Do you want to become a more equity- and people-centered leader? Regardless of your current leadership role, we’ve got a new course you can’t miss.
Learn how to infuse equity into every part of your library leadership and management to ensure a culture of inclusion and care in your library. Join us for our new course, Equity-Centered Library Leadership, starting Sept. 29. This course is simultaneously a deep dive and far reaching, offering highly tailored special sessions for aspiring leaders, middle managers, and directors alike. Join us and transform your leadership practices, regardless of your current role.
This online workshop and guest speaker program is ideal for teams because you can work with your colleagues on an actionable, equity-focused project to bring change to your library services, culture, and programs. All live sessions are recorded for on-demand viewing.
Here are just a few of the powerful takeaways you and your team will gain from this course:
Self- and organizational assessment tools
How to craft an equity-centered strategic plan and lead organizational change
Equity-centered recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and retention best practices
Strategies for trauma-informed staff leadership
How to manage conflict and give difficult feedback while centering relationships
The role of vulnerability, emotional intelligence, and embodiment in leadership
and work with your colleagues on a project for your library.
Purchase 15 or more registrations and apply them across multiple courses.
Want to get started learning right away? Register now for any fall course and get immediate on-demand access to bonus content from past courses.
Check out our guest speaker program:
Where Am I? Self-Assessment as a Tool for Your Equity-Centered Leadership Journey
Ongoing, lifelong learning is necessary for good EDI work, and we don’t all start in the same place. Knowing where you are on your EDI leadership learning journey is the first of many steps to making good progress toward your goals, but self-assessment can be hard. This session will help you authentically and accurately place yourself on a learning spectrum using a change management approach that will immediately signal your next learning steps. Join us to learn how to understand where you are now and strategize how to get to where you want to be.
Speaker:
Ozy Aloziem, (she, her) Founder & Principal Advisor of HEAL INC LLC
Radical Imagination, Strategic Planning, and Leading Organizational Change
This session will push you to think big when it comes to how you imagine equity-centered leadership in your organization. You’ll learn about radical imagination and how to think beyond the typical confines that limit the progress you want to make. From there, you’ll learn how to craft your ideas into a strategic plan that maps out tangible ways to lead organizational change. This session will help you play with what’s possible and then equip you with the tools to bring your radical imagination to life.
Speaker:
Dr. Cerise Hunt, (she, her) PhD, MSW Director, Center for Public Health Practice, University of Colorado
Highly targeted for aspiring leaders: Aspiring Leadership: How to Craft Your Leadership Journey
Learn the foundational skills you’ll need to move into a management or leadership position in your library. This session will discuss career trajectory as well as best practices for new leaders.
Speaker:
Brandy McNeil, (she, her) Ph.D. Director of Adult Services at The New York Public Library, PLA Board of Directors
Radical Empathy and Servant Leadership: Strategies for Healing-Centered People Management
So you’ve implemented equity-centered recruiting and hiring practices, but how do you keep that same energy with your hired staff? This session will lay the foundation for healing-centered and servant leadership practices to help you support your direct reports holistically. You’ll learn how to have difficult feedback conversations, manage conflict, ensure staff success without micromanaging, how to differentiate staff support and encourage wellness, and more.
Speaker:
Christina Fuller-Gregory, (she, her) Assistant Director of Libraries at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities.
It Starts with You: Embodied Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, and the Role of Vulnerability
Black and Indigenous scholars, and other scholars of color, have long argued that attuning to embodiment is necessary in any justice-driven work. This session will teach you ways to imagine and implement embodied leadership and emotional intelligence practices so that you can show up authentically and relationally for your staff, colleagues, community - and yourself.
Using the lens of embodied leadership, you will also learn what vulnerability is and what it isn’t, and the role vulnerability has in all levels of management. For example, you’ll learn how to assess your own communication style while leaning into direct, clear, and kind modes of communication in the spirit of vulnerability. Leave this session with a toolkit for engaging with staff, establishing policies, and more, in ways that resist white supremacist work cultures by centering embodiment, emotions, and relationships.
Highly targeted for directors: Board Dynamics: How to Collaborate with Your Board While Advocating for Your Staff
Learn how to navigate board dynamics and expectations without sacrificing the support of staff, particularly your frontline folks. This session will discuss tactics for embodying the bridge between sometimes competing interests or expectations, and how to do so equitably.
Speaker:
Melanie Huggins, (she, her) Executive Director, Richland Library in Columbia (SC); Immediate Past President, PLA
Equity-Centered Recruiting, Hiring, Onboarding, and Retention Best Practices
Equity-centered leadership extends into every part of a library culture, including staff hiring and retention. Learn relevant and tangible antiracist practices for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining top talent in order to create a work culture that represents your values.
Speaker:
Tarida Anantachai, (she, her) Director, Inclusion & Talent Management at the NC State University Libraries
Applying Equity Practices: Equity Impact Analysis Tools and Organizational Assessment
Now that you have an understanding of where you are personally on your equity-centered leadership journey, it’s time to consider your organization at large. This session will teach you the ins and outs of DEI organizational assessments so that you can home in on and prioritize the most pressing areas of growth. Similarly, you will learn how to apply an Equity Impact Analysis tool to ensure you’re able to assess all of your future organizational policies, procedures, and practices through a data-driven lens. You will leave this application-focused session with tools to implement a DEI lens in all aspects of your work.
Speaker:
Dr. Bre Haizlip, (she, her) LPC, LMHC, NCC, CEO/ Founder of Dr. Bre Coaching & Consulting, LLC
Highly targeted for middle managers: Middle Management: How to Lead Up, Down, and Sideways
Learn how to navigate challenging power dynamics when you feel stuck in the middle. This session will discuss how to use your position of power for good in a variety of contexts as well as best practices for middle managers.
Speaker:
Nichelle M. Hayes, (she, her) MPA, MLS, Interim CEO at The Indianapolis Public Library
New Fall Course Features We Know You’ll Love:
Channels for community building and ongoing networking after the course ends
Live, peer working groups with expert facilitators to immediately apply and practice skills
Companion courses with bundled pricing to extend learning
A mix of 1-day intensive workshops and 3-week workshops to fit your schedule
Optional drop-in sessions highly tailored to specific library roles and functions
Our transformative online courses have given thousands of librarians the tools and vision for meaningful change. Here are just a few of the features and benefits you receive when you take part in any of our immersive online workshops:
Programming designed and led by library leaders
Live sessions (also available on-demand)
Asynchronous, facilitated classrooms
Project-based courses with individualized, expert feedback
Comprehensive supporting materials and resources
Certificate of Completion + 15 hours of PD Credit
Early-bird rates and group discounts available
Here’s what one past participant said about their learning experience:
"This was a fabulous learning experience, and the information was timely and relevant. The speakers provided so much depth to course. Completing an audit of our collection was eye-opening. We were able to identify with real numbers what areas of our collection could use more focus to add diversity. I highly recommend this course!"
-Amanda DeKnight, Library Director, South Park Township Library