Lee Bagby CeperichDirector, Library and Special Collections, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Margaret R. and Robert M. Freeman LibraryTerm FY 2019-2023
Lee Bagby Ceperich has served as Director of the Margaret R. and Robert M. Freeman Library at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 2010 and has held positions at VMFA since 2005. Prior to her arrival at VMFA she held positions at The Library of Virginia and the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. She has served as a consultant for institutional special collections, as a reviewer for NEH grant programs and as an adjunct faculty member for Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Ceperich received an MLIS degree from Catholic University, an MA in Museum Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BA in Art History from James Madison University. Professional affiliations include ARLIS/NA, ALA (CALM, ACRL, RBMS) AAM, VAM, and WALRC.
Kaitlin Thaney
Executive Director, Invest in Open Infrastructure
Term FY 2022-2024
Kaitlin Thaney is the Executive Director of Invest in Open Infrastructure, a non-profit initiative designed to enable durable, scalable, and long lasting open scientific and scholarly infrastructure to emerge, thrive, and deliver its benefits on a global scale.
She previously served as the Endowment Director for the Wikimedia Foundation, where she led development of a fund to sustain the future of Wikipedia and free knowledge. Prior to joining Wikimedia, Thaney directed the program portfolio for the Mozilla Foundation, following her time building the Mozilla Science Lab, a program to serve the open research community. She was on the founding team for Digital Science, where she helped launch and advise programs to serve researchers worldwide, building on her time at Creative Commons, where she crafted legal, technical, and social infrastructure for sharing data on the web.
Dr. Rhea Brown Lawson
Executive Director, Houston Public Library
Term FY 2022-2024
Dr. Rhea Brown Lawson’s impressive career as a library professional spans over 30 years. A strong and passionate advocate for public libraries, Dr. Lawson is keenly focused on ensuring that they remain highly visible and vibrant organizations that proactively contribute to the quality of life in their communities. She has served as the executive director of the Houston Public Library (HPL) since 2005. The Houston Public Library is the largest public library in the state of Texas, serving over 2.2 million people through a network of 42 locations. It ranks seventh among the largest public library systems in the nation according to population served.
Dr. Lawson ensures that HPL is continuously evolving and moving forward a comprehensive, innovative platform of library services and programs to meet the diverse needs of Houston’s residents and the virtual environment. HPL aggressively promotes its vast resources through exemplary customer service, strategic partnerships, and strong community engagement. Under Dr. Lawson’s leadership, HPL has earned over 40 prestigious local, state, and national awards for services, programs, innovation and building projects. Active on the local, state, and national levels.
Dr. Lawson serves on a number of professional and civic committees and boards. She holds a BA from Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, an MLS from the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Dr. Anne Huang
Executive Director, World Arts West
Term FY 2022-2024
Dr. Anne Huang is the Executive Director of World Arts West, a regional presenting and arts services organization that supports Northern California artists and dance companies that sustain the world’s diverse dance and music traditions. World Arts West supports over 450 dance companies that engage more than 20,000 artists, sustaining over 100 dance forms from around the world. Anne is the former Executive Director of the Oakland Asian Cultural Center (OACC), one of the largest pan-Asian cultural centers in the United States.
Anne is a highly regarded culturally specific capacity building consultant and resource equity advocate. She has worked extensively with cultural artists and arts organizations such as Charya Burt, Naomi Diouf, Alleluia Panis, Parangal, Los Danzantes de Aztlan, Diamano Coura, Chinese Culture Center, Dimension Dance Theater, CubaCaribe, LIKHA, Bisemi, Halau ‘o Keikiali’i, Cunamacue, and many others. Anne also advocates for resource equity by working with funders to create equitable funding guidelines and connecting funders with culturally specific communities.
As a thought leader with deep knowledge of challenges and solutions for cultural artists in the 21st century, Anne is a sought-after speaker and consultant for conference panels, cultural convenings, and resource equity in philanthropy. Anne has served in leadership roles for National Dance Project’s Regional Dance Development Initiative, New York Foundation for the Arts’ Immigrant Artist Program, and the City of Oakland’s Mayoral Arts Task Force. She is the Board Chair of Dance/USA Board of Trustees.
Wendy CornelisenState Librarian, State Library of Oregon
Term FY 2023-2026
Wendy Cornelisen is the newly named State Librarian of Oregon, with the charge of building equitable access to library and information services to all Oregonians. In her twenty-year career, she has held professional positions at both the Georgia Public Library Service and the Tennessee State Library and Archives after getting her start in public libraries.
Wendy has also served in several positions in state library associations as the past president of both the Tennessee and the Georgia Library Association, and is currently on the Board of the Oregon Library Association. Wendy earned a Bachelor's Degree from Iowa State University and a Master's Degree in Information Science from the University of Tennessee. She is an advocate for equitable access to information resources, no matter what your zip code.
Maurice York Director of Library Initiatives, Big Ten Academic Alliance Term FY 2023-2026
As the Director of Library Initiatives for the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Maurice is responsible for coordinating collective action at scale amongst the research libraries of the BTAA toward their commitment to realizing an interdependent, networked future. The central initiative in Maurice's portfolio is the BIG Collection, a comprehensive strategy to strengthen an interdependent future for the 15 world-class research libraries of the BTAA by joining the separate collections into one collection, shared and fully networked, across all physical and digital domains.
Maurice works closely with the library deans/directors of the fifteen member research libraries to help shape strategies that the consortium pursues, oversee execution of those strategies, and continually work to build pathways to interdependence and coherence across member universities. He is responsible for exploring, analyzing, and identifying areas for collective action and innovation and oversee collaborative initiatives through the many cross-institutional project groups of the BTAA.
In his previous position, Maurice was on the executive leadership team at the University of Michigan Library, where he led the technology division in developing and delivering cornerstone digital infrastructure projects for information discovery, content preservation, and access, including the HahtiTrust Digital Library, the Deep Blue repository for faculty publications and research data, and an expansive digital collections ecosystem. Before Michigan, Maurice was the Head of Information Technology at the NC State University Library, where he led the vision and implementation of the technology program for the James B. Hunt Jr. Library.
