SLA Members Elect U.K. Librarian as 2023 President
Seema Rampersad to be joined on board by four new directors
McLean, Virginia, U.S.A., 29 September 2021—Members of the Special Libraries Association have elected Seema Rampersad, a senior business researcher and service manager at the British Library, to serve as president of SLA in 2023.
Rampersad will serve as president-elect in 2022 and immediate past president in 2024. Catherine Lavallée-Welch, the university librarian at Bishop’s University in Canada, is currently the president-elect and will serve as president in 2022.
Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Rampersad went to London to study information and communication. She worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers in their Business Information Centre and the Intelligence Unit at the Greater London Authority before joining the British Library. She is interested in how social media, AI, machine learning and multimedia can be used as business-focused and professional development tools for managing and delivering data, information and knowledge.
Rampersad served as president of SLA’s Europe Community is 2020 and is now on its Digital Communications Committee. She chairs the SLA Task Force on Reopening Specialized Libraries, is a member of the SLA Workplace Preparedness and Response (PREP) Advisory Council, and was an initial member of the SLA Task Force on Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DICE).
In addition to electing Rampersad, SLA members elected four new members to the association’s board of directors:
- Anne Barker, senior information specialist at Genentech (San Francisco, California, United States)
- JonLuc Christensen, records and archives technical group lead and information/configuration management engineer for the NASA/CalTech Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Logan, Utah, United States)
- Heather Kotula, vice president of marketing and communications at Access Innovations (Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States)
- Kendra Levine, library director in the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (United States)
These new board members will join the following individuals, whose service on the board extends through 2022:
- Alicia Biggers-Gaddies, SLA treasurer and librarian at the Albemarle Corporation (Charlotte, North Carolina, United States)
- Robin Dodge, head librarian at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (Los Angeles, California, United States)
- Tara Murray Grove, 2021 SLA president and subject specialist in Germanic and Slavic languages, literatures, and cultures at Penn State University (Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States)
- Praveen Kumar (P.K.) Jain, librarian at the Institute of Economic Growth (North Delhi, Delhi, India)
- Elaine Lasda, librarian and coordinator of scholarly communication at the University if Albany (New York, United States)
- Catherine Lavallée-Welch, 2021 SLA president-elect and university librarian at Bishop’s University (Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada)
- Jim Miller, principal at Connect Public Affairs (Ottawa, Canada)
- Jill Mottorn, digital marketing manager at Elsevier (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States)
- Julie Snyder, manager of the corporate library and archives at Shure Incorporated (Niles, Illinois, United States)
“SLA has a unique position, with great subject specialism and international participation of members,” Rampersad said. “Our professional network has great power and relevance digitally and physically at conferences, events and on SLA Connect. SLA facilitates practical, insightful training, learning, industry networking, development and collaboration opportunities.”
About SLA
The Special Libraries Association (SLA) is a nonprofit international organization for innovative information professionals and their strategic partners. SLA serves information professionals in more than 60 countries and in a range of working environments, including business, academia and government agencies. SLA promotes and strengthens its members through learning, advocacy and networking initiatives. For more information, visit sla.org.
Contact
Jennifer Hedrick
+1.703.647.4900
jhedrick@sla.org
