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Nichelle M. Hayes
PresidentNichelle M. Hayes, MPA, MLS, is President of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (2022-2024). She works as an information professional with a focus on the African Diaspora, Community Engagement and Inclusion. As an active member of ALA, she served on the “2023 ALA Nominating Committee” and “Working Group to Condemn White Supremacy and Fascism as Antithetical to Library Work” from 2022 to 2023. Hayes was recently honored as a 2023 Culture Carrier Award Honoree and 2022 National Coalition of 100 Black Women – Breakthrough Women Award. In 2022, she was co-editor of The Black Librarian in America: Reflections, Resistance, and Reawakening. Additionally, Hayes is a genealogist with a focus on African Ancestry and keeping families connected, as documented in her blog “The Ties that Bind.” Hayes is a graduate of the former IU School of Library & Information Science (SLIS) with a Masters in Library Science, (now Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indianapolis). -
Shauntee Burns-Simpson
Immediate Past PresidentShauntee Burns-Simpson is Associate Director for the Center of Educators and Schools at The New York Public Library. An ambassador for libraries and librarianship, Burns-Simpson enjoys connecting people to the public library and its resources. A youth librarian, she works closely with at risk teens and fosters a love of reading and learning with her innovative programming. In addition to her work with a host of professional organizations, she chaired the American Library Association Office of Diversity, Literacy, & Outreach Services (ODLOS) Committee on Diversity. -
Andrea Hayes
Interim-Vice PresidentBiography to Come
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Michele Fenton
SecretaryMichele Fenton is a catalog librarian at the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis, Ind. She received her MLIS from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Fenton is a member of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society and the ALA International Relations Round Table. Additionally, she was a 2016 IFLA IMLS Fellow. Fenton’s interests include African American history, African American genealogy, international librarianship and cataloging. -
Wanda K. Brown
TreasurerWanda Kay Brown is the director of library services at the C. G. O’Kelly Library at Winston-Salem State University. Prior to that appointment, she served as the Associate Dean of Wake Forest University’s Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Brown has spent more than 40 years in the profession. During this time, she has focused on being “professionally active” in state and national library organizations. In June of 2019, she assumed the role of president for the American Library Association (ALA). As ALA president, Brown was the chief elected officer for the largest library association in the world. Brown has severed in numerous positions at the Black Caucus of the American Library Association including as treasurer (2016-2018), as president (2006-08), as treasurer (1992-96) and two terms as an executive board member (2001 to 2003, 2014 to 2016). She was the 2011-2013 president of the North Carolina Library Association and has held various other positions with NCLA, including treasurer (1991-1998) and the 2005-2009 chair of the Finance Committee. An ALA member for more than 30 years, Brown is an active member of the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Library Leadership and Management Association. She has held multiple leadership positions within each division. She is the 2015 recipient of the DEMCO/ALA Black Caucus Award for Excellence, the 2013 BCALA Leadership Award, and the 2012 BCALA Distinguished Service Award. In 2009, Brown received University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Kovacs Award for Outstanding Alumni Achievement. In 2013, UNCG awarded Brown with the School of Education Outstanding Alumni Achievement Award. Brown holds a BA in English, with a minor in psychology from Winston-Salem State University, and an MLS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. -
Taylor Brooks
Assisted SecretaryWe are using these temporary contents on the website.
Our Valuable Team Members
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Rudolph Clay
Board Member, 2022-2024Rudolph Clay (MLS, MA in Human Resources) has been a member of BCALA for more than twenty years, working primarily with membership and coordinating the NCAAL exhibits. He is a founding member of the St. Louis Regional Librarians BCALA Affiliate. At Washington University in St. Louis, Clay serves as Head of Library Diversity Programs and Policy and manages a summer internship program, which seeks to encourage undergraduate students of color to consider academic librarianship as a career. -
Tamela Chambers
Board Member, 2022-2024Tamela Chambers is a library professional with more than 20 years of experience serving all ages in school and public library settings. She is a product of both Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Public Library, and she feels like her job helps her “pay it forward.” Chambers is a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in advertising, Master of Science in library information science and school library certification. She also earned a Master of Education in early childhood curriculum and instruction and a certificate of advance study in education technology from National Louis University. -
LaKeshia Darden
Board Member, 2022-2024LaKeisha Darden is currently the associate librarian for reference and instruction for Warren Library at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach Florida. In the fall of 2020, she completed her doctoral degree in educational leadership from Fayetteville State University. Darden’s dissertation, “Diversity Training Through Story: University Professionals Explore Narratives of the Black Experience by Reading Coretta Scott King Book Awards Titles”, explored the effectiveness of narrative theory coupled with using award-winning Black children’s literature as a diversity training tool with white university professionals. Darden has been a member of BCALA for several years and a member of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee, serving on the jury from 2017-2021. In 2019-2021, she served as the chair. In addition, she currently served a two-year term on the American Library Association’s Equity Diversity and Inclusion Assembly. Darden has designed, led, and facilitated EDI trainings for colleges and universities, public libraries, and special interest groups. She is married to Lt. Col. Kurtis Darden (USAF) and together they have six children. -
Leslie Etienne
Board Member, 2022-2024Dr. Leslie Etienne’s previous professional experience was based in youth leadership and development, social services, and K-12 education. He has also worked with the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, TN, and Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide in Atlanta, GA. He is a graduate of two historically Black institutions. At Philander Smith College, he earned a BA in Psychology and at Clark Atlanta University, he completed a master’s degree in International Affairs & Development. Etienne’s attained his doctorate in Leadership and Organizational Change from Antioch University. Etienne currently works at IUPUI as a Clinical Associate Professor of Africana Studies in the School of Liberal Arts, where he is also the Director of the Africana Studies Program and Founding Executive Director of the Center for Africana Studies and Culture. Etienne’s research interests are based in Black freedom movement histories, frameworks for grassroots leadership and organizing, and the justice-based multigenerational emancipatory education found in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Schools enacted during the “Freedom Summer” in 1964. In the community, he is Project Director for the IUPUI Center for Africana Studies and Culture/School of Education/Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School site. He also serves as the Vice President of the Joseph Taylor Branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. A former Peace Corps volunteer, he served in Guyana, S. America from 1997-1999 as an urban youth development worker. Etienne values interaction with students and enjoys teaching and mentoring. -
Olanike Olaniyi
Board Member, 2022-2024Olanike Oianiyi was born in Nigeria and practiced as a librarian before moving to the United States with her family some years ago. She has a bachelor’s degree in library, archival and information studies, a master’s degree in information science from University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and a master’s degree from Indiana University. She is a Certified Community Health Worker. Oianiyi currently works with the Indianapolis Public Library in Collection Management & Acquisition but had earlier worked as Children’s Librarian and Digital Projects Librarian. She was the library’s first Diversity Fellow and is passionate about researching, collaborating, and connecting my communities with diverse information needs and backgrounds. -
Fannie Mae Cox
Board Member, 2023-2025Biography to Come -
Gladys Smiley Bell
Board Member, 2023-2025Biography to Come -
Tiffeni Fontno
Board Member, 2023-2025Biography to Come -
Kimberly Hunter
Board Member, 2023-2025Biography to Come -
Jessica Tingling
Board Member, 2023-2025Biography to Come -
Michael Torres
Board Member, 2023-2025Biography to Come