Chaitra Powell is the Sarah Graham Kenan Curator of the Southern Historical Collection , a unit in UNC Chapel Hill's Wilson Special Collections Library. Prior to this role, she worked as the African American Collections and Outreach Archivist (2014–2021) and the project director of the Mellon funded, Community Driven Archives grant (2017-2021), both based in the Southern Historical Collection. Before coming to the University of North Carolina, she worked as an archival consultant in Los Angeles, CA and Chicago, IL. Chaitra earned her BA in Sociology and her master's degree in library science from the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. Chaitra's research interests include archival management/administration, community archives, African American history, and the history and culture of the American South.