Lead and manage people and projects in an equitable, just, and culturally competent manner.

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Understanding of the Objective

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     Leading and managing people and projects in an equitable, just, and culturally competent manner means creating an environment where people understand the goals of a project, feel comfortable contributing their knowledge, and know their concerns will be taken seriously across the team. Leadership involves setting priorities, organizing resources, identifying risks, solving problems, communicating expectations, and accepting responsibility for outcomes. Management provides the structure and boundaries that allow those goals to become achievable.

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     Equitable leadership also recognizes that treating everyone exactly the same does not necessarily create fairness. Staff, volunteers, users, and community partners may have different levels of authority, time, confidence, experience, or access to varying resources. Cultural competence requires listening to those differences and seeking perspectives that may otherwise be overlooked so one can advocate for people who may have less influence within an organization.

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     For a public librarian, I believe leadership extends beyond managing staff. Projects may involve residents, descendants, schools, nonprofit organizations, city departments, donors, volunteers, journalists, and other partners. Effective leadership therefore includes communication, advocacy, development, ethical decision-making, and responsible stewardship of information inside and out of the organization.

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     In my professional experience, leadership does not require being the loudest person in the room. Preparation, organization, documentation, problem solving, and helping others succeed are some of my strongest and most successful leadership skills. The MLIS program has helped me connect these strengths with a community-centered approach in which success is measured not only by whether a project is completed, but also by whether the process is ethical, inclusive, and responsive.

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Evidence

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     My work as a lead quality engineer provides some of my strongest evidence of leadership and project management. Collaborating with engineers, product managers, designers, support teams, and other professionals at my company requires coordination across groups with varying priorities. My responsibilities include identifying risks, creating testing strategies, documenting problems, contributing to planning and hiring decisions, and communicating whether a product that is taking money is ready to reach its target users. This work has taught me the difference between authority and influence. A quality engineer may not own every decision, but the role requires using evidence and professional judgment to advocate for users when a product may cause harm. Serving in a lead role has also taught me that positional influence carries a responsibility to elevate concerns that might otherwise receive less attention and to advocate for changes when evidence shows that a decision could create risk, harm, or unequal access for users. Tight deadlines and complex releases have also taught me to communicate risk clearly, listen to competing concerns, and help teams find practical solutions rather than simply identifying problems. With these experiences, I am abile to lead projects, use positional influence responsibly, solve problems, and communicate with my colleagues and stakeholders.

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     The Information Management and Technology Portfolio: Digital Transformation and Change Management provided academic frameworks for many of these experiences. Through change-management, stakeholder, organizational-culture, measurement, and digital-transformation models, I examined how organizations introduce and sustain change. One important lesson was that resistance should not automatically be viewed as unwillingness to cooperate. Concerns at an organization can come from unclear expectations, inadequate training, competing responsibilities, or a lack of trust. Effective leadership requires understanding the reason behind resistance and responding with evidence and empathy.

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     ReadQuest: A Schoolwide Read-A-Thon Adventure allowed me to apply management principles in a library setting. The proposal included a theory of change, logic model, timeline, budget, fundraising strategy, partnerships, marketing, assessment, and measurable outcomes. Developing the program required translating a broad goal into specific responsibilities, resources, and measures of success.​ The project also gave me experience with public relations, marketing, and development through family communication, promotional planning, community partnerships, fundraising, and explaining how the funds raised would support literacy resources and programming. Equity was also heavily included its design. Traditional read-a-thons may favor fast readers, students with more free time, or families able to raise more money. ReadQuest instead emphasized participation, exploration, book recommendations, and reading with others to be more inclusive. The project demonstrated how budgeting, assessment, recognition, fundraising, marketing, and communication can either reduce or reinforce inequalities.

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     The management and ethics case study Story Times Can Be a Drag strengthened my understanding of ethical decision-making. My group examined an inclusive library program introduced without sufficient board coordination, staff preparation, budgeting, security planning, or consistent communication with the community. The case demonstrated that an equitable goal still requires a clear and responsible process. Leaders must follow policy, define authority, prepare staff, communicate consistently, plan for safety, and protect inclusive services even when controversy arises. Ethical decisions should be guided by professional values, evidence, and the needs of the community rather than fear or pressure from the loudest group.

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     Conducting my Dearing family research independently, without any support of a formal organization, especially the local historical society, has demonstrated how leadership can develop through relationships, persistence, and collaboration. The work has involved descendants, other independent researchers, equity organizations, city representatives, journalists, and residents. Coordinating the research, outreach, and communication required persistence, organization, and careful documentation, particularly when some community members resisted acknowledging that this history had occurred in Piedmont. Reliable sources and corroborating evidence became essential to establishing credibility and responding to that pushback.​ This experience also taught me to recognize the limits of my own authority. Advocacy did not mean deciding alone how the family should be represented or what the city should do. Descendant voices and community perspectives needed to remain central. Leadership sometimes means using access, privilege and influence to help other people be heard rather than speaking for them.

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     Finally, my digitized local ephemera collections demonstrate the management of information resources throughout their life cycle. Historical photographs, diaries, maps, newspaper clippings, and other materials require decisions about acquisition, description, organization, provenance, transcription, digitization, preservation, curation, access, and dissemination. Managing these materials has shown me that stewardship extends far beyond creating a digital copy. File names must remain understandable, provenance must be documented, originals and digital files protected, uncertainties recorded, and future access carefully considered. These responsibilities have strengthened my understanding of how project management supports the long-term care, preservation, and responsible sharing of information.

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     Together, these experiences have prepared me to manage people and projects, use influence responsibly, make ethical decisions, solve problems with evidence and empathy, communicate with stakeholders, participate in public relations and development, and manage information resources throughout their life cycle.

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Learning Transfer

     These experiences have taught me that effective and long lasting leadership begins with transparency. Future library and archival projects should establish their purpose, scope, roles, decision-making authority, timeline, budget, risks, and measures of success early enough for everyone involved to understand the process while an equity lens remains central. Questions about whose labor, knowledge, time, and risk are involved should be considered alongside deadlines and budgets. Community members should not be expected to provide unlimited unpaid expertise or represent an entire population, while staff should receive the time, training, and support needed for new responsibilities.

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     Evidence will guide decisions without being treated as the complete story. Attendance, circulation, fundraising totals, and web analytics can identify patterns, while interviews, observations, community feedback, and professional judgment provide necessary contextual information. Communication should also be part of project management from the beginning. Staff, partners, users, and community members need to understand what is happening, why decisions are being made, and how they can provide feedback. Clear and respectful communication becomes especially important during change or controversy.

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     My quality assurance background will continue to support risk assessment, documentation, testing, and problem solving. The MLIS program has expanded my understanding of risk beyond technical failure to include privacy, inequitable access, cultural harm, staff burnout, and loss of community trust because equitable leadership means using influence responsibly and sharing decision-making power when appropriate. My goal is to manage organized and sustainable projects while creating an environment where people can contribute knowledge, question decisions, and trust that their concerns will be considered. Success of my leadership will be measured not only by whether a project is completed, but also by how the work is carried out and whether it strengthens the institution’s relationship with its community.