{"id":33884,"date":"2025-08-24T00:01:43","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T04:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=33884"},"modified":"2025-08-05T17:24:54","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T21:24:54","slug":"reflecting-on-my-experience-in-the-2025-emerging-leaders-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2025\/08\/reflecting-on-my-experience-in-the-2025-emerging-leaders-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on My Experience in the 2025 Emerging Leaders Program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I had such a great time in Philadelphia completing the Emerging Leaders program and enjoying the excitement and chaos that is ALA Annual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The conference began with a morning of seminars and speakers as the final piece of the Emerging Leaders program before we presented our projects. We had some constructive prompts and discussion questions to help us put our future goals and next career steps into perspective, as well as two panels of insightful speakers. After this, we received our program completion certificates and got our materials ready for the poster session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My group\u2019s project for ALSC and YALSA (the Young Adult Library Service Association) focused on evaluating the advocacy resources that these divisions offer to their members and providing recommendations for ways they can bring these resources up to date, make the user experience more manageable, and make maintaining these items sustainable for the staff and\/or volunteers who do this work. I hope that ALSC and YALSA find our project useful as they approach their upcoming reunification and consider where they will take their advocacy efforts in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We offered our recommendations in a written report with appendices containing templates and other resources, and our poster was a visual summary of our findings. My group was great; we worked well together and played off our varied strengths to put together a project we were proud of. This was my first time presenting in a poster session, and it was a rewarding experience to share what we had worked on over the last several months, as well as see what the other groups developed for their respective projects. If you are interested in learning more about our work, head to the Emerging Leaders project page<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Emerging Leaders Group B at our poster session! (From left to right: Kirbie Sondreal, Samantha Streeter, Sarah Bailey, Jessica Grider) Photo courtesy of Jessica Grider<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In participating in the Emerging Leaders program, I learned a lot about teamwork, organizational channels, user experience, and strategic, long-term thinking. I really got to develop and hone skills that I will use every day in my work at the library to better serve my patrons and community. I also made a lot of meaningful connections through the program and feel I gained a great network of peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the conference was busy and fun, as well\u2014I always come back from professional development opportunities like these so inspired, re-energized, and excited to see how I can adapt new ideas for my library and community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By far, my favorite part of the experience was the connection I made with my Emerging Leaders cohort\u2014in participating in this program, I have a new network of colleagues and friends that I see myself staying in contact with for years to come. I recommend the Emerging Leaders program to any early-career librarian looking to gain experience, knowledge, and connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Today’s guest contributor is Kirbie Sondreal<\/strong>. Kirbie is the Assistant Children\u2019s Services Director for the Grand Forks Public Library in North Dakota. She is passionate about early literacy, community partnerships, and language access. She grew up on a farm in rural North Dakota and got a job at her local library at 16, in part because it was her favorite place to be, but also so that she could get out of farm work. Now she enjoys helping on her family\u2019s farm when she can AND being a librarian!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had such a great time in Philadelphia completing the Emerging Leaders program and enjoying the excitement and chaos that is ALA Annual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[2952,134,16,30],"tags":[896],"class_list":["post-33884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ala-annual-2025","category-guest-blogger","category-professional-reading","category-projects-research","tag-emerging-leaders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}