The Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association’s (APALA) Scholarships and Awards Committee is proud to announce Cynthia Mari Orozco as the 2015 Emerging Leaders for the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association. APALA will provide funding to support her attendance and participation in the Emerging Leaders program at the 2015 ALA Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference.
“The Emerging Leaders Sponsorship is an amazing professional development opportunity that enables new librarians the chance to network with other professionals and develop professional leadership. Because of the generous donations from our members and sponsors supporting our scholarship programs, new talented APALA librarians like Cynthia Mari Orozco are able to receive the financial support to ensure their career dreams,” says Eileen K. Bosch, APALA President 2014-2015. We are looking forward to see Cynthia’s future contributions to APALA and the library profession!
Cynthia has vast leadership, community and volunteer experiences starting with her first library leadership role as President of LISSTEN, a student organization at San Jose State University, which connects students, professors, and library professionals. Cynthia writes that the skills she gained, “have helped me serve on library committees at my home institution, collaborate with other librarians to present at conferences, and network with my peers to build connections for future collaborative projects.”
Her most recent effort was to reach out to the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center through Twitter to partner with the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) in hosting the Smithsonian APA Center’s Asian Pacific American Wikipedia edit-a-thon. This was a simultaneous event that involved many APALA librarians throughout the country. Through these experiences, Cynthia, “discovered that leadership does not only entail creativity and innovation but having the drive and ability to carry these ideas to fruition.”
Cynthia believes that effective leadership begins with the leader. She states that a leader, “encourages and inspires innovation and creativity, not being afraid of potential failure but allowing for ample time, space, and energy to explore new ideas and reevaluate existing systems. An effective leader is also “committed to the mission of his or her institution and in the well-being and development of his or her staff, never remaining complacent in existing structures, programs, or services, and constantly looks for opportunities for improvement, collaboration, and growth.”
Cynthia has worked with a number of diversity initiatives at university campuses. At Loyola Marymount University, she partnered with the Asian Pacific Student Services to teach students about the University Archives. She also assisted with the University’s “First to Go writing series” which consists of testimonials of first-generation college students, deposited to the library’s institutional repository. She writes, “As a fourth- and sixteenth-generation Mexican American and second-generation Japanese American, my personal background has inspired my desire to work with students from diverse backgrounds.” This inspiration resulted in Cynthia’s creation of an online space called, “LISmicroaggressions” (http://lismicroaggressions.tumblr.com/) for librarians, archivists, and other information professionals to share their experiences with micro-aggressions in the profession. She concludes, “My hope is that by sharing these experiences, we can increase the dialogue regarding diversity in the profession and understand how our words and actions affect our peers.”
Cynthia holds a BA in Political Science and Sociology from the University of California, Irvine. She has an MLIS from San José State University and MA in Latin American Studies from San Diego State University.
If you are interested in helping other new librarians like Cynthia Orozco, please consider donating to our great organization this holiday season while you shop on AmazonSmile! If you are not familiar with AmazonSmile, it is a website operated by Amazon with the same products, prices, and shopping features as Amazon.com. The difference is that when you shop on AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the charitable organization of your choice.
To access APALA’s Amazon Smile webpage click on the banner ad on http://www.apalaweb.org/ or go directly to https://smile.amazon.com/ch/54-1571421
Most importantly, your contribution will be a perfect gift for you – an “end-of-the-season” tax write off. Consider donating to APALA today!
Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association
(affiliated with the American Library Association)
P.O. Box 677593, Orlando, FL 32867-7593