Speakers: 185th Association Meeting: Fall 2024

Kaetrena Davis Kendrick earned her M.S.L.S. from the historic Clark Atlanta University School of Library and Information Studies. While known for her work on ethics, equity, diversity and inclusion, and communities of practice in libraries, Kendrick’s research on low-morale experiences in library workplaces is recognized as groundbreaking and validating for library employees at all levels.

In her daily and long-term work, Kendrick has transformed library programs, services, and culture via creativity, leadership, and advocacy. She is committed to centering well-being, creativity, and empathy in the workplace and promoting career clarity and rejuvenation to workers. In 2019, Kendrick was named the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. She is founder of Kendrick Consulting and Communications, LLC (Renewals) and is also the 2024-2025 Follett Chair with Dominican University School of Information Studies. Learn more about her work.

Dr. Kari Grain is the author of Critical Hope and teaches in the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Education, where she leads the Adult Learning and Global Change (ALGC) Master’s Program. In her ongoing community engaged scholarship, Kari is a research consultant in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with Simon Fraser University’s Community Engaged Research Initiative (CERi). Her research in experiential learning, adult education, climate action and anti-racism has been featured in peer reviewed journals, books, and podcasts. In the realm of higher education and beyond, Dr. Grain believes that critical hope has the potential to be a vibrant pathway toward systemic and personal change; vital to that process of transformation is an attunement to relational, creative, and vulnerable ways of being in the world with others. Grain is the co-editor of a forthcoming (2025) volume on Community Engaged Research with University of Toronto Press. Kari lives on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories.

Jody Gray (She/Hers) is the Associate University Librarian for Research at the University of Minnesota. Jody has worked in the arena of equity, diversity, and inclusion for over 15 years. Previously, she was the Diversity Outreach Librarian for the University of Minnesota Libraries from 2005-2015. She has also been the Director of the Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services at the American Library Association in Chicago, IL.

Jody is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux (Lakota) Tribe of South Dakota.

Dan Porterfield is President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a global nonprofit organization committed to realizing a free, just, and equitable society. A native of the City of Baltimore, where he was raised by a single mother, and a Rhodes Scholar, he has been recognized as a visionary strategist, transformational leader, devoted educator, and passionate advocate for justice and opportunity. At the Aspen Institute, Porterfield has worked to build upon the organization’s legacy of societal influence and commitment to human dignity while positioning it for a future where it can make its most profound and lasting impacts.

Previously, Porterfield served as President of Franklin & Marshall College. Under his leadership, the College set records for applications, fundraising, and fellowships, tripled its percentage of incoming low-income students, and doubled its percentage of domestic students of color. Earlier in his career, Porterfield served as Senior Vice President for Strategic Development at Georgetown University and as communications director and chief speechwriter for the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is the author of the book Mindset Matters: The Power of College to Activate Lifelong Growth about the growing value of college in today’s rapidly changing world.

Porterfield has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work. He was named a White House Champion of Change in 2016 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020 and to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2023. He earned B.A. degrees from Georgetown and Oxford and his Ph.D. from The City University of New York Graduate Center, where he was awarded a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities and wrote his dissertation on the poetry of American prisoners.

As university librarian, Jon Shaw leads Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, which comprise nine campus libraries and multiple research entities, including the Digital Lab, Slave Societies Digital Archive and Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Shaw also has administrative oversight of the McGee Applied Research Center for Narrative Studies and the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies, both institutionally situated in the College of Arts and Science. Under Shaw’s strategic direction, the Heard Libraries have taken a leading role in several key initiatives at Vanderbilt, from organizing original exhibitions, programs and events that celebrate the university’s Sesquicentennial to launching a Geographic Information Systems Lab that strengthens Discovery Vanderbilt research.

Shaw is currently a member of the advisory boards of Clarivate, the Research Library at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and AmeriQuest: Narrative, Law and Society journal; incoming chair of the Research and Analytics Committee of the Association of Research Libraries; and institutional representative, member and/or delegate for the Association of Research Libraries, Coalition for Networked Information, Center for Research Libraries, HathiTrust, and Association of Southeastern Research Libraries.

Prior to coming to Vanderbilt in July 2022, Shaw was associate vice provost and deputy university librarian for the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.