention, diversity, equity, and inclusion in libraries, and leadership in academic health sciences libraries. Shannon is the co-editor of Diversity and Inclusion in Libraries: A Call to Action and Strategies for Success. She holds an MLS from North Carolina Central University and an M.Ed. in Adult Learning from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently pursuing an Ed.D in Educational Leadership at Charleston Southern University.